Character Lockdown?!?

[mharrington]

Look at this: http://www.mouseplanet.com/9510/Collared.

It looks like PhotoPass is the despotic ruler of the character department (or lack thereof)! And it's going to rob the park of "walkaround" characters. Now they will do nothing more than just pose for pictures!

 

[Wilt Dasney]

God, that's a depressing read.

 

[mharrington]

I bet Walt is roiling in his grave over this.

 

[Wilt Dasney]

This should be linked to on the WDW boards. This is major news that will probably end up affecting all the parks sooner or later. It deserves more traffic than it will get here.

 

[JML42691]

That's really depressing, walking around and just bumping into a character was cool, guess not anymore.

 

[mharrington]

I also wonder what this holds for the marketing department. Will this new development rob that department of having the characters in open areas, like, say, the castle, for advertising, commercials, etc.?

 

[Nicole220]

So sad. I remember the days when characters would go on the rides. But really, the only true walkaround characters now are Alice/Mad Hatter and Peter Pan. Everyone else either has their own themed M&G or is stuck to one spot like Mickey in Town Square.

 

[mharrington]

Here's some news, and I'm pretty sure they're not practicing what they preach on this one (from Screamscape.com):

The latest update at MousePlanet this week about the proposed ban on freely wandering characters in the parks is interesting. The public outrage over the idea has been huge… enough that Disney management is now claiming that there are no such plans in the works, despite confirmation from insiders that the plan was presented to chain the characters down. It’s been amusing to watch Knott’s Berry Farm also jump in on the bandwagon, Tweeting several times over the past week about how Snoopy is roaming all over the park interacting with their guests. Disney has vowed that the roaming characters will remain in the parks, so mission accomplished folks. For now at least… but I know I’d love to see all the characters go back to being unchained and freely roaming around the park once again, despite the ever watching eye of Skynet and PhotoPass.

The reason I'm doubting this is, considering their track record as of late, I think they're only denying what's happening just to throw the fans/purists off their trail, just like what happened when they "denied" that there were no characters being added to Small World. Well, I don't trust Disney for a second on this one.

It's the same old tug-of-war between guest satisfaction and profits...