The Character Locator Challenge isn’t for wimps! You’ll walk and stand, walk and stand, walk and stand for an entire day. You must have park hopping privileges in some form and can either use your own transportation, public transportation or Disney transportation.
The goal is to meet as many characters in Disney Parks as possible in a single day by following the rules below.
Here are the rules:
- The characters must have appeared in an official Disney / Pixar / Marvel / Star Wars production. Characters such as Streetmosphere, Main Street Citizens, iCan, DiVine or Norway Vikings do not count.
- You may only count unique characters met. If you meet them in different costumes, it doesn’t add anything to your total.
- No line jumping or line holding allowed.
- You must appear in all photos together in the same clothing all day. No change of clothes allowed.
- At Walt Disney World you may use Fastpass, but it must be according to Disney rules with 3 advance Fastpass and extra ones obtained using only your ticket(s)
- At Walt Disney World you must share screenshot of all Fastpass used throughout the day. Screenshot must contain your names.
- You may include characters met at any character meal during the same day, but must include a photo of your receipt to prove you paid to eat there. This is to eliminate the chance that someone just ran in and took photos with the characters without paying.
- Use of Extra Magic Hours is okay
- Use of Halloween or Christmas parties is okay
- You must meet Mickey in at least one park.
- You must meet at least 1 character in each of the 4 Disney World parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom). At Disneyland Resort, you must meet at least one character in each park.
- Each meet photo must be shared on Twitter with #CharacterLocatorChallenge @thepiratekenny on each post. Example 1. Pluto #CharacterLocatorChallenge @thepiratekenny
- You may not use a private Twitter account
- Your attempt must be on a single operating day.
- Dance parties do not count.
- Photos must be taken by another person. “Selfies” do not count.
- Characters appearing in a “Dance Party” environment do not count.
Using Character Locator will make this challenge MUCH easier!
SIGN UP AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST!
Below I’ll list everyone who meets all of those qualifications here on the Pirate’s Wall of Fame. Are you ready to take on the challenge?
KtP’s Character Locator Challenge Wall of Fame
Walt Disney World
| Character Locators | Date | Characters |
| Debbie (14) & Kenny White | 10/15/17 | 72 |
| SoarinOverMagic | 10/16/19 | 62 |
| Debbie (8) & Kenny White | 4/28/12 | 60 |
| ColshopS | 11/22/13 | 56* |
| marvelousdisney | 8/18/18 | 54 |
| scottkumka | 2/24/18 | 48 |
| marlon_jose5 | 8/20/17 | 46 |
| DisneyDude_71 | 10/18/18 | 46 |
| The Roaming Home | 2/12/20 | 45 |
| HalsMommy | 7/28/17 | 44 |
| The Splash Guys | 7/7/17 | 43 |
| Nikki | 8/7/19 | 43 |
| eirecait1 | 2/15/18 | 39 |
| eirecait1 | 11/2/17 | 38 |
| VikkiMouse321 | 5/3/18 | 36 |
| Disney Daily Dime | 12/23/18 | 35 |
| CGDisFans | 5/6/19 | 35 |
| VikkiMouse321 | 2/9/18 | 32 |
*In the past I scored the count based on unique characters and characters in different costumes. Debbie and I met 68 characters with different costumes and 71 total meets. The Lamb family met 73 characters with different costumes!
Disneyland
| Character Locators | Date | Characters |
| Lisa Lytle, Tonya Sanders and Julie Livingston | 8/26/17 | 62 |
| Kenny White | 7/12/17 | 56 |
| Loraine La | 1/13/18 | 41 |
Universal Orlando Character Challenge
| Character Locators | Date | Characters |
| Kenny and Debbie White | 12/16/19 | 74 |
| Ryan and Heather Crosby | 4/7/16 | 53 |
Are you going to take on the challenge? Sign up by leaving your Twitter handle and the date of your attempt in the comments below and make sure you’re very familiar with the rules.
We are planning to do the Character challenge tomorrow 2/12/2020 but the form to sign up is broken. We participated 2yrs ago and are hoping to break our record of 39 this time!
I haven’t being at Disney yet. I’ll be for the first time in forever on August this year, and meeting characters is the thing that makes me more illusion to me. I’ll be 11 days at Disney parks, the idea is 2 days each park, 1 day Blizzard, 1 day Typoon, and 1 day for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and Springs… The idea was to meet the most characters a possible but without stress along those 11 days, but perhaps it’s better to try this challenge and have just one entire day at Hollywood Studios, and if I want more use the “water days”. At least I will have hopper plus… What do you think? What do you think would be a better first experience at Disney?
