Does Tinker Bell Know the Tooth Fairy?: Losing a Tooth on Your Disney Vacation
If you head out on Disney vacations with school-age children often enough, eventually the inevitable will happen. Someone’s going to lose a tooth. In my family, this has happened twice. My oldest daughter, Charlie, wiggled out a floppy tooth during a stage show on the Disney Wonder. A few years later, her younger sister Josie bit into a frozen Mickey bar at Disney’s California Adventure, looked down and found her tooth embedded in the chocolate and the vanilla ice cream tinged with blood. (Needless to say, we got her a new bar once the bleeding subsided.)
Of course when this kiddie rite of passage happens, you can handle it as you would at home; just pop a quarter/dollar/fiver/sawbuck under the pillow and move along. But perhaps this is an opportunity for some Disney magic to spice up your routine.
In our case, Charlie was worried that the Tooth Fairy wouldn’t find her. After many reassurances that fairies have special access to the GPS coordinates of every ship at sea, we were able to settle her down for the night. At this point my husband dashed down to the gift shop and purchased a Tinker Bell themed Disney Cruise pin, which we slipped, along with the requisite dollar, under her pillow. With the loot, Charlie also found a note “from the Tooth Fairy” explaining that special fairy legislation gave Tink dominion over all Disney venues, thus the inclusion of the pin.
Since the note became part of family lore, when Josie lost the tooth at Disneyland, we also had to get her a Tinker Bell gift for under her pillow. Luckily there is no shortage to Tink merchandise in the parks, so we were able to score a special fairy pin to commemorate her tooth loss as well.
I must admit that I thought we were pretty clever with our special Disney spin on tooth loss until I figured out that countless other families have celebrated in similar ways. Here’s a run down of Disney tooth loss tips I’ve encountered:
- Use Disney Dollars in place of real dollars under the pillow.
- Sprinkle the bed/pillow with Mickey-shaped confetti
- Put a Disney pressed penny or quarter under the pillow – maybe one with Tink, if you can find it
- Visit the Tinker Bell meet and greet at WDW and ask Tink herself about tooth protocol – apparently she’s very supportive during these discussions
- Use a Sacagawea gold dollar, but call it a Pocahantas dollar
- Leave a small plush fairy under the pillow
- Have the Tooth Fairy or Tink leave a note on a pretty Disney postcard
- Put a Disney-themed toothbrush under the pillow (often found for sale in the parks)
- For a girl, buy a small fairy-themed jewelry box in which to deposit the cash
As with most things Disney, special treatment is not guaranteed, but it never hurts to speak up when something special happens on your vacation. Tell the front desk of your hotel, your waitress, the nice lady at the gift shop, and anyone else who will listen, that your child has lost a tooth. Occasionally this will result in some sort of perk like a free ice cream (always makes me feel better) or having a free card or balloon delivered to your room.
Also, it never hurts to be prepared for special circumstances. If your child has a loose tooth just prior to your trip, you may want to plot out your strategy or acquire a special treat in advance “just in case.”
On a related note, if somehow during the confusion of vacation, the tooth fairy does end up missing you on her appointed rounds, you can always blame the circumstance of being away from home – and then follow up with a REALLY good surprise later.
Has your child lost a tooth during your Disney vacation? How did you handle this? Anything you did right, or wish you had done differently at the time? Let us know in the comments below.
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My daughter just lost her tooth last night at WDW. She was so excited1 I told her that Tinkerbell is friends with the Tooth Fairy and would make sure she knew about it.
You guys are all awesome!!!! We go to Walt Disney World all the time (FL residents) and now I kind of hope my DD loses a tooth there! She’s in love with Tinkerbell so it would just be a “magical” place to lose her first tooth 🙂
My daughter lost a tooth on our last trip down to Disney….she lost it on the plane ride. I wish I had thought of the Tinkerbell gifts as Tink is our favorite character!! We got her a celebration pin that said “1st visit from the DISNEY Tooth Fairy” and she got $5 disney dollars.
Incidently, she has since lost 2 teeth in 1 day on a trip to the Chicago Zoo, 1 tooth on our way to Indianapolis to visit family, and 1 tooth on a bike ride near the riverwalk. She can’t seem to lose them at home! WE leave for Disney in 35 days, wonder if she’ll lose another one!
Both of my kids lost teeth just before we came to WDW and they decided to save their teeth to leave for Tinker Bell. We are Vacation Club members and own and stay at Saratoga Springs. I went to the front desk there and explained that the kids thought Tinker Bell was going to come by while we were there. I asked if there was something I could use as pixie dust. They asked me to come back in 10 minutes. I did and they provided me with a container of Mickey Mouse sprinkles like you find on top of cupcakes, as well as two actual photographs in “Celebrate Today” folios of Cinderella’s castle at night with a fireworks int he background. Both were autographed by Tinker Bell. My kids (and I!) were just blown away. Such a cool thing for them to do for us.
Funny, our daughter (now 8) also lost a tooth during our last visit to WDW. She was very concerned that her special tooth fairy pillow was at home, but we assured her the tooth fairy would know how to find her. The tooth fairy left…you guessed it, a Tinkerbell trading pin, along with a dollar. My daughter still talks about it to this day.
My daughter (who is 11 now) was 4 yrs old when she lost a tooth at WDW. I still remember it clearly…she was eating pizza at the outside tables next to the ToT in HS. I went to get Fast Passes for ToT and came back to her holding her tooth. “Dad!…it got ‘thtuck’ in my pizza!” The tooth fairy gave her Mickey Dollars at our resort that night…and a lot of them as I recall! To this day, she remembers losing her tooth at WDW!!
These are great suggestions, my son will be with-in the tooth-losing ages soon and I can only hope that he would lose one in WDW some day! On an opposite note, my 6 month old daughter got her second tooth while in WDW last week!
My son lost a tooth last week at Disney World. I went down to the front desk at the Poly to see if they had anything they could help us with, and they gave us a really nice little wooden box shaped like a tooth to put the tooth in.
In June, my 6 year old granddaughter lost her tooth during breakfast at Cinderella’s castle. They provided a nice bowl of ice cream and wrapped the tooth in foil so we wouldn’t lose it. She put the tooth under her pillow and Tink left her a little Tink jewelry box with a Pocahontas pressed penny and a Sacajawea dollar. (Poch is her favorite princess). Tink also left her shadow (a small silhouette) along with some pixie dust. (We knew her tooth was loose, so we came prepared.)
My 6 year old daughter lost a tooth during our last trip. We are from Canada but since we were is the United States, the tooth fairy left her an american dollar bill. At home, she gets a $1 coin. She lost the coins over the years but still cherish her american dollar bill.
My 6 year old son lost his front tooth on Tom Sawyer’s Island. He got a $5 bill sprinkled with pixie dust (glitter from his sister’s new princess dress) because everybody knows Tinkerbell takes over at Disneyland!