People often ask us how is it that we manage to meet so many characters, or how did we get to meet THAT character? Unfortunately the answer isn't a straight forward one. There are of course many Disney characters that can always be found at the Disney parks and resorts, then there are those that are out from time to time, rare ones, then the ultra elusive ones. Sadly many of the coolest Disney characters fall into the rare or elusive categories.

The Common Ones

You would have to be doing something very wrong to not be able to meet Mickey, Minnie, Goofy or Pluto at any park. Winnie the Pooh and Tigger are also way up there in the list of characters near impossible to miss also.
There are many other characters that frequent all the parks regularly, namely the princesses, other Fab 5 friends and many of the "classics" (Mary Poppins, Pinocchio amongst others).

Park Dependent

After the common ones there are those characters that are out often, but may vary depending on location. These may include Peter Pan and friends, Jungle Book and Lion King pals and the Pixar gang. Just because you haven't met a character in one park, it doesn't mean they can't be met at the other parks.

Rare and Elusive Ones

Of course, much to many fans frustration there are many neat characters that are just not out in the parks very often, if ever. Even more frustratingly, this seems to be more the trend in the US parks, with the original park in California suffering worst of any park worldwide.
You are certainly more likely to find cool characters such as Maleficent, Chicken Little and Launchpad in Disneyland Paris than anywhere else.
Disneyland Paris is very good at having a whole variety of cool characters on a regular basis. The Florida parks while still refusing to put out the rare ones, do tend to get most of the newer ones, albeit for very short periods of time (again, much to the fans annoyance).

Seasonal Appearances

During certain holidays and certain seasonal times of the year there will be any number of special characters out in the parks. California and Paris tend to fare better than most at Halloween (Paris being the better of the two), while at Christmas in Florida is the place to be.

Trends

For the most part Paris is better at varying the number and choice if characters, while Florida gets the newest ones, and California just gets left behind.
Florida sticks with the most popular and more recent characters, including the princesses, Pixar and fairies.
Paris loves to showcase the villains and more unusual ones, such as Gaston, Shan Yu, Jack Sparrow and Esmerelda.
One advantage that Florida has is that during off peak times, they do tends have a lot of character training, and though not always guaranteed, you may have some luck in finding some more unusual ones. You have to be quite lucky, or really looking for that to happen though. Florida’s characters other than when training and the limited time newbie’s, tend to be very static year in, year out.

And Finally...

Disney announced today on it's Disney Parks Blog that Rapunzel and Flynn Rider would start appearing in the Magic Kingdom on Friday 15th October 2010. They will be replacing the Storytime with Belle show and greeting that has been there for a number of years. Belle will be leaving on September 12th 2010.

Details are sketchy at the moment, but Disney are calling it a "play and greet", meaning that this will be a new style interactive meet and greet experience for the Magic Kingdom.

Speculating and thinking ahead, could this play and greet be a forerunner to what is to come with the new Fantasyland expansion? If you remember, plans for that include a whole number of new "interactive" Princess experiences, from storytelling to making birthday cards. Maybe this is a test run for ideas surrounding that? Time will tell...

Of course, it is sad that they feel they have to replace Belle - there is plenty of wasted space in the Magic Kingdom where I'm sure the new characters could fit in.

One final point to ponder is whether this will also have a Christmas version, or will Belle (or indeed some other Christmas show) return to the Garden in December? Or will Magic Kingdom be down one Christmas offering this year?

Dan.

The Disney Parks Blog this afternoon announced the brand new parade for Disneyland Park at the Disneyland Resort in California!

Coming in 2011, the amazing looking offering will be called Mickey's Soundsational Parade (subject to change), and will be a celebration of classic Disney music from the movies.

I have to say the initial artwork for the parade looks really promising, and I can't wait to see it!

From the drawing, it appears that Dr. Facilier will make his parade debut and none other than Disney's newest princess - Rapunzel!! Of course there are the more popular and traditional characters such as Peter Pan, the Fab 5 and friends and the Lion King too. One interesting point to note is that it appears there will be no PIXAR in this parade, which honestly, is not a bad thing!

It will be a welcome replacement for Celebrate! A Street Party which many fans find greatly underwhelming, rather than exciting.

Dan.

The image below is from the Disney Parks Blog (C) The Walt Disney Company, 2010.

Not a surprise but the Disney Parks blog officially announced that the Main Street Electrical Parade will stay in WDW past the end of summer Nightastic... no new official end date was specified and in fact they stated it was an "open ended run" so it could be there for awhile... of course since it was announced there have been rumors it would stay for up to two years.  We are very excited about this as we won't be back in WDW until December and where hoping we would get to see it and now we can!

It does leave a few questions though... just how long will it stay?  Will CA actually ever get it back or will it be replaced by something else? (and hopefully won't be replaced by nothing like seems to happen way too much recently)  What are they doing with SpectroMagic while it is on hiatus... the rumors before were that it was badly in need of a refurb which was part of the reason for bringing over the Electrical Parade, if they are going to have a year or more to refurb it... will they make some big changes and improvements?  We can only hope so!

