The Great Character Escapade - An AKV Adults Only Trip Report

[DisneyRegulars]

We sauntered into the Magic Kingdom feeling superior to all previous character hunters (has anyone else even been crazy enough to do this? Well if they had we were feeling like we clearly must be the best character hunters ever.) only to be met by this:

Goodness me! The entire park is lined up to see Pluto!!!!! We had no choice but to wait in the line that stretched from Pluto, all the way around the center garden almost back to Pluto. To give you a sense of how long this line was, Pluto needed at least 3 drinks before we got to him, plus we were able to watch one dance party parade, and think seriously about whether or not we had applied enough sunblock. (We hadn't!)

By the time we got through Pluto we were famished. While we could have pushed through, we would have gotten cranky real fast, so instead of pursuing filler characters while we waited for Chip & Dale to come out at 12:30, we instead pursued a waffle sandwich at the Sleepy Hollow.

On the way we met Penelope, the Mayor's niece. People call her Penny. We spoke to her for a while, got her autograph, and she shouted out this horrible rhyme about us that didn't actually rhyme, although she did a good job with easel and weasel, but failed miserably trying to rhyme something with Grizzly. We grabbed a picture and we were on our way to waffle heaven:

Penelope:

I had Grizzly order me a chicken waffle while I ran to the bathroom. WAIT A MINUTE!!!! Chip and Dale were out early! Our leisurely waffle turned into a waffle gobbling session, as we munched quickly so we could meet Chip and Dale and get out of there.

Chippy and Dale channeling their inner cowboy:

While waiting in line for Chip and Dale I enjoyed listening to the young couple behind us. The girl, clearly a Disney fanatic, was quizzing her slightly reluctant partner. "How do you tell which one is Chip and which one is Dale," she asked. He considered for a while, and announced with confidence, "It has to be the stripe!". Nope! And she revealed the chocolate chip secret to him.

We headed out of the Magic Kingdom right on time, and headed over to Animal Kingdom hoping to capture the fab five and anybody else we could spot. We have officially under 14 hours left. We are well fed, well hydrated, and in good spirits.

The current time: 12:40 pm
Number of Characters Visited: 22
Number of Parks Visited: 3
Up Next: Animal Kingdom

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Animal Kingdom threw us for a bit of a loop. I had factored in all the characters start and end times, transportation times, and park hours, but I hadn't factored in rain. Pouring pouring drench you to the bone dreadful rain. We started our AK tour with a stop to visit Minnie and Mickey. Talk about lucking out. We entered the queue to find relatively few people in line, maybe 10 families in front of us. Within seconds of us entering the line, a GIANT Brazilian Tour Group entered behind us. They quickly filled the entire queuing area, and I'm sure stretched far out of the building as well. I cannot imagine how incredibly boring it must be to travel in one of these large groups. The last thing I would ever want to do is follow 100 other people around all day. But lucky enough for us, we were in front of the tour group. Mickey and Minnie were all ready for their safari:

After Mickey and Minnie I had allotted 20 minutes to see Pluto and Goofy. I'm not sure how long this line took, but it moved VERY slowly. While waiting in line we had time to acquire and drink a beer and acquire and eat 2 Mickey bars. Goofy and Pluto also needed to go back stage and eat some dog biscuits several times. While waiting for Goofy and Pluto the sky kept getting increasingly darker. Very dark. Ominously, apocalyptically dark. When we were finally second in line Pluto and Goofy once again had to go refresh themselves. Oh no!!!!! I was certain it was going to start raining and we would have waited all that time for nothing. The CM informed us though, that Pluto and Goofy still met in the rain, it was only lightning that they went in for. Hmmm....So if there is lightning the characters have to go inside, but all 20,000 guests in the park are fine? I found this curious and slightly illogical. But they came back, and just as we were snapping our picture every cloud fell out of the sky onto us.

Here Pluto gets dressed up in a tropical bandana:

Man did it rain! We scrambled over to the Restaurantasaurus to find Donald in his rain position on the balcony. The line for him was confusing, but short. You can see we are completely soaked from our 30 second run in the rain:

Sadly, Daisy was not to be found because the rain scared her off. Despite the rain the train to Rafiki's Planet Watch was still running. We decided to chance it, and hopped the train out to the Watch, stomping in all the puddles on our way back to Africa. At Rafiki's we found Chip and Dale and Rafiki before heading back to Africa:

Here we are very very wet:

Kenny the Pirate's Character Locator said to call Rafiki a baboon (he's a mandrill) but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. We headed back to the mainland and stopped to grab a couple of beers for our walk out of the park. Despite the rain Animal Kingdom had been a great success because we hadn't been sure if we would make it out to see Chip & Dale. We were headed now back to Epcot, for Epcot round 2. Would we be able to complete our Fab 5 collection in Epcot? Would we manage to catch any characters in the world showcase? Stay tuned...

