Disney Springs to become home to a Disney character meet and greet?

Sep 28, 2016 in "World of Disney"

Posted: Wednesday September 28, 2016 1:22pm EDT by WDWMAGIC Staff

You could soon be meeting some of your favorite Disney characters outside of the parks, in Disney Springs.

World of Disney Entrance

If plans go ahead as expected, we've been told that the World of Disney store will be hosting the meet and greet. Using space vacated by the relocated Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, the store will offer the meet and greet as a free experience.

The concept is expected to be tested in the near future to see if a meet and greet in that location is feasible to operate.

Disney Springs has hosted meet and greets in the past, although typically only during holiday periods or special events. Around Christmas, guests can meet Santa and Goofy. That experience is mostly queue-less, using pagers with a return time and then a short wait. It would seem likely that a similar virtual queue would be used at World of Disney.

Santa's Chalet at Disney Springs

The Disney Springs World of Disney is one of the largest Disney retail stores in the world, and was expanded in late 2015 with more merchandise space and redesign of its interior.

Disney has not yet made any announcement or confirmation of the project, so at this point should be treated as speculation.

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wdriveOct 02, 2016

Just breakfast I think, it may change or I may also be wrong haha

asianwayOct 02, 2016

Which meal periods are supposed to have characters? Just dinner? Thanks

wdriveOct 02, 2016

March is when I've heard it's happening

asianwayOct 02, 2016

It's called Cafe Mickey, and they're about to lose their characters in favor of Plaza Gardens-may have already happened

Tim LohrOct 02, 2016

Why question is more in terms of how are they going do a GotG attraction in way that makes sense to fans of the coming films, they're reaching a point with the film stories were it's all going to be one big story line and the separate films are just chapters.. it's actually always been that way with the MCU but it's becoming more apparent... "Captain America Civil War" is just as much about Ironman and the Winter Solider, and making Ant Man an avenger, and introducing Spiderman and Black Panther... The Hulk is a co-star of the next Thor film and The Guardians of the Galaxy will probably be returning to Earth in Vol 2, and nobody knows what's going on in Dr Strange... but that's going to become the norm with these films going forward, through 2017 the stories will become even more interconnected until they all team up in Avengers Infinity War in 2018

DABIGCHEEZSep 30, 2016

danlb_2000Sep 30, 2016

Given this, why are you skeptical that GoTG is coming to WDW? DCA is starting with GoTG and it looks like they plan to eventually do a full Marvel land. So either Disney is going to get the rights back but start with GoTG as an anchor, or they aren't going to get the rights back in which case GoTG is better then nothing.

Tim LohrSep 30, 2016

Well he's "not yet" part of the MCU, he was also not supposed to be in X-Men Apocalypse either, but they surprised everybody with a secret Wolverine cameo in that film... and in sixth months he's getting his own film which still has no name, and a script that no will confirm the content of... and the MCU dropped the Inhumans film from their upcoming roster, the Inhumans are sort of like B-list X-Men anyway... it seems like now's the time to bring the X-Men into the MCU whether it's Hugh Jackman or not, is uncertain

Tim LohrSep 30, 2016

Well getting back to my actual point about, I'm thinking what they are going to want to do "at the parks", is what the public seems to wants to see at theme parks these days, which is something that recreates the experience of popular films, like Harry Potter, Avatar, Star Wars ect... at the moment though neither Disney nor Universal can legally "build" things to capitalist on the Marvel films "in their Orlando parks", but in the meantime Disney could probably promote those films at Disney Springs

danlb_2000Sep 30, 2016

Your original post said "characters are ok to use", and I was interpreting ok to mean, legally allowed. Yes, I agree that it would be desirable to have all the characters there, but I think Disney would rather have something Marvel at WDW instead of nothing.

wdriveSep 30, 2016

Anyone can go to a number of character meals at WDW without a park ticket.

Tim LohrSep 30, 2016

That's not what I'm saying though, I'm assuming legally GotG is al right to use in WDW, the same way Doctor Strange seems to be, but the storylines of the upcoming films will include the rest of the Marvel characters that Universal currently has the right to... the Movies are putting Disney into a position where it's "all or nothing" as far as theme park rides/lands go... maybe they will build it a piece at a time, they went to great lengths to include Spiderman in the MCU and almost instantly afterwards Spiderman began appearing on the Disney Cruise ships... but their whole reason for buying Marvel was to have some thing to appeal to little boys, a "princess equivalent" basically, and little kids don't care who owns the rights to whatever, if they see one Marvel superhero at the parks they are going to wonder where the rest are

BrerJonSep 30, 2016

At Disneyland Paris they still do. Chef Mickey's is a full character dining experience with 4 or 5 characters per meal, and it's outside of the parks in their equivalent of Downtown Disney so anyone can go with or without a park ticket.