News Last night's Moonlight Magic at Disney's Hollywood Studios continued with distanced character sightings

[eliza61nyc]

I mean, considering everything that is going on in the world right now, doesn't this fall under the category of “no big deal”? It’s really not even a little deal; particularly if you are comfortable enough with your health and your finances to be able to go to WDW in the first place. It’s not as if you’d be getting a meet and greet with Julie Andrews or Tom Hanks. You’d be getting it with a sweat drenched low paid employee in a furry costume. So who really cares if you have to wave at them from a distance? You’re still there, aren’t you, which are a more than a lot of other people are able to say. Just enjoy the magic or get someone to take away the gun pointed at your head that forced you to go. Sheesh.

no big deal for me but I don't do meet and greats lol even when I had small kids. but remember we have to complain about just about every thing all the time. (that's a joke)

I am watching it on you tube and the characters were up close and personal at the dance party

Maybe it was only special characters because some characters are walking around interacting. I'm watching paging Mr. Morrow

 

[eliza61nyc]

Or maybe they shouldn't have oversold the event like they did.

wait, I thought the event was free?? are we still taking moonlight magic

 

[SaucyBoy]

wait, I thought the event was free?? are we still taking moonlight magic

No, they are referring to a villains at DHS event back in 2014 (or '13) that was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish.

 

[Lilofan]

Or maybe they shouldn't have oversold the event like they did.

If you are referring to the disastrous Villains event in 2013, anyone who bought a park ticket at DHS that day could attend the free several hour event after the park closing time. Thousands and thousands were in the park all day but what added to the madness was the thousands that bought a park ticket and came in the afternoon were met with hours long backup with cars and buses trying to enter exit Buena Vista Drive Disney did not oversold the event. They just never expected a mass of cars and people trying to enter / exit DHS via Buena Vista Drive . Cast members could not even go home after their shift because of the hours long traffic jam in front of the intersection gas station BVD/DHS.

 

[Lilofan]

What happened on 9/13/13?

Villians free event in 2013 makes NYE traffic after fireworks a walk in the park.

 

[drew81]

If you are referring to the disastrous Villains event in 2013, anyone who bought a park ticket at DHS that day could attend the free several hour event after the park closing time. Thousands and thousands were in the park all day but what added to the madness was the thousands that bought a park ticket and came in the afternoon were met with hours long backup with cars and buses trying to enter exit Buena Vista Drive Disney did not oversold the event. They just never expected a mass of cars and people trying to enter / exit DHS via Buena Vista Drive . Cast members could not even go home after their shift because of the hours long traffic jam in front of the intersection gas station BVD/DHS.

A night that will live in infamy.

 

[Piebald]

Wow it was 2013?! I went with my now wife and it was chaos. Being in the middle of the park I remember being basically unable to move. We saw the villain from PaTF but it was so dark out pictures came out horribly. It was quite the mess but at the time pretty awesome as a free event...but yes they learned their lesson.

I've always said characters could help with the insane crowds though since the company has become cheaper and cheaper. Imagine the reduction in lines throughout the parks if they added a handful of super rare characters throughout each park in a well designed area. You throw Mandalorian and Grogu over somewhere and suddenly you're spreading things out a little.

 

[Lilofan]

Wow it was 2013?! I went with my now wife and it was chaos. Being in the middle of the park I remember being basically unable to move. We saw the villain from PaTF but it was so dark out pictures came out horribly. It was quite the mess but at the time pretty awesome as a free event...but yes they learned their lesson.

I've always said characters could help with the insane crowds though since the company has become cheaper and cheaper. Imagine the reduction in lines throughout the parks if they added a handful of super rare characters throughout each park in a well designed area. You throw Mandalorian and Grogu over somewhere and suddenly you're spreading things out a little.

You are lucky you got to experience. A number of fellow guests could not even get inside DHS via Buena Vista Drive by the mid afternoon. The only exit to get out of DHS at that time was through the same way.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

Worried I might be poking a bear here, but this photo from the event in question just popped up on my feed, and while I don't know what the need was to have some characters roped off and not others, the fact that this guest was able to get all these pictures the way they did makes me feel like some of the discourse here is a little out of proportion:

Yes, you'd think if Goofy can be a "huggable" meet and Greet then Monty and Fat Cat could be too, and yes, on paper this is a slimmer offering than letting guests get up close and personal with every character in the roster. But I don't know, this seems easy enough to chalk up to a one-off "weird thing" - certainly preferable to them just pulling the characters instead of merely lightly altering access.

