Schulyar’s Disney Wish Reveal Opens The Workshop of Wishes

Schulyar, clutching tight to her mom, Amber, didn’t quite know what to make at first of the guy in the tattered top hat and tails who greeted her and her family at the Make-A-Wish Northeast New York office. He said his name was Tiddlywink Higgins, and he was, well, strange – in a funny and charming way.

Tiddlywink soon had the shy 8-year-old giggling. And he did know Schulyar's name, and even showed her it was written in a really fancy book, which she signed with a feathered quill pen. She then banged a gong to make her presence as the first-ever wish kid to visit the Workshop of Wishes official.

Schulyar initially thought she was coming to the office with just her mom to sign some paperwork. She was surprised when she saw her wish granters Jim Bettini and Sabra Venezia – and the rest of her family. And with Tiddlywink as her guide, Schulyar found out the real reason for the visit: Her wish to go to Walt Disney World^® Resort was going to be granted!

“Do you know how hard it was not to tell you?” her dad Kevin asked her over lunch and cake afterward.

The reveal is the first for the Make-A-Wish Northeast New York Workshop of Wishes, seven years in the making. The initiative transformed part of the chapter’s office into a special place where wish children can contemplate and declare their wishes, and find out their wishes will be granted.

“We are trying to make the first part of the wish journey more magical,” Make-A-Wish Northeast New York CEO William C. Trigg, III, said.

The journey through the Workshop of Wishes is led by volunteer actors from the community called storytellers.

“Being a storyteller means that I help a child know that their wish is going to come true, and that we are going to make that possible with the wish granters,” said Tiddlywink, aka Kristoph DiMaria. “We make the magic for them.”

In the Workshop of Wishes, the child visits the chapter’s Library of Wishes to discuss their wish. If they are decided upon their wish, they proceed down the hall to a special workshop room, where their wish is magically granted. (Yes, we keep the details sketchy to keep the surprise going for the next wish kid and family.)

“This was absolutely wonderful,” wish mom Amber said. “The whole experience was just amazing.”