Hi all,

This week has been quite busy on the character news front, but as you may have noticed Jon and I have been away from our desks, but assure you that after this weekend we will be back on top form again!

So what has happened this week? Let's start by taking a trip to Disneyland Paris.

Rapunzel and Flynn arrived in grand style at a press event at Disneyland Paris, for the launch of the Christmas Season. They now meet every day for set times at the Castle Stage. But it seems Disney's newest pair will be staying around for a while, as Disney just launched next year's brochure...

Next year sees a LOT of brand new experiences at DLP, which are very, very welcome! As I said above, Rapunzel will be sticking around, along with the following cool new additions:

Happening: Following the leader with Peter Pan
Meet and Greet Photolocation: Adventureland rhythms of the jungle
3D photolocation: Smile and say “cheese” with Remy and Emile
3D photolocation: Share the Love with Wall-e and Eve
New show at the Hub (Central Plaza):  Mickey’s Magical Celebration with the princes and princesses
Happening: Disney Dance Express
Meet and Greet Photolocation: The wonderful world of Alice and the Mad Hatter
Meet Green Army Men and Play
New show stop and interactive routine in Disney's Once Upon a Dream Parade
Lightning McQueen to replace Herbie in the Motors Action Stunt Show at WDS
Disney Princesses: A Royal Invitation will be the new Meet 'n' Greet at the former "it's a small world" post show area
And to top it all, Mickey's Princess and Pirate's Party debuts in June!

For the Christmas Season, Disneyland Paris have also partnered with the Hotel Plaza Anthenee in Paris for four special shows exclusive to the hotel.

Happening four Wednesdays from the 1st December, Guests will be able to join Minnie Mouse and a different set of Disney pals every week for the show. Although not many details are available, it so far appears to be a free show that will happen "in the window", to people passing by.

I will keep you updated on this one, and tell you further details as I get them.

Disneyland Paris has a lot of refurbishments scheduled for the coming months, including the much awaited, and needed, Castle refurb. In their efforts to make the park perfect again in time for the 20th anniversary in 2012, they are doing some major renovations. The Castle will be down from January for an extended period until at least March.

The Pirate ship in Adventureland will also close in March for a major rebuild. The last major one we know of at this stage is the relaying of the concrete along that parade route, starting up by "it's a small world". All the floors will be re-laid, meaning that the parade will take on a new temporary route from Main Street, up and around the Hub, and back down Main Street again.

This will mean that the parade will have to lose the show stops (which has pretty much happened already), and will lose two large floats that cannot get round the Hub safely. Our guess is that the floats will be the longer princess one and the Lion King one. Once the parade returns to normal, it should be for the new celebration year, which incorporates the new interactive show stops that I mentioned above.

Our friends at Characters Photos Blog have been in DLP for the start of the festive season, and now have a new page up on their blog with all the latest characters.

It would appear that Belle has lost her Christmas outfit this year, and Beast has been replaced with Adam. Mickey also has a new outfit, and the other fab 5 pals all have neat winter outfits for the Studios too.

The Tree Lighting Ceremony is back, as is FantIllusion and the Christmas post-parade. Christmas Winnie the Pooh, Belle's Christmas Village, Santa's Village (Woody's Roundup Village) and Mickey's Winter Wonderland have all returned too.

My Halloween Trip Report for DLP is still to come, and I also have yet to post the final parts of Loren Javier's trip reports from his September/Halloween trip to Walt Disney World. I promise they are all coming, I just need more time!

We continue to upload more pictures to Flickr, too. We still have many more to come from our sumemr adventures to Tokyo and california, but have also started to upload a taster of pictures from Halloween at DLP, just so that you can see what we did there. But be rest assured, there are MANY more to come from both Jon and I!

Don't forget there is still time to vote in this week's Character of the week. Check out the latest post here, and to find out who you can vote for! Don't forget, you can vote by going to our Facebook or Twitter pages and writing on our wall.

Speaking of our friend Loren, he also has a brand new blog page where he aims to keep everyone up to date with his latest Disney adventures also. Check it out here!

The Christmas Day Parade taping took place in California this week, and registration was later opened - and closed due to becoming full - for the Magic Kingdom taping. Once again, Loren was there, and his pictures from the day can be found here.

Staying with Christmas Parades, the Magic Kingdom's Mickey's Once Upon a Christmastime Parade has debuted with some interesting changes. The Winnie the Pooh float and characters have been removed, sadly, and Bo Peep and Jiminy Cricket has been added. We are unsure of any other changes at this stage, but will keep you updated as always.

It would also appear that Duffy has replaced the Christmas Bear that was in Disneyland's Christmas Parade.

While I'm talking about Disneyland and Christmas, MiceAge reports that they could be moving their Christmas activities to a ticketed event, like the Magic Kingdom after this year. This would be very sad, and a retrograde step to take.

The Disney Parks Blog posted this week that there will be a new section to the Playhouse Disney show at both Hollywood Studios and California Adventure, called Jake and the Never Land Pirates.

Moving to Hong Kong now, this is not confirmed, and I await the official word on this, but a friend of mine in Hong Kong told me that the parade there (simply titled Disney On Parade) has now ended. Whether this was just for Halloween I'm not sure, but the impression was that it has gone for good - maybe a new parade is in the works?

And finally, the new Times Square Disney Store opened this week to much fanfare. The old World of Disney Store on 5th Avenue closed last year to make way for this new store in Time Square. Lots of Disney Characters were there, including the Big Cheese himself, the princesses and other Disney Pals.

Ok, I think that's everything for now! Please continue to check the blog regularly for updates, and bear with us as we continue to add more content and improve the site. We have lots of great new features planned, and we appreaciate all the support we get.

Dan :)