I am preparing to make an attempt. Just need clarification. Will country bears about when they do meets AFTER a dance party I.e during Xmas party I got them roaming before a parade l. They had done a short dance party before.
As long as someone else takes your photo it would count. But they do meet and greets through the day
Our family will attempt the Character Challenge on 1/27. Hoping to find as many as possible on a short day. The Gomez family, Twitter @anthonyg82
Have fun!
The Gomez family will be postponing our character challenge given the terrible weather forecast for Sunday 1/27.
I have a couple questions: do water parks count, do non-disney hotel character meals count, do marathons count, and should the genera rule of thumb be that it only counts if the meet is open to the general public.
No
No
No
Yes
Only theme parks
Hi Kenny, I have a question..I am considering trying the challange on a Tuesday when I attend early morning magic at MK. There are no characters that meet at early morning magic and that that will put me a great position to be first in line for some of the Fantasyland characters when the park opens to all guests at 9AM. Is that allowed under the character challange rules ? Also I will need to open a twitter account and I am not very tech savey, I plan to use photo pass, for the pictures, Is it a simply process to post the photos from MDE photo pass to a twitter account ? Can I do that at the end of the day ?
Emm is no problem. Not posting them live to Twitter is a problem. Use a cell phone.
Wow – so fun. Since i only get to go every 3-4 years, I probably can’t use one day just for chracters – but for me just seeing characters I have never seen before is a thrill. I managed 47 unique on my recent trip – plus 10 more meets that were in differnt cloths. I saw 11 others unique characters last time I was there & 4 other different ones before that so I am over 60 for my overal total :) That kind of makes me feel good LOL – since I haven’t ever done a speicial event – can you tell that my most recent trip I made major use of Character locator!
Me and my cousin are going in January 2017:) he has never been, but i have been 5 times!! I can’t wait to do this!
Cool! My daughter and I are doing a 6 day trip in November. We were thinking of hitting all four parks in one day just to say we did it and I think this character challenge is right up our alley.
On your character locator, some characters pop up only when you change from ‘name’ to ‘land.’ Also, do you have information on how meet and greets work for Early EMH? Do they just start earlier?
All characters are listed all the time, you are just changing the order. All schedules are on the app
I was getting screenshots of what was happening, and realized that I wasn’t signed in and my sub expired. Woops!
So do the dance parties count since the characters don’t sign?
No
Old thread, but I love the idea. I won’t meet all the requirements on our trip in June. We’re going to skip EPCOT this time around and no park hopping. That being said, from my previous 5 trips I have met 71 different characters (not including the different Mickey’s, Goofy’s, Donald’s, etc…) and I really only started character hunting on the last 2 trips. Our next trip is 4 full days. I’m going for 29 new characters (where I get my picture taken with them) to get to 100. Based on Fast Passes secured and character meals booked I will have 10 new characters, so its just a matter of coming across 19 others. With the character-poloza and dance parties this is very possible. We haven’t been in 5 years, so there are a lot more “new” regulars that weren’t around 5 years ago. I’ll let you know how I make out.
Sounds great. Look forward to hearing about your adventure!
this is such a brilliant idea, I hope you don’t mind that Im going to embark on this challenge this summer :) Ive een looking for a good character hunt for a while because I cant seem to organise my own, but hopefully, after taking some tips from your challenge I may be able to complete a challenge, although im not holding my breathe to get 60 different characters :P but i’ll try :)
Sure, feel free! Please let me know how it turns out. If you want to share your photos and experience afterward, I’d be happy to do that too.
On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 1:22 PM, Kennythepirate's Disney Character
Yeah, well i’m going to be on the college program working as a cast member at WDW Florida, so hopefully I’ll get a day off with my roommate so we can go do this together :)
Sounds like fun. Look forward to meeting you at WDW sometime to say hi.
On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 3:55 PM, Kennythepirate's Disney Character
Hey Kenny! love this idea. All in one day? I am going in Feb and I might have to take you up on this challenge. I am having issues posting a comment to your site, but I will be emailing you in the future for this one! I witnessed you running around for the Ultimate challenge, and I am pretty sure this is more along my pace, and I love it!
I see that some comments are needing moderation. I’ll check my settings. Feel free to email me!
Ah, issue is with facebook I’ve had some people trying to post spam and links to some not very nice sites that linked through Fb. So I set the word facebook to hold in moderation, but I approve them manually a short time later