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Wow, the KennythePirate blog has gone from non-existant to virtual obscurity to know by dozens of people in 19 months!  Nothing better than having dozens of friends, it’s almost as great as having dozens of donuts, but less fatty.  Seriously, I’m still blown away that the blog has taken off as much as it has.  I’m just a guy with usually bad photos, terrible prose and opinions.  I have lots of opinions though.  I’ve seen about 1.5 million page views just in 2013.  Some people told me it was a dumb idea to start a blog that mostly focuses on character information.   I was told people just don’t care that much about character meets.  Guess they were wrong, huh?  Turns out that my family isn’t the only one that loves to meet and interact with characters.

Here’s a few things we’ve learned on the blog in just over a year and a half.

1.  Animal Kingdom hates characters – We’ve seen Terk, Flik, Daisy, Miss Bunny, Thumper, Lilo & Stitch, Meeko, Timon, Jiminy Cricket and Eeyore all stop meeting regularly in the Animal Kingdom and only received Dug, Russell and Air conditioned FP+ Mickey/Minnie in return.

2. KtP created Touring Plans!  At least 7 people have used them too, maybe 8.

3.  Limited Time Magic is mostly character meets and dance parties (Walt Disney World LOVES Dance Parties!)

4.  Mickey can’t stand the heat.  He’s now indoors in all 4 parks.  He built himself a cool new pad in 3 of the parks already and there’s talk of him and Minnie reuniting in Hollywood Studios or at least being near one another.  For now, Minnie is still sweating it out in Hollywood Studios.  Mickey’s new meet in Epcot is really easy to get into.  It has short lines most of the time because they kicked out the real stars in Goofy and Donald

5.  Characters appear at resorts for holidays.  I even drove to EVERY Deluxe resort to get their schedules and then again to meet them the week before Christmas.

6.  Character Palooza is really difficult to keep track of.  It’s in Animation, no Echo Lake, no Streets of America.  Wait it’s on Echo and Streets?  For summer it’s on Streets of America!

7.  There’s no more Pooh in Hollywood Studios.  That could be a good thing, but we’re talking Winnie and the gang.  Piglet now only serves meals at the Crystal Palace with Eeyore.  No wonder Eeyore is so sad, he doesn’t even get the tips!

8.  Epcot is for Princesses.  Epcot moved Marie to the Magic Kingdom, sent Beast into Dinner entertainment exile in the Magic Kingdom, got rid of Donald with no pants, kicked Goofy out into the heat and told Stitch to hit the road.

9.  If you have enough money, you can any character meet you want.

10.  Fastpass+ might become a convenient way to meet a few characters, but it usually results in fewer total characters in the park.  Almost every time we’ve heard that a character would have some of Fastpass, it meant other characters were about to get the axe.  Capacity and total guest count can, at times, overtake guest experience.

11.  The Magic Kingdom is getting a new daytime parade next Spring!  But they also cut SpectroMagic up into small pieces and fed them to WallE.  We’re stuck with a parade from 1862 at night for the forseeable future.

12.  EuroRob has a lot of great Disneyland Paris character photos and Rich has a lot of great Disneyland character photos!

13.  KtP went to Universal and Busch Gardens to visit characters and you’re stuck looking at his family photos.  I also learned that Minions make great dancers!   I even added some rough character schedules, show schedules and park hours.  I even picked up a cheap annual pass while I was there.

14.  Fairies are really fickle.  They come and go almost as fast as a gallon of milk in my family’s refrigerator.  It’s Terance!  No, it’s Periwinkle.  Wait it’s Rosetta, um Vidia, no Terance.  Uggh.

15.  It now costs $100 to visit the Magic Kingdom for one day.  And that’s per person!  I think the annual passes cost like $149,000, or something like that.  I can’t bear looking at the bill on renewal day each year.

16.  I learned that there were different Ewoks meeting with Chewbacca and figured out the names of the Cantina Band with some help.

17.  That we can get Lady and the Tramp’s autograph at Tony’s Town Square Restaurant

18.  New Disney characters that I met include:  Big Bad Wolf and 3 Pigs, Clara Cluck, Clarice, DJ from Cars, Dr. Facilier, Friar Tuck,  Gideon, Greeo, Haunted Mansion Grave Diggers, Jack Skellington and Sally, Ludwig Von Drake, Marion Ravenwood, Max Goof, Periwinkle, R2-MK, Red the Fire Engine, Robin Hood, Silvermist, Vanellope,  Wendell and Wreck-it Ralph.  I met a bunch of new Universal, Snoopy and Seasame Street characters too, but haven’t posted the photos yet.

What characters have you met since visiting KennythePirate.com for the first time???  Has the blog and app been a help to you?

KennythePirate (and his hard working brother) built an app, then built it all over again in less than a year too :-)