Disney, Characters and Cosplay

I love the Disney characters. Even though we were both adults, I made reservations for character dining on our Disney Honeymoon. It was such fun to meet Pooh and Minnie Mouse as well as others. But we didn't stand in line to meet any of the characters.

Since this trip will be for Emily, I know we’ll be waiting in line for some characters. I do have two character dining reservations, one for Chef Mickey’s on our first night so Emily can meet the big cheese right away. While the Disney characters are usually well done, it’s pretty much just paid cosplay.

Dragon Con Jack and Sally

We attend Dragon Con every year and the costumes there are usually some of the best at any con. There are always a bunch of Disney cosplayers, which includes me since I cosplay as Snow White. This year while we were waiting for a panel to start, I saw a couple cosplaying as Jack and Sally from Nightmare Before

Christmas. Their costumes were wonderful!

I’m planning on attending the Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party this year, and I was excited to hear that Jack and Sally were going to be doing meet and greets at the party. I was excited, until I saw the picture of the characters. Sally is ok, but the Jack’s head is really misshapen. The cosplayers at Dragon Con did a much better job than Disney! Now I’m not going to bother waiting in line for several hours to meet Jack and Sally.

Image: http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog

The meet and greet wait times can be insane for some characters especially for special events. For Friday the 13^th yesterday there was a Villains event at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. People crushed into the park to get a chance to meet some of their favorite villains. A person in my October trip group on Facebook tried to get the Studios but apparently the traffic was backed up all the way out of Disney’s property!

I follow some Disney bloggers and at least one was able to get in. Kenny the Pirate runs a wonderful blog and has a great app that helps you find and meet characters at Disney World. He tweeted last night that he waited 3 ½ hours to meet Oogie Boogie from Nightmare Before Christmas. Other villains had wait times that were an hour or more. I didn't wait more than an hour and a half to see Patrick Stewart speak at Dragon Con – I just can’t imagine waiting 3 and ½ hours for a quick meet and greet with someone who is basically a cosplayer.

I waited about 3 1/2 hrs for Oogie
— kennythepirate.com (@kennypirate) September 14, 2013

I am looking forward to doing some meet and greets for Emily. And I’d probably wait 3 and ½ hours to meet Sophia the First since Emily loves her. But I hope we don’t have to. We have Magic Bands and I've been trying to fiddle with Fastpass +, and I've been picking a lot of characters meetups just so we can free up some time for some rides.