This past week we had the most magical time on board the Disney Wonder cruise ship for the inaugural New Zealand sailing! The ‘Magic At Sea’ cruise was the very first cruise that Disney has ever offered from New Zealand, spending four days at sea (no port stops) where guests on board celebrated all things Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars!

The 4-night cruise started in Auckland on Tuesday 21st November 2023, and arrived back on Saturday 25th November 2023. We have always wanted to go on a Disney cruise – we just never imagined we would be able to go on one, and from our own city. It was everything we could wish for and more!

We will be writing up our full cruise adventure here on our blog, starting with day 1 –

Tuesday 21st November 2013

Our day started at 4.00am – we wanted to go down to the harbour to see the Disney Wonder coming in to New Zealand for the first time ever. We were tracking the ship position online, and found a great spot to see the Wonder in person! The ship looked beautiful with all the lights, and of course those iconic Mickey Mouse funnels!

After watching the Disney Wonder sail into Auckland, we headed back home to quickly finish our packing. We live pretty close to the port, so we still had plenty of time to pack, and double check we hadn’t forgotten anything. Our boarding time was 12.30pm, so before we knew it we were loading our luggage in the car and driving down to the port – and there she was, the Disney Wonder!

We quickly found our way to the boarding area, after taking a few photos of the Disney Wonder in port. We’ve never been on a cruise before, so we were expecting a lengthy boarding process – but it was quite quick really, lots of lovely helpful staff.

Before we knew it, we were stepping on board the ship and into the atrium. We were welcomed aboard the Disney Wonder! Goofy was there greeting guests from the stairs.

We were a bit overwhelmed, and didn’t know where we wanted to go first! So we sort of followed other guests, and wandered down the hall, where we were welcomed straight into Tiana’s for lunch. We were definitely hungry and excited to have our first meal on board.

We got our drinks and bread service, and lunch menu to order our meals.

• K – Leafy House Salad, Vegan Pennette Pasta, Raspberry Sorbet
• M – Beef Empanadas, Chicken Cesar Salad, Welcome Aboard Sundae
• J – Beef Empanadas, Pennette Pasta, Welcome Aboard Sundae

Kristy’s lunch –

Matt’s lunch –

At lunch, we were told our room was ready, so we decided to go drop off our carry-on bags. After a bit of navigating, we found our room – our checked luggage was already waiting for us outside the door. We dropped off our carry-on luggage, did a quick tour of the room, and set off to explore.

4pm – We attended the mandatory safety briefing on deck 4 (section G). Took a little while, but after being reminded about life vests and life boats, it really did sink in that we were on a ship about to sail out to sea.

4.45pm – Found a spot on deck 10 to watch the Sail-A-Wave deck party. This was our first time seeing Mickey Mouse and friends on our cruise, which was so exciting! We finally heard the ship horn tune, which brought tears to my eyes – we had heard it in videos many times, but we finally got to hear it in person, which was simply magical.

We wanted to see the ship leave port, but after waiting a while we still hadn’t started moving (the ship was still moored to the dock), so we took a few deck photos then went and saw the characters in the atrium.

In the atrium, we met Pluto! We got hugs, photos, and autographs (I got an autograph from Pluto in the back of Juliet’s book, as I didn’t have one yet). While in line, we noticed the water moving past us out the windows – we were finally on our way!

We went up to the deck and took photos of Rangitoto Island, as the ship was finally sailing out of Auckland and out to sea.

In our research, we had read that the merchandise stores usually open an hour after leaving port – so we went to see if they had opened or if people were lining up yet. We could see all the fun inaugural sailing merchandise through the windows, but the doors were closed. A crew member said they needed to wait until the ship reached international waters, which would be in the middle of the night, so the stores would open at 9.30am the next day.

The stores were right next to the Walt Disney Theater, so we waited for a few minutes before the doors opened and we found seats for the Golden Mickeys show at 6.00 pm. The 1 hour show was awesome, there were so many great characters included – a great celebration of Disney films for the first day of our cruise.

