Hello everyone!

May I take this opportunity to formally wish everyone a Happy New Year. We were in Disneyland Paris (I mean, where else WOULD we be?!), and so we could only Tweet and Facebook our New Year's greeting to everyone, so this is the first chance I have had on the Blog.

We had an amazing time as always in DLP, and those of you who follow our Facebook page may have seen our various updates about all the cool things they were doing for New Year.

Our pictures will be coming in due course; in fact later tonight I might just upload a select few to begin with and make an additional blog post here so that you can all see a selection of some of the neat things we did this trip.

We are now back of course though, and counting down, as always, to our next crazy adventure, which will be to WDW and our first Disney Cruise next month! Following the WDW trip we are also seeing the Phineas and Ferb Disney Live show. February will be quite the amazing month!

Following a pretty quiet December, there are a few small bits of news for this new year, so let's take a quick look.

In WDW, we have heard whispers that Princess Merida and Sophia the First will make appearances once the new Disney/PIXAR film 'Brave' has been released.

To make way for the removal of the gargantuan Central Plaza Stage at Disneyland Paris, the final performance of this years main Hub show, Mickey's Magical Celebration, will be on January 9th.

Also ending earlier than the official Magical Moments end date, are the Green Army Men Meet 'n' Play and the Disney Dance Express. Both of these will also end on January 9th.

Also ending early, but not until March 4th will be the parade's show stops, the Following the Leader with Peter Pan show and Rapunzel's meet 'n' greet location in Fantasyland. It is expected that Rapunzel will simply move into the new Princess Pavilion on a rotational basis, just like the rest of the princesses.

Character locations that will be staying that were added in 2011 will be the Alice and Mad Hatter area in Fantasyland, the Jungle Rhythms gazebo in Adventureland, and Aladdin's Magic Lamp (also in Adventureland). As far as we know the characters will still appear at these locations.

Now as for the parade itself, the Dreams of Imagination float (Mickey and Friends) will be removed for it's magical transformation also on January 9th, while the Dreams of Romance 2 float will be taken out for it's refurb from January 16th. Both will return in their new forms in time for the 20th Anniversary launch, on 1st April 2012. As we already know from a while back, Mickey and Friends will be put on the finale float and fairies and Merlin will now appear at the beginning. The princes and princesses displaced by Mickey and Friends taking over their float will either move to the Dreams of Romance 1 or be in new horse drawn carriages. We have a thread going on our Forum here, and if you scroll down, user Dragy recently posted a piece of artwork showing the new changes.

Over in California, Loren tells us that this weekend Disneyland will be celebrating Three Kings Day by featuring some cool characters in the park! Check out his Forum post about it here.

Loren also tells me that Disneyland continued it's tradition this year of having a mass ensemble of characters appear at park closing at Main Street Station on Christmas Eve. Ones that he tells me appeared include Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Max, Donald Duck, Pluto, and Chip n' Dale in their pyjamas and then there was Pooh, Tigger, Rabbit, Eeyore, Mulan, Mushu, Pocahontas, Meeko, Cinderella, Prince Charming, Suzy, Perla, Fairy Godmother, Rapunzel, Flynn Rider, Belle, Beast, Snow White, Dopey, Woody, Jessie, Buzz Lightyear, Jane, Terk, Lilo and Stitch (in a Santa costume!), Alice, the Tweedles and the Queen of Hearts.

Finally, Character Central celebrated it's second birthday on January 1st, but of course we were away in DLP, so we missed being able to make a post about it. We just want to thank every single one of the 120,769 unique people that visited last year on at least 222,000 occasions! We really appreciate all your support and feedback. In the next few months up until April we are going to be working to make some awesome new additions and changes to the site. So stay tuned for those!

So, Happy New Year everyone, and Happy 2nd Birthday Character Central!

Dan.

Hi all,

Today sees the official launch of the Magic Moments Festival in Disneyland Paris. Of course over the last week or so we have already seen previews and soft openings of the shows, parade and new character locations, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway. I did tell you that f I came up with a picture of the pink princess tent that has appeared in Fantasyland, I would post it. And I have! The Disney and More Blog posted an article about the press weekend, and although most of the information is not new (I have talked about all of it over the last week), if you scroll down you will see two pictures of the temporary location (just there while they complete the new location at the old Small World exit area).  [ Read More... ]

Hi all,

The last few days have been quite eventful in the Character world!

Let me begin by going back the start of the weekend at Disneyland Paris, which saw the press launch of the new Magical Moments Festival. All the main features of the new celebration were previewed during the day, treating regular park Guests to a snippet of what is to come. Later in the evening, they had the main press event, and that consisted of a spectacular show on the hub – though sadly not one we’ll see during the main celebration. Photos and one video of the press event and show can be found on DLRP Express’s website here.  [ Read More... ]

Hi all,

Yesterday insidethemagic posted some new pictures form the new Mickey and Princess meet and greet rooms at the new Town Square Theater in the Magic Kingdom. The brand new locations have been open on “soft opening” test runs.  [ Read More... ]

Hi all,

I have some news form Disneyland Paris today regarding the new Magical Moments Festival.

They have been out in full force installing the new photolocations, and so far include Aladdin, Lion King/Jungle Book, Rapunzel and Alice in Wonderland. I found these pictures posted to a blog, and I have to say that the Aladdin one looks neat, the Alice one is ok, but the Rapunzel one looks simply awful (you can click the images to see them larger). The Rapunzel one is just stuck right in the middle of the walkway and is completely out of touch with its surroundings. I really think it is a bad set up.  [ Read More... ]

Hi all,

Today has seen a few more things come up on the character news front, after a somewhat quiet week.

The Disney Parks Blog posted that from this weekend there is a special Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides area set up in the Festival Arena area at the back of Frontierland in California. As well as merchandise, special drinks and exclusive 3D previews of the movie, Jack Sparrow himself is said to be making appearances from time to time too. Jack Sparrow does not get out much these days in the US parks, preferring to spend most of his time in Tokyo and Paris!  [ Read More... ]

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.  [ Read More... ]