Every year the theater department puts on a fundraiser, Tea with a Princess, during which a group of students dress up as Disney princesses, princes or other main Disney characters while friends, family members and community members bring their younger siblings or children to come meet their favorite character. This fundraiser raises money for the department and has done so for the past two years. This year, the theater department director, Barbara Whitlock, made the ultimate decision to change up the details.

This year on Dec. 3 and 4, and Dec. 10 and 11, there will be limited seating per session with online ticket sales. This is contrary to last year, when people had to pay at the door or send in payments and wait in a line to get in. To compensate for less seats, there are more sessions that people are able to attend. The online ticketing came about through the school and the SHS treasurer, making things more convenient for accounting.

In previous years, each princess would have their own table with multiple children to entertain. This year, each table will have two princesses with fewer children. Another change that is supposed to make things easier is that the princesses will be rotating from table to table instead of the making the children move.

From her experience as Elsa from the Disney film, “Frozen,” junior Kierstin Whitlock thinks that, in the larger groups of kids, the more shy children wouldn’t get as much attention, while others sometimes got too much. Having smaller, more controlled groups will make it easier to give every child the same amount of attention. The children will also have more one-on-one time with each princess. This being said, the princesses will have a much longer day.

“Having less kids to focus on will definitely help us (the princesses) getting to know the kids better, the kids having a better time and not feeling like their princess has to be shared with 20 other kids at one time,”  Kierston said.

Even though there are possible benefits to the new system, such as shorter lines, there could also be some drawbacks. For example, if someone didn’t know about the online registration, they wouldn’t be able to go in when they showed up for the event. But the hope is that this new registration system make everything less complicated and alleviate some of the guesswork when it comes to the number of people.

“How can we make things better?” Barbara asked herself, “I don’t always want to do the same old thing.”