Characters, Cruising, and COVID

I’ve been adding little bits and pieces about my recent Disney Cruise Line vacation to Disney Over 50. One of best things about our pre-COVID cruises was the amount of character photos that we took! Things are different now, but there are still plenty of characters.

Characters are socially distanced right now. There was a circle on the floor where we stood, and the characters stood behind us. If the pictures were taken indoors, masks need to stay on. They could be taken off outside.

At most of the character greetings there was a Shutters photographer on hand. There was also a character attendant. The Crew Members are not allowed to take pictures for passengers, but it was always easy to find someone who would take it for us.

One of my favorite parts of the characters was that there was hardly ever a line. On past cruises we had to wait, sometimes long enough that the characters would change. That wasn’t a problem this cruise. There were only 1,345 passengers, so I’m sure that had a lot to do with it.

The character costumes would change, depending on what was going on. No matter what they were wearing, we would want to get a picture! When else can you get pictures with Chip ‘n’ Dale in tuxedos?

Since there were almost no lines, we had some great interactions. We played hide and seek with Stitch! It was so much fun. On our Star Wars Day at Sea day the traditional characters were replaced by Star Wars characters.

Things are going to change at some point, and eventually cruises will be more crowded and the lines for characters will be back. On our cruise, the amount of time with the characters was one of my favorite parts. I say that a lot of things were “one of my favorite parts”. That’s how fantastic our recent Disney Fantasy cruise was.