Hi all,

So as the New Year dawns, and a new decade, we have some changes to start 2011 with.

This month sees the start of the "Pixar Pals Countdown to Fun!" parade in Disney's Hollywood Studios, on the 16th. This "new" parade is a modified version of Block Party Bash with the addition of characters from Up and Ratatouille, as well as removing the interactive show stops.

Also at Disney's Hollywood Studios, Leroy Small, Citizen of Hollywood, spent his last day on set this week. He has gone off to take his career to new heights somewhere else in the world. We wish him well, and thank him for his years of service entertaining Guests on Hollywood Boulevard.

The Disney Parks Blog are offering a unique opportunity for fans to be able to vote for some rare characters (rare for California at least) to be featured at an upcoming family event there. Although an interesting idea and one that will certainly get the character fans interested, most of the ones in the first list are common at other parks.  At least most of them are pretty rare for Disneyland and hopefully there will be some more unusual ones in the coming two days. Check the official blog for more details.

With the end of Christmas Season at the Parks, several special characters added for the season at Disneyland Paris will be leaving - at least temporarily. These include Rapunzel, Flynn, Darth Vader, and Chewbacca. Rapunzel and Flynn are expected to return in a few months as part of the new promotional year celebration.

Disneyland Paris has been doing a lot of renovation recently in preparation for the upcoming 20th Anniversary. Today they have started the replacement of the parade route walkway in Fantasyland. Since this will take several months to complete they are changing the parade route to go up Main Street, around the hub, and back down. To have the whole parade fit around the hub they have to remove several of the floats – Alice, Ariel and the Jungle Book/Lion King floats were the casualties. Once this work is complete the parade will return to its normal route and all the floats will return; however, when it does finally return the show stop will be changed and is supposed to be more "interactive".

Finally, we have heard strong rumours (first reported on Disney Central Plaza and now has been confirmed) that DLP are gearing up to return the Tarzan show to the Chaparral Theatre in Frontierland this summer, after being absent for the last two summers. This will be a welcome return for the fans, who have recently been complaining (and worried) that there is increasingly less and less show based entertainment on offer at the park. Of course, a lot of this is due to budget constraints, but it will be great to see a full stage show back in the park once again.

Back here at Character Central we have been working hard to ensure we bring you all the latest pictures from our trips. Our Flickr pages are currently in a constant state of update. Just today I added many, many new pictures from our Walt Disney World trip, and last night Jon added a load from Paris.

As we add new content to Flickr, the normal process is that they then appear on the site using the Flickr API technology, but for some reason this has been not working right, and so some pages are sometimes experiencing delays in displaying images, or just missing images altogether. If you come across a page on this site that seem to be lacking in pictures, or has some sort of error, then please just bear with us while everything is figured out.

On a similar note, since I have been adding new pictures, naturally new locations and characters appear. Today I added three new Citizens of Hollywood from Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We would like to welcome Jack Diamond, Otto Von Bonn Bahn and Dara Vamp to the site!

New locations added in the last few days include the Play ‘N Dine at Hollywood and Vine, Inventions Restaurant, and the Founder’s Club Restaurant.  We also added a new page for Disney's Twelve Days of Christmas, a special event we were very lucky to be invited to.

As well as new characters and new locations, we are always adding new outfits for existing characters, and just yesterday I added the Chef Remy Living Character to Remy’s page. The Living Characters initiative is a new generation of animatronic technology that allows the characters to be portrayed more realistically and accurately, but remain interactive with Guests.

Ok, I think that’s all for now.

Dan.