The current time: Not Entirely Sure O'Clock in the Afternoon
Number of Characters Visited: 30
Number of Parks Visited: 4
Up Next: Epcot Visit # 2

 

[DVC-Jen]

Love all the character Pictures! Especially Rafiki!

 

[franandaj]

We had three other days to enjoy those things. We could have done the people mover, but by the end of the night we both were too exhausted to even enjoy our favorite ride together.

I didn't realize that the Great Character Escapade was only taking place on one of the days of your trip. I understand better now. You two are young so you can do this kind of thing!

Pluto needed at least 3 drinks before we got to him, plus we were able to watch one dance party parade, and think seriously about whether or not we had applied enough sunblock. (We hadn't!)

We had the same thing when we got our picture with Marie last year, she had to keep going backstage for sips of milk. We also saw a Dance Party go by.

You guys are really rockin' this thing so far!

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Alright! Lots of adventures have happened in my real life since my last post. We spent a week resort hopping at Disney, CAN'T WAIT to tell that story! But I have to finish this one first. We also adopted two new ferrets, and then spent the last few days trying to get the stink under control. I can now stand to be in my own house, so I am ready to continue on where I left off. Epcot: Round 2. I actually had a notebook with me that had our schedule in it. I finally have it next to me as I write this. I kept very detailed notes as to transfer times, and it looks like it took us less than an hour, 49 minutes in fact to see Chip and Dale, Rafiki, take the train back from the planet watch, get a beer, walk to the front of Animal Kingdom, take a bus to Epcot and enter the park. Why I thought these details were important, I'm not sure, but let it be known that if you ever need to do that exact adventure it will only take you 49 minutes.

I had a perfectly laid out plan for Epcot, we were going to enter the park. You can see here that step 1 went fairly well:

Wait wait wait, I need to digress. Did I tell you about Wayne? I feel like I have, but he needs to be heard about again. Wayne was the bag checker during our first Epcot visit in the morning, and by golly he was the sweetest darn bag checker I have ever seen. "How are you? Thank you I hope you have a Magical day" In the softest sweetest voice you can imagine, to EVERY SINGLE GUEST. Well here we were 6 hours later and I got Wayne again. Sure enough he was still going at it with his sweetness!!! I still need to write to Disney about him. He is exactly who they want giving first impressions to guests. I just wanted to hug him.

Okay, so the plan was to go around the World Showcase and meet Duffy, Jasmine and Aladdin, Tigger and Pooh, Aurora, Alice, and Belle. We started off great with a visit to Duffy. Many of the characters were very interested in where their name was on our shirts. Donald was none too pleased to find himself not listed first. Duffy was completely shocked that he even made the shirt:

Yippee! Already had Duffy, I was an AMAZING planner. The best planner ever. Soooo good. We scooted right on over and caught Donald too:

And then things went downhill. Fast! Perhaps I'm not god's gift to planners after all. Apparently, if you want to see characters in the World Showcase, you can't arrive at the times the characters are actually supposed to be there. Nope. You must arrive BEFORE, significantly BEFORE, the character actually appears. We were turned away by the character handlers at Jasmine and Aladdin, Aurora, Alice, pretty much every character we tried to see, even if they had appeared only minutes before our arrival we were turned away from them. Hmmm...Maybe I wasn't such a good planner after all. Note to self: Plan the World Showcase tour right at 11:00 when it first opens.

While we were in England searching for Mary Poppins we did happen upon Tigger and Pooh with no line. Well, there was one family in front of us, but really, that could hardly be considered a line right? WRONG! Wrong wrong wrong! It was the character family from hell in front of us. I took detailed notes on how to ensure that every other family in line hates you to the core. Here are my notes:

Step 1: Arrive with one mom severely outnumbered by children, at least a 4 to 1 ratio. I can't recall exactly how many kids there were, but it was a lot. I think 4.

