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Hello everyone,
As a new year dawns on January 1st, here at Character Central we are celebrating our ninth year online!
Sometimes I can hardly believe that we have been around for so long now, but in other moments I still feel that we are young and growing, with a lot to learn about the Disney character fan community.
As the past nine years have passed us by, we have met a lot of new people, had wonderful encounters and experiences, but it has also not been completely devoid of bizarre, unusual and sometimes frustrating or even downright bad circumstances.
Characters have become a part of Jon and I's way of life. Sometimes it has consumed every waking moment and caused us stress, and for what? We have occasionally had to take a step back and refocus on what we enjoy; re-evaluating what makes us fans, and what makes us enjoy the Disney Parks and characters. But in realising that, we acknowledge that there is more to life than characters, too. We have had bittersweet experiences that have made us appreciate the wider world and a life outside of Disney, but also made us enjoy more diverse areas of the Disney community, too. We don't have to be everywhere, all the time, and we don't have to be first at everything. I think that a lot of fans in the community should perhaps take a deep breath and keep that in mind as we hurtle through the last year of this decade.
Over the past nine years, Character Central has grown to a monstrous size that I never thought imaginable, and that would not have been possible without the support and love we get from all of you - our family, friends and followers. We are forever grateful that through our ups and downs - through all those bittersweet and frustrating times - we have a community around us that loves what we share, what we do, and enjoys being a part of the ride.
In 2018 we once again managed to meet a good number of new characters and see a lot of new entertainment offerings, from (finally) meeting the truly wonderful Little John from Robin Hood and Tony from Lady and the Tramp, being at the opening of PIXAR Pier, randomly encountering the magnificent Blue Fairy in Fantasyland, meeting new characters such as Black Panther, Edna Mode and Vampirina, visiting both Disney's Vero Beach and Hilton Island for the first time, and running in most of Walt Disney's World runDisney race weekends (Princess, Star Wars and Wine and Dine - we didn't do Dopey, but we are in 2019!) - and SO much more! There was so much new content for the site, I'm still catching up!
Speaking of catching up, we continue to get a lot of questions about missing content, including locations and characters. I have always maintained that Character Central reflects our own personal experiences, and that still remains true. All the content on our site comes directly from our own adventures. If something isn't on Character Central, providing I just haven't gotten around to adding it (most things have been added, though), then we haven't got to experience it yet. Like I said before, we can't be everywhere all the time, and the site reflects our own personal adventures.
With that in mind, I want to point out that I know and acknowledge that my blog posts are a little few and far between, but I don't feel the need to share "news" with you all constantly on the blog, since there are plenty of pages that do that already. We regularly post to all our social media accounts (usually daily, unless I forget!), including Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and even if not immediately obvious many pages here on the site actually get updated fairly frequently (such as new character outfits, etc) - you just have to go look to see what's new!
One major change we did make during an extended period of downtime for the site in the last part of the year, was to finally remove the forum. Forums are a dying breed, with social media taking over as the soapbox platform to voice an opinion these days, and coupled with the fact we would get a lot of spam, which was untenable, we took the decision to close it. You can still however keep track of your characters by logging in as usual to your profile.
Finally, for those of you who do follow our regular social media updates, you may have noticed that we spend a great deal of time at Walt Disney World these days. Well, I am very happy to reveal that since September of 2018 we in fact live in Florida! So, you can expect even more frequent updates as we get settled and immerse ourselves in the culture and lifestyle of living near Walt Disney World - but at the same time keeping our own identity, our own brand and interest, and moulding our experiences to be what we want them to be.
I'll leave you with a paraphrase of the immortal words of the great Judi Dench, "here's to the next 12 months at Character Central. While no one knows for sure what we'll see or do, I do know it will be quite an adventure - an adventure that we'll take and make together. See you in the future!"
Happy New Year, best wishes for 2019 and beyond, and peace and love to all,
Dan.
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