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 | More Park Character Updates | |
| PeterPanFan
Saturday, March 27, 2010 8:08:46 PM |
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According to various character people in the know (drew81, raxip on wdwmagic and Berlioz70 on the Dis amongst others) there will be some character changes starting sometime in May in WDW (mostly in the Magic Kingdom).
In the Magic Kingdom:
Ariel (human) and Prince Eric! will be taking up residence in Adventureland at the Veranda (replacing Lilo and Stitch). This means Ariel's Grotto will be closing to make room for the Fantasyland expansion. Goofy will be moving to Pirates of the Caribbean (hopefully in a pirate outfit) Wendy will now regularly be joining Peter in Fantasyland Mary Poppins and Bert will be in Fantasyland near the Carousel Snow White will be appearing near the wishing well by the castle Chip and Dale will be moving to Tomorrowland (hopefully in their outer space outfits) Stitch will be returning to Tomorrowland Winnie the Pooh and friends will be moving to Town Square from the Pooh Playful Spot (also tied to the Fantasyland expansion work)
In DHS:
Lotso (from TS 3) will be replacing the Up characters in the Animation Building Jojo and Goliath will be leaving Playhouse Disney
In AK:
Carl and Dug will be moving to the Oasis and appear there randomly The character in Africa will be leaving (some of which will become random in the Oasis)
In site news… we continue to add stuff and work on pictures… Dan is currently working on WDW pictures while I am working on Disneyland Paris pictures from Feb… I have added a Valentines Day at Parc Disneyland page which has a lot of pictures of the special Valentines Day characters up now :)
Also, we want to have various character news from across the parks on our blog. So if you have information and or rumors about upcoming character changes please let us know ([email protected])… we are happy to give you credit (or not if you wish to remain anonymous) :)
Thank you! Jon |
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 | Park Character Updates | |
| PeterPanFan
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 3:54:01 PM |
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So some interesting and exciting Character related news has been filtering out lately. First, in Disneyland Paris, many of the New Generation Festival happenings have started... most/all of them are in "soft" openings currently meaning that they are not guaranteed to happen and may not be in their final form. Most of the changes this year are merely that, changes, they are taking existing shows/events and making changes to them. The two notable exceptions are a Princess and the Frog "happening" in town square and an all new central plaza show called Disney's Showtime Spectacular.
The Tiana/Naveen happening appears to follow the format of Step in Time with Mary Poppins and Once Upon a Time, Sleeping Beauty with an introductory song and dance show followed by a meet and greet with the characters. I have seen a few short clips and it looks entertaining and like a nice addition.
Disney's Showtime Spectacular replaces It's Party Time... with Mickey and Friends and had its first public showing today. Based on the pictures we have seen and the short clip of video it appears FAR better than It's Party Time! They have two new characters to Disneyland Paris in it (in additional to Tiana and Naveen who also appear elsewhere)... Boo and Angel! The show is divided into a few sections which each feature a group of characters from some of the newer movies and include one or two songs from the movie. The sections include Toy Story, Incredibles, Monsters Inc, Lilo and Stitch (and Angel), and Princess and the Frog. In addition to the characters from the featured movies, Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald, Goofy, Chip and Dale join the show and change outfits for the different numbers. For example, for the Incredibles section they put on Incredibles outfits including masks! Overall the show looks very cute and we can't wait to see it (several times) in June! You can see some pictures here: DLRP Magic
Here is a video of the final from the fine folks at Character Photos Blog:
In addition to the all new events, there have been changes made to several existing ones. These include Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen replacing Belle and Beast in the Once Upon a Dream Parade, a Ratatouille car with Remy and Emile being added to Stars 'n' Cars, and another version of the Character Express called the All Star Express. All these changes seem to be well done and make nice additions or updates. Overall, based on initial impressions it looks like the New Generation Festival is going to be much better than Mickey's Magical Party and definitely a lot better than I had been expecting! Now hopefully they can continue that trend and have Toy Story Playland greatly exceed some very low expectations.
Back in the US the news isn't quite as exciting. Construction has been going on back stage for the new Fantasyland in the Magic Kingdom since shortly after its announcement; however, it has mostly been hidden from public view. That is starting to change and it seems that in the next few months (or possibly after the summer season) Toontown will be closing. Which of course means new locations must be found for the characters who greeted their fans there. Starting in early April, Expo Hall will close its doors for construction of new meet and greet locations for Mickey, Minnie, the Princesses, and the Fairies. Obviously once their new homes are completed over the next few years the Princesses and Fairies will move out to their new digs. It is uncertain what the long term plans for Mickey and Minnie are; however, it is possible Expo Hall will be their new permanent home in the Magic Kingdom. In addition to the characters moving out of Toontown, Pooh and friends will be moving to Main Street while the exterior of their ride is re-themed. Who knows if they will have new meet and greet locations in the Fantasy Forest or if they will remain elsewhere.