Step 2: Have absolutely no organization or plan when visiting the characters. Have all monster children run up to both characters wildly waving things to sign and hugging. Completely overwhelm characters. Make sure the littlest one spends way too much time pulling on Tiggers tale so that he cannot possibly sign any of the 37 things you brought to get signed. Which leads me to step 3.

Step 3: Bring more than one item per child for the characters to sign. This particular family chose to bring an autograph book, a picture frame, and a hat FOR EACH CHILD. Oh my goodness I was dying. That's 24 signatures that aren't getting done efficiently as children are running around everywhere while mom asks each one, "little Johnny, did Tigger sign your hat?" I can assure you that little Johnny could care less about his darn hat and picture frame, that's why he and the other 15 children hadn't bothered to get them signed!!!!!

Step 4: After getting all 312 items signed by two characters, the only thing left to do is really rub it in your fellow line goers faces that you don't care at all about them. To do this best you must hand the photographer at least 3 cameras with which to take pictures. You then must proceed to take family pictures and individual pictures with all three cameras plus the photopass camera. That's 24 pictures. 24!!! I know you think I'm probably exaggerating by now, but sadly, I am not, let's count them: 4 kids each alone with 4 cameras each is 16, plus mom needs to be alone too so another 4, plus the whole family is another 4 = 24 pictures!

So there you have it. Four easy steps to really drive some other families nuts. Our non-existent line took at least 20 minutes for this one family. Here is our pic, I'm sure that's a fake smile as I was pretty livid at this point (families like this is why Epcot must serve alcohol):

Turns out Tigger and Pooh were also interested if they made the shirts:

Please note the efficiency in that last pic. Tigger is busy signing the single book while we talk with Pooh. Orderly multitasking at it's best.

After visiting Tigger and Pooh we happened upon the crepe shop in France. Grizzly thinks these crepes are amazing. I'm indifferent towards them, but we took a second to gobble down some crepes. Actually I think we gobbled down crepes before meeting Tigger because we also gobbled down some Fish and Chips. Just before leaving the World Showcase we came upon an ice coffee vendor. ?Yes please! We both ordered an ice coffee with Baileys and Vodka. Mmmmmm. Yum Yum Yum! Sipping on our drinks we headed towards the Character Spot before leaving the park:

All in all our Epcot journey was slightly disappointing, but we still managed to add 7 characters to our total, and most importantly had secured our fab five. We headed over to Magic Kingdom for our final hurrah! Will we make it until 2am? Will we make it to 50 characters? Stay tuned as we meet lots of talking characters with lots and lots to say...

The current time: 5:29 PM
Number of Characters Visited: 37
Number of Parks Visited: 5
Up Next: Magic Kingdom Visit #2

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Alright! Last park of the day. We were headed into this park feeling slightly refreshed from our snacks at Epcot, but as our clothes were drying Grizzly was starting to feel slightly chaffed. Poor guy. He toughed it out though. With my obsessive time keeping I noted that it took a mere 18 minutes to travel from Epcot to the Magic Kingdom via monorail. We left Epcot at 5:29 pm, and were in line for Merida at 5:53. The Merida line was surprisingly short, and although we needed to wait for the next showing, we were second in line for that. Overall just 23 minutes for Merida which I didn't think was bad given what her lines used to be like. I guess we have the Anna and Elsa line to thank for other short princess lines. Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Tinker Belle all had ridiculously short lines as well. It's almost like all the parents said "Ok sweet princess loving lady, you can choose only one princess," and then every kid jumped immediately in line for Anna and Elsa.

At 6:30pm we used our very first Fast Pass of the day, Tinker Belle. She was quite enthused by my huge pixie dust bag and wondered where I had gotten it.

Okay, now we had some real decisions to make. We weren't sure what we had time for, and we also couldn't for the life of us figure out if Pete's Silly Sideshow was open for Extra Magic Hours or not. Three different sources each said something different! So we did what seemed best and headed for Buzz. His line looked long but moved fast:

Then we bit the bullet and waited for Tigger and Pooh. And waited. And waited. And then we waited a bit more. 45 minutes after entering the line we finally got to meet them. I can't imagine waiting that long if you weren't doing some ridiculous challenge where you were trying to see as many characters as possible in a single day. What were these people thinking? Probably something along the lines of "I must get as many characters as possible to sign my picture frame and hat and autograph book." Yes, I'm still bitter.

