Character Hunting - How Rare or Common are they? 

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...