So that is most of the recent character news! As far as site news... we continue to add more information and Dan has been busy adding greeting information. We have also now added a search feature which hopefully will be useful :) I hope everyone has a magical day! Jon
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 | Updates | |
| PeterPanFan
Sunday, March 14, 2010 6:20:29 PM |
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Hey all :)
In addition to the new trip reports Dan has also added a bunch of new meeting info to characters. We have also added a bunch of new characters and updated where some characters can be found. Hopefully the next new site feature will be search. We are also busy working on our pictures from previous trips and trying to get those uploaded. Hope everyone continues to enjoy the site and as always if you have any suggestions please let us know! Thank you, Jon
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 | General Update | |
| DisneyDan
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 12:03:30 PM |
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Hi all, We have continued to add more content to the site gradually. Hopefully you're all liking it still! We have both been quite busy of late though, and have fallen behind on proper updates. I will be attempting to add the latest trip reports soon - I promise! for now, just sit back, relax and enjoy the site! Thanks! :)
Dan. |
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 | Happy March! | |
| PeterPanFan
Thursday, March 4, 2010 7:13:56 AM |
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Well it was a busy Feb and we had a great trip to Disneyland Paris! We
are currently working on pictures from the trip (as well as catching up
on older pictures) and more pictures should be showing up on our flickr
accounts (and here) almost daily :D
Some of the character highlights of our trip:
On Valentines Day DLP had some special characters out. The big
highlights were Bernard and Bianca from the Rescuers, Gus and Jaq from
Cinderella, and Quasimodo and Esmeralda from Hunchback! Apparently
Bernard and Bianca flew in from Tokyo just for the day... how awesome is
that?!?! Unfortunately, there must have been some problem because they
were supposed to be out 3 times for meet and greets but only actually
came out once! Luckily for us we found out about them from a new friend
we made while there (Thanks Rob!) so we were of course waiting for them
for their first set and were able to meet them. In addition to the meet
and greets all these characters were in a special pre-parade for the
day.
In addition to the special characters, there were several other special
meet and greets. In the morning Mickey and Minnie were at the
Disneyland Hotel in prince and princess outfits. In the late
morning/early afternoon Mickey and Minnie were out in Fantasyland in
Valentines Day outfits. In the afternoon at the Disneyland Hotel Belle
and the Beast were out and they were in their ball outfits. It also
looks like some of the other hotels had special meet and greets for the
day.
We are really glad we were there for Valentines day and got to meet a
bunch of characters we had never met before and are hoping to be there
next year again if they do something similar!
Other than Valentines day things were pretty "normal" character wise for
Disneyland Paris... which is FAR different than normal for the US
parks... there is definitely a lot more randomness in DLP which is
great; however, at this point we have met most of the characters that
are out frequently. That isn't to say we didn't meet other characters
or there wasn't anything new. We met a few characters in places we have
never seen them before and also saw some out in outfits we had never
seen before... and even if we have met a character lots of times it is
always great meeting (and getting pictures of them) again!
One nice (well sorta nice...) change they had made since our last trip
involved the characters from Star 'n' Cars. When we were there in Oct
most days a lot of the Stars 'n' Cars characters (but not all... for
example most of the face characters were never there) were out meeting
people near It's a Small World in the early afternoon. It was a bit
strange as the show/parade is in WDS and some of the outfits are more
"Hollywood" for the show so it isn't a perfect fit for Fantasyland...
but we were very happy to get to meet them in their Stars 'n' Cars
outfits so we weren't going to complain :P Well, now it seems like they
have decided to move this meet and greet over to WDS... which makes
more sense and also gives people more reason to go over there. Also,
instead of just some of the characters it was almost all of the
characters when we were there. This included all of the face characters
as well as Elvis Stitch (who we never saw in Fantasyland). Personally I
think this was a good change and really adds something to WDS... the
only downside is since they come out in the main area of the park and
spread out all through Production Courtyard and Toon Studio, it is much
more obvious they are out meeting (WDS is so small you can see at least
some of the characters from 90% of the park when they are out LOL)...
this of course means it is MUCH more crowded and you get the usual
pushing and shoving and mayhem that occurs for characters at DLP :\
When they were in Fantasyland most people didn't know they were going to
be there so while it would get crowded as people stumbled upon them it
wasn't like the whole park was instantly aware they were out and mobbed
them.
