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From MousePlanet

The park's atmosphere characters, once known as "walkarounds," are about to be prohibited from walking around. Instead, every character will be confined to a precise location, making it easier for a Disney's PhotoPass photographer to capture the marketable moment on camera.

Read the rest here

After reading the full article, I was angry. I have nothing against Disney coming up with ways to make money. After all, that's kind of what businesses do. But for them to decide that Alice can't ride the teacups anymore or Mary Poppins can't occasionally ride the Carousel because there's no way to package that moment and sell it as a PhotoPass product, that's nothing but raw, naked greed. Once again, they're deliberately sacrificing a piece of the customer experience just to make a few extra bucks.

I'm always hearing that a healthy percentage of Disneyland's daily visitors are APs who aren't shy about complaining to Guest Relations about stuff they don't like. Hopefully, they give 'em an earful over this.

This is truly sad I am not one for standing in line to get my photo taken with a character, but it is fun to be walking and all of a sudden see a character pop up and you can catch a quick candid shot before the children descend like locusts.
And to have Disney say they don't care if people quit because they are replaceable as Dixie cups That breaks my heart

I agree this is sad.
Even as an adult I get a thrill out of walking into the shops at the UK pavilion and seeing Mary Poppins just browsing through the books on the shelf. It would be such a shame to lose these moments.

I think they're doing this more with the costumed characters than the people dressed as Aladdin, Mary Poppins, etc. But I don't think the primary reason is the PhotoPass; I think that's the public image they're giving the policy change, but not the real reason.

Over the past few years, it seems there's been an ever-growing litigious risk to the costumed characters, such as the public scandals and lawsuits concerning Tigger and more recently Donald Duck. Then there have been cases where the CM within the costume has been accosted by angry adults in the parks or kids allowed to wildly misbehave. We all remember the "free-range" days for the costumed characters to roam the parks, but thanks to safety concerns and lawsuits more controlled environments are the answer to safeguard the company against the risk of more of these events in the future.

mindflipper wrote:I think they're doing this more with the costumed characters than the people dressed as Aladdin, Mary Poppins, etc. But I don't think the primary reason is the PhotoPass; I think that's the public image they're giving the policy change, but not the real reason.

Over the past few years, it seems there's been an ever-growing litigious risk to the costumed characters, such as the public scandals and lawsuits concerning Tigger and more recently Donald Duck. Then there have been cases where the CM within the costume has been accosted by angry adults in the parks or kids allowed to wildly misbehave. We all remember the "free-range" days for the costumed characters to roam the parks, but thanks to safety concerns and lawsuits more controlled environments are the answer to safeguard the company against the risk of more of these events in the future.

You probably are right about the reason for the policy change mindflipper....

Disney would never make that the official reason. Doing so would make it appear if previous policies and practices were wrong, possibly impying in some way their was fault/liability on their part.

Future Guy wrote:I'm always hearing that a healthy percentage of Disneyland's daily visitors are APs who aren't shy about complaining to Guest Relations about stuff they don't like. Hopefully, they give 'em an earful over this.

Do APs really feel any impact from it or even interact with them on a regular basis?

I honestly thought they weren't allowed to roam for years since the only places I ever see them are at a location or going to/from said location.

I know that there are some crazy fan girls that regularly follow around the mad hatter. I've never seen it but watched youtube videos

ashleykay5389 wrote:I know that there are some crazy fan girls that regularly follow around the mad hatter. I've never seen it but watched youtube videos

That sounds a lot like all the girls who were following mindflipper around when we were down there. He was cool about it though, acted like he didn't notice!

Amy wrote:

ashleykay5389 wrote:I know that there are some crazy fan girls that regularly follow around the mad hatter. I've never seen it but watched youtube videos

That sounds a lot like all the girls who were following mindflipper around when we were down there. He was cool about it though, acted like he didn't notice!

And I thought I was being clever by NOT wearing that hat!

What a terrible idea! As a kid, my favorite part of the characters, especially at Disneyland, was spotting them on a ride. And of course no Disney fan ever really grows up, so I was hoping to spot Peter Pan and Wendy on the carousel once again this year!

Esmeralda wrote:What a terrible idea! As a kid, my favorite part of the characters, especially at Disneyland, was spotting them on a ride. And of course no Disney fan ever really grows up, so I was hoping to spot Peter Pan and Wendy on the carousel once again this year!

Maybe the Disney characters dressed as Aladdin, Mary Poppins, princesses, et al will continue to wander a bit with a handler nearby, but the costumed ones like Donald, Goofy et al may not roam "free-range" anymore.

That's terrible news. Hope they reconsider.

Supposedly, Disney has changed their mind about this (link) Or at least denied ever having considered it. Of course, they also denied that they were building Bay Lake Tower even after construction had started. I seriously doubt that lawsuits had anything to do with this. As a large company that's known to have deep coffers, Disney is a natural target for frivolous lawsuits, and that'll never change no matter what they do. They could carpet the parks in flypaper, and they'd still get hit with frivolous slip-and-fall suits. More likely, it was unchecked greed by the PhotoPass division. Hopefully, wiser heads have prevailed here.

It could have also been more about the staff safety rather than the guests since children will run at them even though they never give the requiste "Come at me, bro!".