Meeting Disney Characters

One of the great things about getting an internship at Disney is the unlimited park access. This allows tons of time to experience the magic, including meeting Disney characters. There are a LOT of characters guests can meet at Disney from the Fab 5 to the Princesses to other common characters to meet like Pooh to characters you can only meet at parties to seasonal characters to rare characters that you come across just by chance. I don't know an official number or anything but the number exceeds 200. Now if you decide to meet characters you may want to commemorate your experience. Here are some ideas to help you do that.

Pictures The photopass team will take your pictures with the Disney camera, but the photographer or the character attendant is more than happy to take pictures with your personal camera.

Disney Autograph Books Many guests also get autograph books. A cheap way to get these is if you go to the damages shop now called Mickey's Treasures at Cast Connection. When merchandise is damaged it goes to this store where cast members can buy it for 75% off, including all types of autograph books. I got one of the Princess autograph books with pages to put pictures and a bunch of blank pages of all of the non-princesses to sign. The the only thing wrong with the book was the plastic covering was a little torn! This is what I began my character journey with. 

Homemade Autograph Books When I worked in the park I saw a lot of guests make their own autograph books. This is a cool way to go if you want to get creative. These are nice because you can make them as big as you want because if you are at Disney for 6+ months you might run out of space in one you buy through Disney. Just search Disney Autograph books on Pinterest and you will get a ton of cool ideas to inspire you!

Picture Frame Mats A current trend I have seen in the parks is to bring a plain picture frame mat for the characters to sign. Then you can put your favorite character picture in a frame to display your autographs for all to see!

Blank Canvas I really liked the picture frames the guests were bringing but I don't really use frames much and thought the space taken up by a picture could be put to another use. Therefore, I modified the picture frame mat concept and bought the flat canvases at Michaels, painted a design on them and brought them to the parks for the characters to sign. I made a few smaller ones for gifts for my picture and started a larger one for me. I still haven't given those ones to my sister yet and mine still has a little work to go, so I'll maybe post them at a later date. 

Disney Character Encyclopedia I think this is my new favorite idea. I have seen a handful of guests bring a book with all of the characters in it and have them sign on their page. I googled it and I think it is an inexpensive way that allows you to be prepared for just about any character you might encounter at the parks! Each character has their own page and there is even trivia and whatnot. Unfortunately not EVERY character is in the book, but it definitely covers a majority of the ones you'll encounter. Here is a link to it on Amazon: Disney Character Encyclopedia 

Other items I've seen guests bring everything from pillow cases to  t-shirts to canvas bags for characters to sign, so the possibilities are endless!

Now go see how many characters you can meet!