After the show, we headed back up to see the view from decks 9 and 10. We could see Auckland shrinking into the distance behind us as the sun was setting.

After admiring the view from the the top decks, we headed back to our room, to get changed for dinner at the second seating.

8.15pm – Dinner at Animator’s Palette!

This was the rotational dining restaurant we were the most excited about, as we had heard so much about it. As we sat down at our table, we were given our drawing sheets – and we suddenly remembered we hadn’t practiced any figure drawing before our cruise! Oh well, we grabbed a marker and got stuck in, having fun with our character drawings.

After handing back our completed drawings, we got our menu for the night.

• K – Arugula Leaves Salad, Black Bean Chipotle Cakes, Dark Choc Mini Cake with Strawberries
• M – Chicken and Walnut Salad, Lemon-Thyme Marinated Chicken, Warm Sticky Date Pudding
• J – Sliced Serrano Ham, Lemon-Thyme Marinated Chicken, Lemon Icebox Pie

Kristy’s dinner –

Matt’s dinner –

We went back to our room to put our Animator’s Palette drawings away, where we found our first towel animal (Kangaroo). We then ran back to see Goofy and Rapunzel in the atrium but they were just finishing their meet and greet, so we went for a wander around the ship.

Another trip back to our room for a quick pitstop and rest, and we checked the itinerary to choose our next activity. We decided to head to Azure for the Silent DJ party. We each got headphones with three channels to choose from, with lights to indicate the channel (red, blue or green) so you could see what your friends were listening and dancing to. This was really fun – we all danced past midnight!

Once the party wrapped up, we decided to go for a bit of a wander, before finally heading back to our room (with soft drinks from the self serve machines), and ordered fries with ketchup from room service – it came quick! Fun end to an awesome day. After writing down my itinerary notes from the day, we finally got settled for bed at 1.30am – what an amazing first day of our first Disney cruise.

Our day 2 blog post will be up soon – check out all our Disney Wonder blog posts here

The post Disney Wonder Inaugural NZ Cruise 2023 – Day 1 appeared first on Villa Varykino.

Today’s unboxing features the Funko Soda Harley Quinn figure. I am a big Harley Quinn fan (I made her classic animated outfit back in 2007) and while my collecting is mostly focused on Star Wars, I like to pick up a few Harley Quinn items from time to time. I love the Funko Soda range, so of course I wanted to add the Soda Harley Quinn to my collection.

Check out my unboxing video –

The Funko Soda range is different to the main Pop! Vinyl range in that every figure has a chase variant. Because the metal soda can has no windows, you can’t see the figure inside, so you don’t know which version is inside.

This Soda figure features Harley Quinn in her Suicide Squad movie outfit, played by Margot Robbie. While that is not my favourite movie featuring Harley Quinn (I personally love Birds Of Prey), her outfit in that movie is very popular, and is used for a lot of merchandise.

The tin features a red and blue colour scheme, which matches Harley’s Quinn outfit. The back of the can has an image of the standard figure version, with a red silhouette of the chase version – which appears to be the same figure, but holding a mallet instead of the baseball bat.

This figure has a total edition size of 12,500 – 10,500 of the standard figure, and 2,000 of the chase variant figure. My figure is the standard version – 1 out of 10,500. I have yet to find a Soda chase figure, wonder if I’ll ever get that lucky?

I am really quite impressed at the level of detail on this figure. Considering the cute stylized design, I wasn’t expecting all the small details of Harley Quinn’s outfit to be included. Her tattoo’s, t-shirt print, jacket back, gloves, baseball bat decorations – it is quite detailed for the size.

The Soda Harley Quinn figure is a cute rendition of her Suicide Squad outfit, and a wonderful addition to my little Harley Quinn collection. Someday I’ll track down the convention exclusive Soda Harley Quinn figure, featuring her classic red and black outfit – and I can’t wait to see what other Soda figures Funko makes next!

The post Funko Soda Figure – Harley Quinn appeared first on Villa Varykino.

