News Walt Disney World's Character meet locations to reopen along with more shows and entertainment

WorldExplorer

WorldExplorer

Well-Known Member
celluloid said:
It takes a good amount of rotation spots for the characters to have a line constantly moving so one moves in while the other leaves. Without the college program there have been less character trained "friends" and people to portray roles. If there are illness call outs, which happen even without Covid it hits even harder. That is why I brought up staffing. Similar to the reason we are still waiting on the hopeful return of the rest of the parking trams and teams.
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I get the line thing (maybe? The number of people standing around the line ushering people seems the same as before, but maybe I'm remembering wrong), but not the performer thing. They have enough people to fill a schedule of characters for "sightings", where the character is in there for x hours, but not enough people to fill a schedule for meet and greets, where the character is also there for x hours?

I get not opening MORE character spots, I don't get why we'd still be stuck with the watered down version of the ones we do have.
 
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celluloid

Well-Known Member
WorldExplorer said:
I get the line thing (maybe? The number of people standing around the line ushering people seems the same as before, but maybe I'm remembering wrong), but not the performer thing. They have enough people to fill a schedule of characters for "sightings", where the character is in there for x hours, but not enough people to fill a schedule for meet and greets, where the character is also there for x hours?

I get not opening MORE character spots, I don't get why we'd still be stuck with the watered down version of the ones we do have.
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I don't think you are aware of how many people it takes to play the characters you meet in a full day shift of operation. When the meet an greets become normal again, the crowds to meet them will be more than the passer by version now. The demand will be much greater, and the company was taking less risk since the encounters are closer and in buildings. Some have moved back into buildings already; we are getting there.
 
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WorldExplorer

WorldExplorer

Well-Known Member
celluloid said:
i don't think you are aware of how many people it takes to play the characters you meet in a full day shift of operation. When the meet an greets become normal again, the crowds to meet them will be more than the passer by version now. The demand will be much greater, and the company was taking less risk since the encounters are closer and in buildings. Some have moved back into buildings already; we are getting there.
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I do know there are many people doing the character performances, thanks.

Okay, so I think I get it now; I wasn't thinking about them probably not staffing multiple rooms for the low turn out, and was presuming them having the thing open meant the usual number was there and waiting.

Yeah, I get the argument now.
 
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mm52200

mm52200

Well-Known Member
Have said it before, and will say it again.
They are only short on performers because they still aren’t calling them back. There are performers on displacement still and a list of laid off performers still waiting to be worked through.
They can’t use college program cast until cast members in their role classification have been called back. Which they haven’t. Disney is very content with the number of entertainment cast they have back, they are in total control of that.
 
ToTBellHop

ToTBellHop

Well-Known Member
mm52200 said:
Have said it before, and will say it again.
They are only short on performers because they still aren’t calling them back. There are performers on displacement still and a list of laid off performers still waiting to be worked through.
They can’t use college program cast until cast members in their role classification have been called back. Which they haven’t. Disney is very content with the number of entertainment cast they have back, they are in total control of that.
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I wouldn’t say they are “very content” given that they have slowly, but progressively, brought more entertainment cast back. They do think they can get away with the current amount at any given time as long as they continue to slowly bring things back and they are gladly using the return of old things as marketing for guests to return (in lieu of actual new entertainment). And I’d say it seems they are right.

As an example, if people complain that Fantasmic! still isn’t back, they can just say “it’s coming back this year!” even though they aren’t presently paying to run it. Most guests would then say, “oh, wonderful!”
 
mm52200

mm52200

Well-Known Member
ToTBellHop said:
I wouldn’t say they are “very content” given that they have slowly, but progressively, brought more entertainment cast back. They do think they can get away with the current amount at any given time as long as they continue to slowly bring things back and they are gladly using the return of old things as marketing for guests to return (in lieu of actual new entertainment). And I’d say it seems they are right.

As an example, if people complain that Fantasmic! still isn’t back, they can just say “it’s coming back this year!” even though they aren’t presently paying to run it. Most guests would then say, “oh, wonderful!”
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But they are very content because they have the exact control over how much cast/staffing/offerings they have when they want. It’s not like other lines of business where they are legitimately short staffed and are scrambling for people.
Entertainment still has multiple lists of people waiting for a callback to their jobs.
 
ToTBellHop

ToTBellHop

Well-Known Member
mm52200 said:
But they are very content because they have the exact control over how much cast/staffing/offerings they have when they want. It’s not like other lines of business where they are legitimately short staffed and are scrambling for people.
Entertainment still has multiple lists of people waiting for a callback to their jobs.
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Absolutely. Some of the decisions have been mind-boggling as they are literally turning away money.
 
drew81

drew81

Well-Known Member
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happymom25

Active Member
Such great news!! Cannot wait for normal meets here!! I’m getting memory maker if they get rid of the stalking character pictures before our trip.
 
Animaniac93-98

Animaniac93-98

Well-Known Member
While DLP has now dropped its mask mandate (indoors and out) and you can hug characters, it still requires guests to be fully vaccinated to visit the park in accordance with French law.

This may be part of the reason why full contact meet and greets were brought back there before the American parks.
 
ToTBellHop

ToTBellHop

Well-Known Member
Animaniac93-98 said:
While DLP has now dropped its mask mandate (indoors and out) and you can hug characters, it still requires guests to be fully vaccinated to visit the park in accordance with French law.

This may be part of the reason why full contact meet and greets were brought back there before the American parks.
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But, all of the unvaccinated guests are masked!
 

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