With Walt Disney World continuing to experience labor shortages, multiple character meet and greets will be suspended beginning Sunday, October 23.
The affected characters include Minnie Mouse at both Town Square Theater in the Magic Kingdom and International Gateway at EPCOT, as well as Donald and Daisy Duck and Max at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. As of the writing of this article, Pete’s Silly Sideshow at the Magic Kingdom is still closed, with no reopening date announced.
The cuts are likely to accommodate the return of other character-based experiences, like character dining and Fantasmic!, which utilizes many characters in its finale.
Disney College Program participants may be able to alleviate things, but currently, Entertainment Cast Members frequently face a grueling schedule, working six days a week with few chances at days off. To deal with this, a slight reduction in character meet and greets should help reduce the strain.
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Of all the characters to cut, Minnie at Town Square in 50th attire is the WORST!!! This will be a once in a lifetime photo and WDW should think of that! SO disappointed!
I agree. I bought a special outfit to meet them and my day to meet them is October 23 first day of the cuts.
I got an audition email recent about character auditions so maybe its temporary. And to agree w you matt w cps coming back it might figure itself out long term.
Maybe yoy can write a letter to them on this.
This is unapologetic and unforgiving, why can’t they ax off Pluto & Fancy Nancy at DHS(so Mira can debut and Sofia can return), Chewbacca at Launch Bay, and Elena & Jack Sparrow at MK instead of doing all of this, I thought the labor problems were solved by now
This isn’t about labour. It’s about monetising character meets. By moving more to dining they can make more money by customers having to pay for the dining experience, whereas in the Parks it’s “free”.
This will also impact wait times as character meet queues helped take the stress from other queues
I guess this is what happens when you sack your entire staff!
Cutting characters is likely more so to do with people quitting due to being overworked with management constantly asking CMs to be patient “help is coming”, yet never does.
The luster of the job has worn off for many.
I’m so glad I had the opportunity to have the Mickey and Minnie meet and greet on Oct. 2nd.
Unfortunate. Love meeting and greeting characters. Hope Epcot brings back Elsa and Anna in their Frozen 1 outfits. Miss the old ones a lot and north mountain background :(
I’ve got a 6 year with Down Syndrome and we are due to go to Florida in Nove. Her understanding of going on this holiday is zero. The only thing I keep saying is that she is going to meet Mickey Mouse. She would have absolutely loved the character meet and greet. We can’t afford the character dining unfortunately. Disney seems to be only interested in squeezing it’s guests for every penny it can make. Why have people queue and meet characters for free when you can get them to pay. This isn’t the park that Walt Disney created – shame on you Disney!