Ten Things You May Not Know About Alice in Wonderland

1. The film was created in five years for $3 million, largely because Walt Disney had created a full live-action version of his film so that the animators had something to work with.

2. The talking doorknob was the only new character that Walt created for the film.

3. On the title page in the movie, Lewis Carroll’s last name is spelled wrong. It says, “Carrol.”

4. Listen carefully when Alice is playing croquet with the Queen and the King waves his crown. Someone yells, “Hooray!” Many people believe this is Mickey Mouse’s voice.

5. In the Walrus and the Carpenter sequence, watch as the R in the word, “March” flashes on the calendar above the mother oyster. This refers to an old belief that you could eat oysters only in months that have an R in their names. Months that don’t have an R in their names are the summer months, and before refrigeration, people couldn’t eat oysters in the summer due to the heat.

6. Lewis Carroll wrote the riddle, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” It originally had no answer, but that didn’t stop people from making up their own. One popular answer was “because Edgar Allen Poe wrote on both.”

7. In the Walrus and the Carpenter sequence, the dates used are the same for March 2010, in which Disney would release Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland.

8. The Queen of Heart’s henchmen are a deck of cards. The animators had to make sure that each card was represented, except for the non-heart court cards, which were missing to show that the Queen isn’t playing with a full deck.

9. This was the first film to have the actors who did the voices for the characters credited on screen. And indeed credits wouldn’t again be given until The  Jungle Book.

10. Listen closely right after the song “Painting the Roses Red.” The same fanfare was also used in Dumbo after Timothy Q. Mouse said “Dumbo the Great!”