Hugs will be back “soon”!There have been plenty of ways to see characters since the theme parks at Walt Disney World reopened in 2020. I love character sightings and cavalcades as much as anyone. But I will admit that I miss the hugs and up close pictures.
We could see the return of up close characters “soon”. That’s of course not an exact date, but it is more than we knew a few days ago!
The promise of “soon” comes from Christine McCarthy, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Walt Disney Company. She participated in the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference. Here is what she had to say about characters:
The other thing that has not yet come back, but should be coming back soon is character meet and greets. And for any of you with children or grandchildren, you probably have had — little kids love being around those beloved Disney characters. And those character meet and greets also take people out of lines for going on Space Mountain or Mickey and Mini’s Runaway Railway.
I mean, they’re just things that you load balanced the park better and so when we can get all of those back on and they should be all coming back on this year. But they’re all not back yet. I think with the trending of COVID, we’re definitely going to see some of those face-to-face interactions come back.
If you’d like to read her entire question and answer session, you can find the transcript here. I’m assuming that whoever transcribed it was responsible for spelling Minnie incorrectly in the quote above. If you’d rather listen to the session, the Walt Disney Company has posted it here, but you need to sign in at Morgan Stanley in order to listen to it.
When I hear what “soon” is, I will let you know. Covid numbers are low in Florida right now, so here’s hoping that “soon” is “soon”er than we might expect!