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Hello everyone,
On May 1st Disney's Hollywood Studios celebrated its 30th anniversary. I thought I would share with you some of my photos from the cavalcade that took place that morning at the park, plus a few extra pics of some of the fun items we picked up that day.
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Hello everyone,
Last week I talked about the (then) upcoming surprise character appearances at the Magic Kingdom as part of Mickey and Minnie's Surprise Celebration (for their 90th birthdays).
Well, last Friday saw the first day of the daily fun at the Flagpole in Town Square, and I was there everyday to see who came out! From what I understand from talking to cast members who were there everyday, these characters will remain the same for the foreseeable future, and even possibly until the end of the celebration in September. The days may change later on, just to make it fair to people who can't come on specific days of the week (because of work or school, etc), but the characters are likely to remain the same. Indeed, today, Nick and Judy are back in Town Square, as they were last Friday. Of course, as always with Disney, anything is subject to change at any moment, so we shall see what happens in a couple of weeks from now.
The characters that are a part of this new offering, so far at least, are: Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps (Zootopia), Phineas and Ferb (from their namesake TV show), Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck and Prince John (Robin Hood), Chicken Little and Abby Mallard (Chicken Little), Remy and Emile (Ratatouille), and Gideon and J. Worthington Foulfellow (Pinocchio).
Important! - At time of writing, the characters begin at around 11.30am (usually with a slight delay), and end around 2.30pm, daily. It should be noted that the park schedule and/or the WDW app has been listing characters off and on as being in Town Sq until around 4.45pm. We found this to not be entirely true, and when they did appear after 3pm, they would just walk around and NOT stop for photos.
Let's take a look at some of the [ Read More... ] |
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Hello everyone,
From tomorrow the Walt Disney World Resort begins their Mickey 90th Birthday celebrations, which means that there are some character changes around the resort, particularly at the Magic Kingdom. Since the official WDW website states there'll be "surprise character visits", a lot of sites have already reported that there will be a sort of "random-rotating" schedule of characters that will replace Chip, Dale and Pluto at the flagpole in Town Square, since Pluto is moving to the Silly Sideshow, and Chip and Dale will be in the new street party.
I have my own speculation as to what we can expect to see at these new character appearances, and thought it would be fun to share with you all here.
I'll start by stating quite clearly that this is purely my speculation. Some of you may already know otherwise, some of you may agree, some may not. It's just for fun, but [ Read More... ] |
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Hello everyone,
Today I wanted to share with you all my personal thoughts on the upcoming 90s Nite at Disneyland park at the Disneyland Resort in California.
Since Disney announced the night, and subsequently put tickets on sale - which have since sold out - there has been much speculation online about what to expect from the event. I see a lot of people posting on social media about all sorts of crazy characters that they some how expect to appear, but honestly, I think we need to just be a little realistic. I, and I am sure many of you, would rather be surprised than disappointed.
First of all, I want to make it clear that while this is an opinion piece, I am not deliberately trying to be negative - I want to be objective and point out some key factors involved here.
First of all, this event is a four hour event that cost $99 per person. That's about what the Halloween parties cost. It should be repeated again that this is a four hour event, from 9pm until 1am.
For $99 it isn't going to be all out extravagance. You have to figure that some of that money will not go towards characters. Disney has said there will be merchandise and food offerings, as well as special fireworks and themed backdrops. There will also be a collectable Indiana Jones card, a free guidemap, a free fanny pack, and a free Disney Afternoon map. These things cost money to produce, and whilst merch and food items will be at an extra cost to guests, there is no guarantee to Disney anyone will buy them - the initial outlay for these items has to come from somewhere. They won't purely rely on sheer hope that someone will buy them. So, already we have money out of our ticket price for specially produced fireworks, the free items, food offerings and merch items.
Next, we come to [ Read More... ] |
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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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Hello everyone,
Pixar Fest is in full swing at Disneyland Resort in California, and we were there recently to check it out.
To begin, let's take a look at the decor that greets you as you walk from the hotels and parking, through Downtown Disney and the Esplanade.
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Hello everyone,
Last weekend John Smith and Meeko joined Pocahontas in Disneyland's Critter Country for a special surprise greeting. It was really cool to all three of them together - a sight that rarely ever happens.
I wanted to share with you all some photos from our encounter with them. Enjoy!
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Hello everyone,
It isn't often that extraordinary characters like the Blue Fairy just randomly appear at the parks, but for whatever reason, that exact thing happened this last week at Disneyland when the Blue Fairy made some surprise appearances over several days!
I thought it would be nice to share here some of our photos from the magical encounter. Enjoy!
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Hello everyone,
Recently I shared with you the amazing recent additions to Disney's Animal Kingdom that you can experience this summer, and today I would like to share with you the Incredible Tomorrowland Expo, now featuring at the Magic Kingdom.
The Incredible Tomorrowland Expo is based on the idea of a convention (or "expo"), except, this one is for superheroes.
First of all, let's take a look at some of the decor around Tomorrowland.
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Hello everyone,
Last weekend was the debut of the brand new Donald's Dino-Bash! festivities in Dinoland USA, at Disney's Animal Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. We were there for the opening of the event, so I wanted to share it all with you here.
Let's start with taking at look at some of the decor, before we move on to PhotoPass, magic shots, food, the dance party, and of course the character greetings.
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