Today marks the 35th anniversary of the release of Robocop in theatres in the US. I’ve got a few favourite Robocop collectibles on display around the house, but my most recent acquisition from this franchise is the RoboCop Funko Soda Figure (international version, limited to an edition of 6,000).

A nice thing about this line of collectibles is that the packaging opens cleanly across a seamline that means that the soda can is a displayable collectible once open too. Funko generally only release a few characters per franchise in this line (it’s nowhere near as prolific as standard Funko Pop! Vinyl figures), and Robo himself is the only character from the movies to have been released so far.

One aspect about this collectible line is that every figure has a chase variant. Sometimes the outside of the can shows what the variant version looks like, some have a ‘mystery silhouette’ as this can does. We know from online research and advertising that the variant is a version with his helmet removed. Two separate runs of this figure have been released – a US run of 10,000 (1,600 chase variants) with the black name band around the bottom of the can, and an international run of 6,000 (1,000 chase variants) with the grey name band around the bottom of the can.

Okay, so no variant for us today… just a regular version. Nice to have a classic representation of the character nonetheless.

Also included in the soda can is a little cardboard “pog” disc which notes whether the figure is the standard or chase version. In our case, this RoboCop figure is the standard version – 1 out of 5,000 (out of a total edition of 6,000, with the other 1,000 being chase versions).

There is no articulation at all on this collectible – again not too surprising. Despite that, this is overall a fun, stylised rendition of Alex Murphy, aka RoboCop, to add to our collection.

The post Funko Soda Figure – RoboCop appeared first on Villa Varykino.

I don’t remember how or when I became aware of Harley Quinn, but as a big Batman and Superman fan in my childhood, it was inevitable. She stuck in my mind, I loved her look, her personality – so of course when I got into cosplay, she was right at the top of my wish list.

Fast forward to 2007. Our local Armageddon Expo announced the line up of guests, which included none other than Harley Quinn’s co-creator Bruce Timm. Well, I was not going to miss out on an opportunity to meet him and get my Harley Quinn comics signed – so why not dress up as well?

I was still quite new to cosplay and sewing at this time. I had only sewn three costumes since I first started cosplaying in 2004 – a Jedi Knight, Padme’ Amidala’s lake dress, and Barriss Offee.

Here’s my original description of how I made my Harley Quinn costume –

• Black Lycra undersuit –
  For hiding undergarments, and just giving a ‘smooth’ finish to the costume. I used Kwik Sew 3052, a pretty good pattern that needed only minor changes to fit me better. I used Nylon lycra, with a small zip in the back.
• Black and Red bodysuit –
  Again I used Kwik Sew 3052 – it was well suited for Harley Quinn because of the front seam. I ended up making it from the ‘bottom up’, with black and red ‘Manhattan knit’ fabric. I sewed it up with the bottom colours being right, then worked out where the cross seam would sit on me, then cut it at that point, then sewed the top up in the correct opposite colours, then sewed the two halves together and added sleeves. The diamonds were carefully cut out and applied with 3M spray adhesive – this held incredibly well, allowed the two layers to stretch together and meant I didn’t have to sit for hours handsewing them all on! The bodysuit does up with a small zip at the back.
• Red and black gloves –
  I knew because of the red, I couldn’t just buy red and black gloves – the colours wouldn’t match, and it’s pretty hard to find red gloves that aren’t satin. I tried using a Vogue glove pattern, but my hands are too small. Instead of spending ages adapting the pattern, I simply traced around my hands and sewed them out of my manhattan knit – worked well.
• White Collar –
  Spent a while drawing squiggly shapes on newsprint and holding it around my neck in the mirror. Just a progress of seeing what looks right in terms of shape and size. It took a while, but I’m very happy with the shape. I originally planned to make it from white satin, but it didn’t sit flat at all – so I used a white cotton drill. It ironed completely flat, and looked great. It is made as two identical shapes – front and back, sewed together across one shoulder, and it closes shut on the other shoulder with little snaps. I hand sewed small pom poms I bought to each ‘squiggle’. To finish I sewed a small strip around the inside neck so it would form a little collar around the neck.
• White writst cuffs –
  I took a strip of white cotton drill and sewed it into a tube inside out – this fitted exactly around my wrist. I then did the same with a really long strip – and sewed it in a zig zag onto the small wrist band. This took some time to do with my machine, but I love how it turned out. They dome close around my wrist with little snaps.
• Black and Red soft boots –
  These took me ages. I originally tried to make them from vinyl then cover them with my bodysuit fabric, but the vinyl sat horribly. In the end I cut 2 ‘v’ shapes out of vinyl, and covered them with the red and black fabric – they dome closed around my ankles, as a separate piece to the boots. The boots are basically pointy toed socks made in three parts – sole, top right and top left. I cut the sole again out of vinyl and placed this inside the sock to give some flatness to the shape. It all worked surprisingly well.
• Red and Black hood –
  One of the most important aspects of this costume for me was getting her hood right. I already had a basic hood shape (from my Barriss Offee costume), but Harley’s had to fit tigher, and has a ‘flat top’ to the face opening. It took a few tries, but I got a shaped that worked well enough (I didn’t get the ‘squarish’ angles around the face that I wanted, but it looks okay). The ears were sewn up like cones seperately, stuffed with polyester toy fill and hand sewn onto the hood – took help to get the placement right. The pom poms were slightly larger than the ones on the collar, and hand sewn onto the ends.
• Accessories –
  For her mask I bough a cheap white plastic face mask, cut it to a more correct shape. I stretched the black manhattan fabric over it, and glued it in place, folding it over the edges. I used thin clear beading elastic to hold it in place. Kryolan white makeup and black lipstick finish it off.

