Aurora's Cottage (formerly known as "Woodcutter's Cottage"), is what Flora, Fauna and Merryweather used as a secret base to keep Princess Aurora safe from Maleficent until the day of her sixteenth birthday.
Due to the Maleficent's curse inflicted upon Aurora as a baby, Aurora's father, King Stefan, proclaimed that all spinning wheels should be eliminated from the kingdom immediately. However, the leader of the fairies, Flora, knew that merely burning all the spinning wheels wouldn't stop Maleficent. In order to save the princess, the fairies come up with a plan: they'll raise her as their own niece deep in the forest until Maleficent's spell was no longer a threat.
After the fairies explained the plan to Aurora's parents, King Stefan and Queen Leah, the two monarchs (very reluctantly) agreed that it was the best way to save their precious child from Maleficent's horrible curse. Therefore in the middle of the night, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather disguise themselves as mortal peasants, sneak into the deep woods of the kingdom to the abandoned Woodcutter's Cottage where they change Aurora's name to Briar Rose and where Aurora spent most of her chidhood, initially unknowing of her true identity as a princess.
Role in the film
Sleeping Beauty
Inside the cottage.
Nothing is known about the cottage, except that it once belonged to a woodcutter who left it for unknown reasons. After it was abandoned, the three Good Fairies occupied it as a hiding place for Princess Aurora to keep her safe from Maleficient's curse.
When we first see the cottage, Aurora (under the name of Briar Rose) is seen singing happily while cleaning her window sill. When her "aunts," Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, want to plan a surprise 16th-birthday party for her, they send her away to get some berries, and while in the woods, she encounters the handsome Prince Phillip.
Meanwhile, the fairies are preparing the birthday cake and the dress without magic in order for Maleficent not to find them. However, it doesn't go so well as they hoped, so they decide to use magic very carefully. In the process, Flora and Merryweather fight over which color the dress should be (Merryweather wants it to be blue while Flora wants it to be pink), causing the attention of Maleficent's raven, Diablo, who's in search of Aurora, find their hideout.
When Aurora returns, the fairies wish her happy birthday and finally tell her of her true status as a princess. They also tell her that she won't be able to be with the stranger she met in the forest, since she's betrothed to Prince Phillip (ironically, the stranger she met in the forest, is in fact Prince Phillip). Aurora's shocked of the information that was kept hidden from her for sixteen years, still can't believe she won't be able to see the handsome man she met.
Angry and upset, she runs into her room and cries on her bed. The last time the cottage appears, is when Prince Phillip is on his way to meet the girl he met in the woods (not realizing that it's Princess Aurora). When he goes inside, he's captured by Maleficent and her goons, as Diablo informed Maleficent of Aurora's hideout. When the fairies arrive at the cottage, they are shocked to find Prince Phillip's hat left on the floor. Realizing he has been taken to the Forbidden Mountain, scared but determined, they go to the Forbidden Mountain to rescue him, for he's now the only one who can save Aurora with True Love's Kiss.
Maleficent
The Cottage had appeared in the film and like before it is where the Fairies are hiding Aurora and assumed human forms to take care of her. Unlike in the original, Maleficent somehow finds the Baby Aurora at the cottage with Diaval quite easy. She takes a look through an opened window and looks down on the infant princess who smiles at her instead of being frightened despite Maleficent's appearance. For sixteen years, Maleficent watched over Aurora as the Fairies are very incapable of watching over the princess through Diaval who would visit her in the Cottage often to take care of Aurora. On one occassion, Maleficent conjured a little rain and thunder inside the cottage on the three Fairies just for little fun.
Gallery
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Trivia
Early concept art for the cottage as it was going to appear at the new fantasyland
- It's unknown what happened to the cottage after Flora, Fauna and Merryweather took Princess Aurora back to the King and Queen's castle.
- Aurora's Cottage was once planned to be constructed in the Fantasyland Expansion in Walt Disney World, which would have served as a new meet and greet location for Princess Aurora, where guests could have celebrate her birthday, but was replaced alongside Cinderella's Chateau and Pixie Hollow, by the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
- When Flora and Merryweather are changing each other into blue and pink, respectively, with their wands, they forget to block the chimney. When the raven arrives, he looks down the chimney, out of which pink and blue magical streams are shooting. He gets hit with both, however does not change from his natural black color. This proves that to alter the color of anything, the magic has to be established on clothing or a fabricated surface.
- While preparing for Briar Rose's birthday party, the three fairies lock the front door. When Briar Rose returns from picking berries, she opens the door easily.