We finally emerged from Tigger and Pooh with just enough time to run over to see if Princess Tiana was out. She was not out, which proved to be excellent because in her place we found Prince Naveen with absolutely no line. We both let out an unexpected whoop when we saw Prince Naveen standing all alone. He was genuinely surprised that we were so excited to see him.

With our first and only prince under our belts we headed off to our Anna and Elsa Fast Pass. I had heard horror stories of even the Anna and Elsa FP line taking a very long time, but the cast member assured us it would only take a few minutes, 15 at most, and she was right. They have really nailed down the FP+ system since it began. I'm liking it more and more with each trip. So we met Anna and Elsa for the first time. The most impressive thing about Elsa was how incredibly flowy her dress was. It was magnificent how it flowed and ruffled through the air. Grizzly even commented on it, and he's a guy who cares nothing about princess dresses. He reminded me he was a guy a few moments later when he stepped on it! Other than her dress though Elsa was pretty dull. She said since she likes cold she would like NY, but Olaf likes summer, so to be in Orlando she has to make him a really really big flurry. Anna, however, was AMAZING! I could have sat and listened to her talk all day long. They should make a little eavesdropping booth! We asked Anna if her boots were from Olkin's Trading Post, and then she told us this great story about how Olkin is trying to get into summer products now, and that he sells sun block, but he doesn't really understand sunblock, so he makes it in rainbow colors, and Sven has been running around bright blue.

I must have gotten tired at this point, because I don't have any notes on the order of things that happened next, but I think we went to see Minnie and Daisy at Pete's Silly Sideshow. For around 8pm at night this line was REALLY long. It took us about 45 minutes for each side. I wasn't expecting these lines to take so long. While in line I got to overhear a glorious conversation between a boy and his dad. It went something like this:
Boy: Dad, my feet hurt Daddy. (Not whining or anything, just stating that his feet hurt)
Dad: No they don't. (I just about died! How could he possibly know if his son's feet hurt or not)
Boy: They do Dad, they're really sore.
Dad: Well are they wet?
Boy: No
Dad: Then they don't hurt. (Really really confused by this logic, but okay.)

I'm all about acknowledging my kid's feelings, so this conversation just struck me and made me feel really bad for this little boy. Eventually we made it through the long line and met Minnie and Daisy. I still think both Daisy and Donald's outfits make them creepy:

We then repeated our line waiting feet to meet Donald and Goofy. Shockingly, Goofy did not have us hold up our ears.

Alright! We had gotten 4 of the fab five at all parks, all we needed now was Mickey, and he was our last remaining FP. Our FP window started at 9:00 so we headed down there after finishing with the side show. This was our first experience with talking Mickey, AND HE WAS GREAT!!!!!!! So cool! All I wanted to do was bring my son back to see him. Mickey took the time to tell us a joke about pirates and the type of socks they wear, but my FAVORITE part was when he was talking to the spanish speaking family in front of us. He told them he had been learning a few spanish words, and he told them his words he had learned. I don't remember what they were, but they were somewhat random and funny. At picture time though, well after the whole I've been learning spanish conversation, the photographer said "Say Cheese" and Mickey replied "Queso!". It was great! The whole room was laughing. If you haven't been to see talking Mickey yet, he's definitely worth a visit. He was pretty awesome.

Finally we had our fab five in all four parks. The only characters still left out in the Magic Kingdom were Cinderella, Rapunzel, and the Little Mermaid. So we went to visit them.

Rapunzel was by far my favorite of the group. She saw our llamas on our shirts and went nuts! She told us how much she LOVED llamas. As a llama obsessed person myself, I was quite smitten to have found a fellow llama loving princess. I loved Rapunzel!

Finally, we headed up and saw Belle. We knew we had to be in the show in order to get our picture taken with Belle, so we were quite happy when the CM picked both of us to be the suits of armor. Let me tell you. This show is much more enjoyable if you are actually in it. Be in the show! It's way more fun than watching other people in the show. I still have to load in our Belle picture, but rest assured we saw her too.

And that was it! We headed out of the parks completely tuckered out, barely able to walk, and completely exhilarated at the same time. My phone said we had walked over 18 miles. I think we stopped for a Mickey Bar and some popcorn on the way out. Be briefly discussed riding the TTA before leaving, but both of us were just too exhausted to even ride our most favorite ride. But now to find our car and get back to our hotel. The adventure continues next as this night is not nearly through.