Another thing we made a point of doing this trip was going to the
different Hotels in the morning. For those that don't know, every
morning at all of the Disney Hotels they have characters out which is a
very nice touch. With the exception of the Disneyland Hotel there is
normally only one character out at a time but they normally switch
through the morning what character is there. To make it even better,
when it is one of the Fab 5 they are usually in special resort specific
themed outfits! So for example at the Cheyenne you might meet Cowboy
Goofy or Indian Mickey! While we had met a few characters at the Santa
Fe when we were there last Feb and had been making a habit of checking
the Disneyland Hotel in the mornings starting in Oct (will talk about
the Disneyland Hotel in a min) we hadn't gone to the other hotels. Dan
had previously stayed at the Cheyenne and the Sequoia so he had met a
couple characters at them before but he had never met characters at the
Newport or New York hotels. During the course of our trip we went to
every hotel (except the Santa Fe) at least twice and got to meet
characters in a bunch of new outfits... so these new locations and
outfits will get added to the site before too long. One kinda odd thing
was at the New York and Newport they didn't seem to be out in their
"normal" outfits for those hotels. For example at the New York, Goofy
was out but was in his regular outfit instead of the New York ones we
had seen pictures of... and at the Newport, one morning Minnie was out
in a really extravagant frilly dress we had never seen before and the
next day Mickey was out in his Winter Wonderland outfit... we weren't
complaining about either of those especially since we had never met them
before either but hopefully at some point we can meet them in their
actual Hotel outfits.
Now onto the Disneyland Hotel, at the Disneyland Hotel they normally
have one (or a couple ie Minnie/Mickey or Chip/Dale) of main characters
out in the rotunda in a roped off area with a line and a photographer
(like the setup in all the other hotels); however, in addition there are
normally 2 or more random characters wandering around the hallways
around that area. The characters are pretty random and can be anything
from the Pooh characters to Pinocchio characters to Robin Hood
characters to Launchpad and Scrooge McDuck. Needless to say we have
started checking there every morning on the way into the park ROFL. In
addition to the morning characters we found out about something new this
trip... in the afternoon around 4pm on most weekends (and weekdays
during busy periods) there is a little song and dance routine done by
random characters in the main reception area with a meet and greet
afterward. It is a nice way to relax for a bit in the afternoon and
still meet characters (not to mention a warm place in the winter). We
were there for this a few days this trip and I am sure it will become
something we check out regularly!
So... all and all it was an awesome trip and we got to meet some new and
very rare characters along with old characters in new outfits! We also
managed to get the French signatures of more characters some of which
Dan has already added to the site! So be on the lookout for pictures
from the trip as we add them :D but here are a couple to start with:
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 | Updates and DLP! | |
| PeterPanFan
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 12:35:16 PM |
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We have been continuing to add lots of stuff to the site with more Characters, Shows, and other things. In addition, Dan has started going through and adding more detailed descriptions and meet and greet info to some Characters as well as adding more items to their wardrobes. We still have lots to add including signatures for most characters! This week so far we haven't added much to the site and this will probably be true for the rest of the week and some of next... but for good reason! We will be going to Disneyland Paris this weekend for 5 days! So we will be taking lots of pictures and hopefully meeting some new characters! Last year on Valentines weekend they had some special rare characters out and we are hoping they do so again this year as some of the characters last year we have never met! If any of our Paris friends happen to read this and want us to keep an eye out for any of their "friends" please let me know and we will try to get pictures! :) Have a magical day!
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 | We are now 1 month old! | |
| PeterPanFan
Monday, February 1, 2010 6:54:23 AM |
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Hi all! Today is the one month anniversary of the site going live! While it is still in "development" now and was pretty basic when it we first made it public it has come a long way in a month! Recently we have been adding some new features including popup larger picture and now paging to allow you to see more images. We have also added some new sections to the web site including trip reports. In addition, we have made some behind the scenes changes to make management of the site easier which will hopefully result in us getting more information about characters and places up quicker! :) We have more features planned along with some improvements to existing features which will make the site even better. We have also been busily adding more Characters and Parades, Shows, Events, etc. We really hope you all like the site as it is now and it will keep getting better as we fill in more information. If you have any feature ideas or general ideas/thoughts about the site please let us know! We love to hear feedback :D
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 | New Trip Reports section! | |
| DisneyDan
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 11:29:25 AM |
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Hi all, So we have now added a trip reports section to the site. Although not publicly visible I have made 2 entries on it and am posting the direct links to them here. This is a feature we are still working on, and things might be changed or removed, so if these links don't work, then just bear with us - but at time of writing, the should work!
Thanks,
Dan :) |
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