Hi all,

Those of you who follow us on Facebook will know that we have been in Disneyland Paris for the past five days, where we tried to make some posts from there “live” from the parks. For the first time we used the “check-in” feature on our Facebook page to update our followers of our activities, and also managed to upload two pictures of characters also – one of Rabbit and the other of Super Star Goofy. I have to say that it worked to some success, and we hope to provide more live updates in the future while we are in the parks.

While we were in Disneyland Paris we attempted to document all the changes that are currently going on around the resort, from the major Castle refurb, the resurfacing of the entire Fantasyland parade route and other smaller projects. Earlier this evening Jon made a post in our forum about some of these changes. Other things that I want to mention that he didn’t include are the removal of the Mad Hatter’s chair at the entrance to the labyrinth, ready for a new photolocation, the closure of the outdoor seating area at Hakuna Matata for the jungle rhythms happening and place making of the Aladdin meet ‘n’ greet in the Bazaar area. All these projects are in preparation for the new Magical Moments Festival which begins in April. Why do I mention these changes? Well they mean a few new things for us character fans.

The jungle rhythms happening will be a new mini-show that includes the Jungle Book and Lion King characters, as well as the African Tam-Tam drummers that feature at the park.

The Aladdin meet ‘n’ greet area will be the first time that these characters (and other more random ones) have been given a set location, and will hopefully mean a little more structure and order is coming to the way meet ‘n’ greets are dealt with in DLP!

The Hatter’s chair will herald a new meet ‘n’ greet photolocation also, as advertised in the new Magical Moments Festival brochure.

On a related side note, the brochure also indicates that there will be a new “play and greet” with the Green Army Men in Toy Story Playland, and the website mentions a new Fantasyland meet ‘n’ greet for Rapunzel. We knew of course she was returning, but whether that now means in a proper photolocation form or not is still unclear.

The new programme was released on the website today also, and it brings with it the last weekend for the Disney All Star Express, which will be leaving the park to be transformed into the Disney Dance Express for the new festival.

Mickey’s Winter Wonderland also plays its last performances this weekend as the winter season comes to a close.

The new programme also has something interesting on it – Good Morning Disney New Generation. Quite what this is we are not sure yet, but it happens three times in the morning from this weekend. When I find out more about this I’ll let you know.

Back to our trip now, and earlier I made a separate blog post about something very special that happened in Adventureland while we were there yesterday, which can be read here.

I have begun to upload some of my pictures from the trip. Be assured there are many more to come, but for now click here to see them so far.

We managed to experience a couple of new character dining options. We did the London Brunch at Inventions at the Disneyland Hotel on Sunday, and also the Tea Party at Cowboy Cookout BBQ in Frontierland. Both were very enjoyable, and I hope to make a separate blog post about each of those over the coming week, but for now be sure to check the pictures on my Flickr to see the characters we met.

Finally for our trip, we managed to meet some of the Fab 5 and friends in some cool different outfits that we had not seen before. Over in the Studios High School Musical Mickey and Minnie were out in the HSM room in the Disney Blockbuster Café, and in Adventureland Safari Goofy, Chip and Dale were exploring the jungle! The Safari pictures are still to come, so stay tuned this weekend for those!

Over on the forum, Loren posted his most recent report from the Family Fun Days in California, and that can be found here. Thanks Loren for posting this, we look forward to hearing ore this weekend! 

And lastly for this post, earlier this week Orlando Attractions Magazine posted an interesting article about the future of Expo Hall and meeting Mickey in the Magic Kingdom, and the possible addition of FastPass to the experience! I’ll let you read the article for yourself, but it sounds interesting to say the least!

Ok, that’s all for now – more this weekend,

Dan.