Worn at – Armageddon Expo Auckland 2007

Matt made Harley’s over-sized gun for me. The handle part is from a cheap toy gun but the barrel etc is made from pvc pipe and styrene. He then sprayed it silver, and hand painted the grip black. It looks great, and I found it so much easier to pose with a prop to hold.

I had the crazy notion of performing a skit for the cosplay competition. I had been watching the Batman animated series episodes with Harley Quinn in them on repeat, for costume reference, so hearing her voice all the time, I thought I might be able to perform as Harley on stage… yikes! I think back and wonder how on earth I had that idea and courage!

To complete my ‘Mad Love’ skit idea, we made one more prop – the Joker’s ‘Death Of A 100 Smiles’ blueprint. We bought an A3 sheet of blue card stock, and Matt hand-drew the blueprint using a screenshot as reference. After nearly 13 years, we still have this simple prop stored safely away.

I wish I took more photos during the construction process, but rushing to get the two costumes finished in time, I only took a couple of quick progress photos. I’m still amazed it all came together in time, and I had such a great day in costume at the convention.

I didn’t really figure out too many poses for Harley Quinn, so I stood the same way in most of our photos that day. That’s okay, I love the photos we got, and cosplay photography wasn’t the same back in 2007! The photos we took are great memories from an awesome day.

I love Matt so much for being the Joker to my Harley Quinn. We were still newlyweds at the time, but he grew his hair long for me and let me dress him up as the Joker. It felt so romantic to spend the day in our ‘Mad Love’ cosplay – something different to our usual Jedi and Stormtrooper costumes.

I had so much fun being Harley Quinn all day, it really helped going into the cosplay competition that afternoon. With just a quick run down with Matt of what I needed him to do for the skit, we headed into our performance.

The winners were announced later that day – and to my honest absolute surprise, we won Best In Show! I had put so much work into our costumes for the love of the characters, so it was just the most amazing bonus!

I learnt a lot about sewing these costumes, and someday I hope to remake my Harley Quinn classic costume, so I can improve on all the areas where I was still learning sewing techniques.

It was so exciting to finally meet Bruce Timm in my Harley Quinn costume. I was so shy – I’m sure he meets scores of Harley Quinn cosplayers every year, and I was such a novice seamstress, but it was a dream come true.

I took along two of my favourite Harley Quinn comic books to get signed – with Bruce Timm cover art of course! His ‘Mad Love’ cover is still one of my all-time favourite Harley Quinn artworks, it was such a dream come true to get them signed in person!

