4. Star Wars Characters

This one is important due to its timeliness. Four weekends each, Disney flexes its latest intellectual property muscle by releasing Star Wars characters out into the wild. While you can interact with Disney characters in Star Wars costumes in other ways, Star Wars Weekends represent the only time that you can interact with actual Star Wars characters. There are a lot of them, too. Star Wars Weekends are designed for superfans, so we’re not just talking about Darth Vader, Queen Amidala, and Luke Skywalker here. Jawa, Greedo, Aurra Sing, and even Asajj Ventress made appearances last year. A couple of those sound like made up names to me, but I assure you they’re not.

5. Jessie and Woody

Fittingly, these characters from the Toy Story franchise appear in Frontierland, where they are presumably the rootinest, tootinest cowboy and cowgirl in the land. If you want Woody to tell you to Reach for the Sky, you’ll need to hang out in the Splash Mountain/Pecos Bill area. I’d be remiss if I didn’t warn you about Jessie, though. This is the single creepiest character design at Walt Disney World. The soulless, neckless design is the stuff of nightmares. 

6. Beast

The Beast is almost impossible to find without the benefit of securing a reservation for Be Our Guest. As you know from a previous article, that’s no small feat on its own. So, if you want to meet Beauty’s beloved, you’ll have to gain the most difficult dinner reservation at Walt Disney World. Then, you’ll have to watch for him during the meal. Beast moves quickly through the dining hall.

7. Character Palooza

This one is the doozy. If you are unfamiliar with it, you are really missing out. Every night at Hollywood Studios, they host the Fantasmic gala. It features dozens of Disney’s most popular characters. What you may not know is that in the hours leading up to Fantasmic, the characters from the show engage in a meet and greet. You won’t find it on any schedule, though. Most people discover it either through blind luck or word of mouth. Since you’re lucky enough to read it here, you’ll have the edge on other park visitors. Simply head over to the Tower of Terror exit the same way you would if you were heading to Fantasmic.

The trick to finding Character Palooza is checking the number of showings of Fantasmic. If there is one, two meet and greets occur. The first should start at 4:30 PM EST near Echo Lake while the other occurs at 5:30 at Streets of America. If there are two shows for Fantasmic, a single meet and greet transpires at Streets of America at 6:00. Note that there can be up to three sets, each of which is composed of different characters. There are roughly 30 characters in play, so Character Palooza is the holy grail of Disney meet and greets.