Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas

Because her last thought before stepping through the door in the library is that she is a queen, she arrives at the library at Buckingham palace. There, she finds an elderly lady asleep and covered in dream sand. The Sandman has already been here. Sally sees a portrait showing a younger version of the woman before her. A placard under the portrait reads, Queen Elizabeth II. Sally studies the Queen asleep with a pot of tea beside her, an ordinary woman—like her portrait but more real. Sally realizes that she, too, might be able to be both a queen and herself.

Sally leaves the castle and searches for a graveyard through which she can reach Halloween Town. The unimaginably vast City of London is sound asleep, people slumped everywhere, dusted with sand. She wanders through the city until she finds a graveyard with a mausoleum in it. She steps through the mausoleum door and into the cemetery in Halloween Town.

Halloween Town is sleeping silently. The only sound is the distant crooning of the Sandman prowling the streets. Sally creeps to the garden behind Doctor Finkelstein’s house and gathers the herbs she needs to make a sleeping potion strong enough to affect the Sandman.