The post Harley Quinn and Joker Costumes appeared first on Villa Varykino.

Lego was a central toy in my childhood. From the basic bricks to the themed sets like Pirates or Lego City, I spent untold hours creating and playing with Lego. I still have all my childhood Lego, though it’s well used and I don’t have the box or instructions for many of the sets. Then it got all mixed up again after our daughter played with it in her childhood, getting new sets to add in to the mix. Nowadays, we have several generations of Lego all mixed together in big storage tubs.

In the Star Wars prequel era (2002-2005), I started hunting down as many Lego Star Wars sets as I could, and got quite a good collection. It grew alongside my Star Wars 3.75″ action figure collection, until I finally had to make a choice – I didn’t have the space or the budget to continue collecting both. I made the decision to sell my Lego Star Wars sets, and continue collecting the action figures.

Now, years later, the Lego bug has bitten again – there have been a few new sets released that finally tipped the scales and got me to buy Star Wars Lego again. But first, a look back at one of my original Lego sets.

Organising years of collected LEGO – before and after:

LEGO Paradisa Rolling Acres Ranch (6419)

This is one of the oldest Lego sets in my collection. I was a horse-mad girl in my youth, so I loved anything to do with horses. This Lego set included three horse figures, so of course it was on my wish list. I *think* I got this as a Christmas gift, or perhaps it was a birthday gift – either way, I know it was a gift from my parents when I was quite young (this set was released in 1992).

After all those years, I am thankful that I still have it, including the box – though sadly I lost the construction booklet somewhere along the way, but thanks to the internet I was able to access an online copy to rebuild the set. It was really fun to build a Lego set from childhood, with all the original pieces (well, I think it’s missing one or two). I am so glad that I still have it, all these years later.

The post LEGO – Getting Back Into Building appeared first on Villa Varykino.

This weekend marks 17 years that Matt and I have been together as a couple. 17 years of adventures, travels, costuming, collecting, and all around geek fun.

When I first met Matt, he costumed as a Stormtrooper with the 501st Legion, and I costumed as a Jedi Knight with the Rebel Legion – and ever since then we have been dressing up in all sorts of fun costumes together. From local troops and conventions, to international events like Star Wars Celebration and DragonCon, we have so much fun together as a couple.

I am so blessed to have a best friend and husband to share Star Wars and costuming with. Our home is full of Star Wars collectibles, and our days are full of Star Wars fun. The last 17 years have been filled with love and adventure, and I can’t wait for what tomorrow will bring with Matt by my side.

Happy Anniversary Matt!

The post Seventeen Years appeared first on Villa Varykino.

Happy Mother’s Day! I was lucky enough to be able to spend the day with my mother and daughter and our family, it was wonderful. My daughter knows of my love of Funko Pop! Vinyl figures – most of my Funko collection is of course Star Wars, though I wish I could collect Disney Pops as well. So my daughter got me a wonderful gift – a Marie Pop! Vinyl from The Aristocats, a childhood favourite film of mine. The story is about a cat and her kittens, so this gift was right on theme for a wonderful Mother’s Day gift.

I watched The Aristocats so many times when I was young – a classic animated Disney film featuring cute cats, set in France. Better still, one of the kittens was called Marie, which is my middle name, so of course she was my favourite. Plus she’s a white cat with pink bows, seriously she’s just so cute and pretty.

I absolutely love the ‘diamond’ glitter Pop! Vinyl figures (I wish they used the finish more in the Star Wars range), so I was so excited when Funko released Marie in a glitter variant. She is adorable in the Funko-style sculpt, complete with her pink bows, and the glitter just makes her even prettier. She is a wonderful addition to my little Disney-themed Funko Pop! Vinyl collection.

Happy Mother’s Day!

The post Funko Pop! Vinyl Marie Figure appeared first on Villa Varykino.

There are just some objects that stick in your memory. Many years ago, when I was working on my classic Harley Quinn costume, I got fully immersed in the fandom, and searching as much Harley Quinn content as I could find – which was mostly from fans back then.