If all the characters at the event were roped off despite the return of standard operations it'd be a different story, I suppose. But reading this thread gave me a real different impression of how accessible the characters were, and this picture makes it seem like a much smaller deal than stated.

 

[zapple]

Worried I might be poking a bear here, but this photo from the event in question just popped up on my feed, and while I don't know what the need was to have some characters roped off and not others, the fact that this guest was able to get all these pictures the way they did makes me feel like some of the discourse here is a little out of proportion:
View attachment 641966
Yes, you'd think if Goofy can be a "huggable" meet and Greet then Monty and Fat Cat could be too, and yes, on paper this is a slimmer offering than letting guests get up close and personal with every character in the roster. But I don't know, this seems easy enough to chalk up to a one-off "weird thing" - certainly preferable to them just pulling the characters instead of merely lightly altering access.

If all the characters at the event were roped off despite the return of standard operations it'd be a different story, I suppose. But reading this thread gave me a real different impression of how accessible the characters were, and this picture makes it seem like a much smaller deal than stated.

All the characters on the bottom row were in the Disney Jr Dance Party area for a special Disney Afternoon dance party and they were interacting with the crowd with no distancing. It was the outdoor ones that were behind the rope, which makes no sense.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

All the characters on the bottom row were in the Disney Jr Dance Party area for a special Disney Afternoon dance party and they were interacting with the crowd with no distancing. It was the outdoor ones that were behind the rope, which makes no sense.

That feels like all the more reason not to leap to the conclusion of it being some COVID thing . . . I don't know what the reason would be, but this feels far less nefarious than the discussion suggests.

 

[drew81]

It comes down to laziness.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

It comes down to laziness.

I guess for me it just feels like there are a thousand examples of Disney's laziness that are far more egregious than this one, and for some reason people have chosen to give this one the energy that those deserve.

Which doesn't mean we should just let it slide - in fact, it probably does mean the opposite. I'm certainly a vocal critic of Disney's operations. It just feels like some perspective is in order here.

 

[Club Cooloholic]

I guess for me it just feels like there are a thousand examples of Disney's laziness that are far more egregious than this one, and for some reason people have chosen to give this one the energy that those deserve.

Which doesn't mean we should just let it slide - in fact, it probably does mean the opposite. I'm certainly a vocal critic of Disney's operations. It just feels like some perspective is in order here.

Agreed. It was a very niche event for a very small group of guests that happened to be very free. Honestly would it matter if there were characters there at all or not? These people were going to go anyway. If I am Disney and I see this kind of reaction I just say let's skip these characters all together next time.

 

[doctornick]

I guess for me it just feels like there are a thousand examples of Disney's laziness that are far more egregious than this one, and for some reason people have chosen to give this one the energy that those deserve.

Which doesn't mean we should just let it slide - in fact, it probably does mean the opposite. I'm certainly a vocal critic of Disney's operations. It just feels like some perspective is in order here.

Yeah, I'd be curious as to the rationale behind the difference in M&Gs before attributing it to Disney being "lazy". I don't really see where there's some sort of substantial monetary gain by not having those characters being huggable. So, my gut feeling is that they did this to keep the line moving and make the rarer characters more accessible for more people and to avoid having folks queuing for a long time to meet them. Because we've all seen or heard of the ridiculous lines that rare characters can get at some of these special events.

Maybe this was a test ground for modifying such rare characters for busier events and to see how guests viewed the idea?

 

[Djsfantasi]

I understand that the reason for stopping freestyle meet and greets on the walkways was two-fold. First, it created people eaters to spread out the crowds. And secondly, it eliminated the ugly push and shoves when parents tried to get their kids up front for a hug.

I remember back in the late 80s (1987-ish?), bringing my toddler son. Parents were nearly coming to blows to get their kids a hug.