We added 16 characters at the Magic Kingdom, bringing our grand total to 53 character meetings in a single day! Total score tally coming up. Anybody want to take on this challenge too?

The current time: 1:00am
Number of Characters Visited: 53
Number of Parks Visited: 6
Up Next: Heading Back to the Hotel, Getting Lost, and ANGRY husbands

 

[DVCjj]

An absolutely amazing trip. So enjoyable to be part of the adventure.

Love how you write. Thanks for sharing.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

An absolutely amazing trip. So enjoyable to be part of the adventure.

Love how you write. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you so much! I'm glad you are enjoying following along.

 

[dvc at last !]

View attachment 111706 Ok, I know I owe you a full trip report, and it's coming, but to tide you over I wanted to share these amazing posters we picked up on our trip. I'm totally in love with them, and they were so cheap. They came in a pack of twelve, here are the first two we have managed to frame. I'm totally psyched about them! Oh, and our trip was fantastic!

OMG - where did you find these ?

 

[dvc at last !]

Just found this TR - your challenge sounds fun !

 

[DisneyRegulars]

OMG - where did you find these ?

A lot of the gift shops have them. We saw them in the Emporium at the Magic Kingdom, at the Poly, and in Downtown Disney. Look, we hung up our favorites, good thing we had a whole undecorated room:

 

[dvc at last !]

They look great !
We need to do this !
May I ask the price ?
Were they flat or rolled in a tube and what size are they ?
We will be at WDW in November want to purchase them.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

They look great !
We need to do this !
May I ask the price ?
Were they flat or rolled in a tube and what size are they ?
We will be at WDW in November want to purchase them.

Are you ready for this? You may want to find a seat. Okay, sitting? They cost a grand total of $19.95!!! I totally would have easily paid $100 for these. The most reasonably priced fantastic souvenir ever!!!

They are 12x18. The frames actually cost much much more than the actual posters. They come flat. I carried them on the plane so they wouldn't get bent. I picked up the frames and mats at Michaels with 50% off coupons. One day I even walked into and out of the store 8 times to buy all the mats because they only let you use the coupon once. Thought this was a brilliant idea ( I asked the clerks if they cared) and felt all awesome until on one of the trips I walked smack into the sliding glass door. Then I felt like a complete idiot for my remaining purchases.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

This is what the front of the package looks like:

 

[TeeterTots]

This is what the front of the package looks like:

Wait....so all 8 posters for $19.95! Can't be! Disney doesn't do fab finds! Lol

 

[dvc at last !]

Are you ready for this? You may want to find a seat. Okay, sitting? They cost a grand total of $19.95!!! I totally would have easily paid $100 for these. The most reasonably priced fantastic souvenir ever!!!

They are 12x18. The frames actually cost much much more than the actual posters. They come flat. I carried them on the plane so they wouldn't get bent. I picked up the frames and mats at Michaels with 50% off coupons. One day I even walked into and out of the store 8 times to buy all the mats because they only let you use the coupon once. Thought this was a brilliant idea ( I asked the clerks if they cared) and felt all awesome until on one of the trips I walked smack into the sliding glass door. Then I felt like a complete idiot for my remaining purchases.

That is amazing 19.95 for 12 posters. I believe that the actual mats and frames were way more then the posters even with coupons !
Love that you love coupons as much as me. I would do the same thing at Michaels/ACMoore except try not to walk into the sliding door !
They are the best souvenir ever !

 

[dvc at last !]

So what about the Resort hopping ?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

So what about the Resort hopping ?

That report is coming next! We thought it was a good idea to piece together a trip last minute,so we ended up with five nights at five different resorts with our five year old along. Oh the stories I have for that trip! I'm trying to finish up this trip report before I forget all my favorite and not so favorite parts of that resort hopping one.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Wait....so all 8 posters for $19.95! Can't be! Disney doesn't do fab finds! Lol

I kid you not! Printed on acid free lignin free paper no less! Less than $2 per poster (there are 12). I hope they come out with larger sizes, and one for splash mountain someday.

 

[TeeterTots]

I kid you not! Printed on acid free lignin free paper no less! Less than $2 per poster (there are 12). I hope they come out with larger sizes, and one for splash mountain someday.

I'll definitely be picking these up in October for sure!
Loving your trip report and looking forward to another!