A Harley Quinn fan website had a round-up of all the licensed merchandise available – and back then, there wasn’t much. It was all from the animated series, as this was before Margot Robbie brought Harley to life on the big screen, and Harley Quinn merchandising really took off. Back then it was hard to find Harley merch, so it meant hunting and hoping that rare piece you wanted would show up on ebay someday.

I’ve collected some of my favourite Harley Quinn items over the years, but there was one item from that fan website that really stuck in my mind – a mug. Now, to most people, a mug isn’t something to get too excited about, but as I don’t drink coffee or tea, any mug I buy gets put on display as a collectible.

The classic animated series artwork, the sculpted handle – it was so pretty and fun. But, being released twenty years ago, I had pretty much given up hope that I would ever find one in good condition on the secondary market. Then one day, I had a random impulse to search Harley Quinn merch on our local NZ online marketplace Trademe – and boom! There she was. Pristine – and with a cheap buy now option – so ‘buy now’ I did.

After all these years, I can’t believe I found this mug locally, and for a great price! Perhaps an odd item to get so excited about, compared to some of the amazing Harley Quinn statues and figures that are available now, but this is a vintage piece from Harley’s early years, and that feels so special to me. I smile every time I see her sitting on my shelf.

The post Harley Quinn Mug appeared first on Villa Varykino.

Happy Star Trek Day! 54 years since the first episode of Star Trek (The Original Series) debuted.

Although we haven’t posted a lot in the way of Star Trek collectibles here on Villa Varykino yet, we’ve got a good bunch lined up to check out in full in the future. Amongst them are these classic The Original Series replica props/roleplay items, from Playmates. They each feature some pretty cool audio clips and lighting.

And, as a side note, we were extremely excited and privileged to meet both William Shatner (Captain James T. Kirk) and the late, great Leonard Nimoy (Science Officer/First Officer Spock) at DragonCon in 2009. More on that topic soon too, when we take a look back at past DragonCon events that we have attended.

The post Happy Star Trek Day, 2020! appeared first on Villa Varykino.

The long awaited third instalment of the Bill & Ted movie series, Bill and Ted Face the Music, starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter as Ted “Theodore” Logan and Bill S. Preston esq, respectively, has just launched in selected theatres and through video-on-demand channels. We watched it via the latter, and although this post isn’t intended as a review, I have to say that we really, really enjoyed it. It was no small ask to return to these characters nearly 30 years after the last film, and maintain the feel of both the characters and humour of the original movies, while updating just enough to make use of modern film-making techniques and catering to a 21st Century audience. But Bill and Ted Face the Music has already struck the right note with fans and critics alike, and I am in full agreement that this was a fun arc that went far enough pushing things beyond the charm of 1989 & 1991 movies.

But that’s not what we’re here for today. This article is to reflect on a different Bill and Ted medium… the short run of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Comic Book series that ran for 12 issues in 1991 and 1992. The Excellent Comic Book series was published by Marvel Comics, written and illustrated by Evan Dorkin, and followed on directly after Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.

Sadly, I don’t quite have a full run of this series, but intend to track down the remaining 4 issues that I need to complete the full set. Nevertheless, I fondly remember purchasing and reading these among the many comic titles that I indulged in during my early university years.

Issue no.1 starts during Bill and Ted’s pre-wedding ceremony, and features all the historic figures from their Excellent Adventure, not to mention the range of significant characters from their Bogus Journey, including Station, and the good robot Bill and Teds. Rufus has time-traveled back to fifteenth century England to procure some medieval musicians for the imminent wedding, but inadvertently brings back a couple of miscreants intent on stopping the the wedding with the princesses, in order to win back the hands of Joanna and Elizabeth.

I’ll sign off on that note, to avoid spoilers, and because I’ve got a couple more issues to revisit and re-read. The series has been collected in a couple of trade paperback archives, which can be found through Amazon or eBay (affiliate links). Party on dudes!

The post Bill and Ted’s Excellent Comic Book appeared first on Villa Varykino.