Hi all,

Last week saw the opening of a new Cars meet ‘n’ greet location in California Adventure. McQueen and Mater have relocated near the ever-progressing Cars Land, and have brand new backdrops. Some pictures were posted on Twitter here and here. The eagle eyed among you might notice some slight bodywork changes too, something that I mentioned earlier last week was due to happen in Florida, too.

The end of last week also saw St Patrick’s Day events sweep across Disneyland Paris, with Mickey and Minnie donning their Irish best, Chip and Dale performing some Irish dancing, and all four characters featuring in a pre-parade in their Irish finest. Our friends at the Facebook group Character Photos Blog were there and have posted some pictures to their page. There was also some random happening in the Santa Fe with Chip and Dale for the Irish festival, where they wore white outfits, completely different to their in-park Irish ones.

This weekend the Walt Disney World Resort has been holding a special event for “Disney Moms”, at a “social media” event (a gathering of selected mums and their kids who use social networking to talk about Disney), and has involved some really neat elements – including the launch of a brand new character! Jake from the new Disney Junior show Jake and the Neverland Pirates made a surprise appearance at the party two nights ago. Stitch Kingdom uploaded this picture to Twitter. Two pirates from the TV programme, Sharky and Bones, were also there giving musical entertainment. It is likely that since Jake has now been also added to the Playhouse Disney attraction at both US Resorts (now named Disney Junior, just like the channel) he will start making appearances in the parks soon – at least, we hope he does! So Character Central would like to extend a big welcome to Jake and his two pirate friends, and we hope to see more of them in the future! (Well, I don’t expect to find the other two pirates any time soon, but Jake hopefully in the Studios before not too long).

Other characters seen at the multi day event have included Kim and Ron from the TV show Kim Possible, Hook and Smee, Agent Oso, Handy Manny, Donald and Daisy Duck, Mickey doing a musical number in a pop star outfit, Phineas and Ferb, and Pluto. Kim and Ron were removed from the regular park line up over two years ago now, and have not been seen since. It is good to see that they returned from saving the world to make one more appearance at the Resort.

Now for some Character Central news. Very soon Jon hopes to get polling functionality up and running on the forums. One of the first polls you might see is the return of a very popular feature I ran last year, which used to rely on people posting to our Facebook page, but could now use polls instead… Stay tuned for more information in the next day or two!

As well as the return of aforementioned popular feature, I also have a new semi-regular feature planned that will be based around shows and parades of times gone by. I may also run a poll before the first one of those to see which item should be first. Again, watch this space over the next few days for more information!

Finally, I have a huge collection of guide maps, time’s guides and other leaflets from the parks and resorts worldwide that I have built up over the years, and was considering starting a map exchange thread on the forum. Post your comments and thoughts on this by hitting the Discuss button at the bottom of this article, and let me know how many of you would be interested in sharing maps and guides from the past, present and going into the future, with other fans. It is a fun way to acquire interesting items and information about the other parks worldwide, even when you can’t visit them.

Ok, that’s all for now,

Dan.