While we haven't gotten to see it in WDW yet, we did get to see the Electrical Parade in CA last summer when all the latest changes debuted... so you can see our pictures of it here :)

They also released this video showing some of the prep and training work that cast members have to do for Celebrate! a Street Party

Jim Hill gives details about Tangled from the Comic Con panel.  It sounds really promising and I am more excited about this movie then any Disney (animated) movie in awhile.  I have really liked almost all the recent Disney animated movies but there haven't been many I have been really excited about beforehand.  Happily, three of the main characters (Rapunzel, Mother Gothel and Flynn) will be coming to the parks before the movie release (rumors say Oct for WDW at least) and I can't wait to meet them in December!  Disney posted this behind the scenes video describing how they came up with the "look" of Tangled

The Disney Parks blog posted the following awesome video of World of Color from an airplane at 1800 feet... it is a pretty awesome view!

Hi all, I'm going to start trying to do a post like this fairly often with Character and other big Disney News from around the web... hopefully at least weekly but maybe more often.

Inside the Magic reported that Phineas, Ferb, and Agent P were at the Montebello, CA Disney Store earlier this month... this was the first newly designed "Imagination Park" Disney Store to open... really hope that Phineas, Ferb, and Agent P start meeting at a park sometime soon and there continue to be rumors that they will be in the parks sometime this year or early next!

The Character Photo Blog reports that while the Winnie the Pooh and Friends show did not return to DLP for this summer it should be back for the Halloween Parties and the Christmas season which is good news!

They, along with DLRP Today, and others report that Dr Facilier will be a part of Disneyland Paris' Halloween parties!  There have also been reports that he would be out for WDW's Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween parties... at least for the Villian's Mix and Mingle Show!  Would be great to have him out since he has only been seen in the Tiana's Showboat Jubilee in WDW and CA so far and in general wasn't available for meets.  The promotional photos have also appeared: here, here, and here

Disney announced at Comic Con that there would be a new Haunted Mansion movie directed by Guillermo del Toro, this new version would be a complete departure from the Eddie Murphy comedy movie and instead would be a more scary/dark version and reportedly will be told from the viewpoint of the mysterious Hat Box Ghost.

Disney and More reports on more signs of the as of yet unannounced DLP Studios Ratatouille attraction is a reality.  The latest news focuses on two photos of the area outside of the soon to open Toy Story Playland.  In what appears to be one of the entrances/exits to TSP there is a very Parisian looking arch that looks to have an image of Gusteau on it... all rumors of the details of this ride sound very interesting and exciting!

The Disney Parks Blog has released some details about the Last Tour to Endor here

As a huge Star Wars fan (I am a member of the 501st) it sounds awesome and I really wish we could go!  But I guess we will settle for Tokyo :P

Some of the details revealed include that their will be a special Star Wars themed fireworks show, a Death Star disco (guessing a Star Wars themed dance party), Disney Characters (I would guess that they will have Jedi Mickey, Leia Minnie, Darth Goofy, and Stormtrooper Donald out... and maybe some of the other Star Wars characters seen during Star Wars Weekends), and last but not least a special version of the Hyperspace Hoopla (the stage show seen during Star Wars weekends).  I have to say when we went to Star Wars weekends a couple years ago the Hyperspace Hoopla was a surprise that we really enjoyed so I am sure this special version will be even better!  In addition, there will be special event merchandise.

Tickets for it (it is on August 14, 2010) are $75 in advance and $89 at the gate (if any are left). For more information and to purchase tickets, go can go to www.starwarscelebration.com.

Well, I have been busy trying to get my backlog of pictures processed so I can focus on the thousands of new pictures I am sure I will take in a few weeks at Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland once we are back.  So there are new photos showing up almost daily.  Currently I am working on pictures from Christmas at WDW :)

While I have been doing that, Dan has been working on adding lots of descriptions and meeting info to the lands in all the parks and has almost finished that so check out our parks pages to see the improvements!  I think they have added a lot to those pages and have improved them significantly.  Also along the way we have added several new characters and locations!

So expect to continue to see more new additions over the next couple weeks until we leave for our big trip!  Once we are back look for lots of new and exciting pictures, characters, and a whole new resort!

The site itself is enjoying it's best month yet and we really hope everyone is enjoying our site!  And if you like the site please feel free to pass the word onto your friends! :) We have many new features planned.  The next should be user accounts and a forum (along with the ability to comment on various things like the blog LOL) and I am hoping to have that working sometime soon after we get back from Tokyo :D  In the meantime if you have any thoughts, suggestions, or feedback feel free to email us at [email protected] we also just created a twitter account for the site (DisCharCentral), so feel free to follow us if you want to hear about updates to the site and our adventures in the parks! :D

Have a magical day!

I have added a load of new items to the site, including Jedi Training Academy, Wishes, Voyage of the Little Mermaid, Mickey's Twas the Night Before Christmas, some of the Holiday Storytellers, and many more!

I have been adding new descriptions and updates to existing pages also. 

Be sure to check them all out!

Dan :)