King Triton
Costume Debut: January 2019
Costume Reprised: June 2019
For the first Disney DJ Night of 2019, Irvin and his friends decided to go with a Little Mermaid theme. Though Irvin has several costumes from that movie already, none seemed conducive to lots and lots of sweating, so he prepped a new one: King Triton. It ended up proving to have a surprising amount of DIY: the cuffs (fabric hot-glued and velcroed) and the crown (painted gold, and placed in the wig with much effort). The trickiest part was the ruffle where the torso meets the tail; in the end, a yard of lacy trimming sufficed. Irvin even bought a new trident for the occasion.
On the night in question, the real King Triton must have been having a hissy fit, because there was an awful lot of cold and wet outside. But that did not deter the intrepid Disney dancers; King Triton may have placed himself underneath several layers of coats, but he showed up to party anyway, with an Ariel, a Scuttle, and an Eric they met waiting in line.
Triton does not really have any songs to sing or dance to, so he contented himself with lamenting his daughter's life choices in all her songs. He took over for Flotsam and Jetsam in ruining the end of "Kiss the Girl." Triton proved to have a robust amount of photo ops: fighting with Ariel, cockblocking Ariel and Eric (the Eric in question posted about "King Cockblock" on social media), and wrestling with an Ursula over the trident.
Of course, the worst part of the costume was the beard - facial hair remains Irvin's Achilles heel in cosplay. To be honest, most of the night was spent with the beard hanging loose around his neck - how was he supposed to sing his heart out through all that hair? The beard did have one very good purpose: it completely covered any lack of "summer body"!
But when it was actually summer, King Triton was a no-brainer to wear at the Mermaid Parade, continuing a noble tradition of cosplaying Little Mermaid characters at the parade for the fourth year. The copious amounts of hair proved quite warm, but the costume actually worked quite well for the event. There were many many Tritons and Neptunes at the parade, and at one point Irvin took a group picture with all of them. Angelica accompanied Irvin as Ariel again, but 2019 proved to have a surprising dearth of Ursulas in the parade - Irvin had almost no one to fight over the trident with!