Hello! During my trip last week, we went to the Bon Voyage breakfast at Trattoria al Forno. At the breakfast the Ariel that visited our table was not really in character. We have met Ariel a few times in the past (once in her grotto and twice at CRT) and she was always in character just like in the movie and a lot of fun. This time Ariel was not very pleasant and seemed to be annoyed because she had to sign several autograph books. We always try to have the pages ready for the characters at the end of the table, but this time a couple of the books were not on the right page. She was very annoyed because she had to turn the page and was like “can someone please help me” in a not so nice voice. My niece went running over to help her trying to please her. When Prince Eric came over she even said something snarky to him about all the autographs he had to sign but he didn’t seem phased. All of the other characters were great. This experience got me curious, has anyone else out there had a character experience that was less than magical?
Yes. When we were at Akershus in October 2017, our experience with Snow White wasn’t very pleasant. I like to have the autograph books opened to the right place, as well. Since we didn’t know which character would be next, I had them all marked so I could quickly get to the right character. When she walked up, I started to turn the page and she almost jerked it away from me and let me know she could do it herself. She seemed very hasty with our table and the part she tried to act nice seemed very fake. All of the others were wonderful, so I’m sure that made her less than spectacular experience even more noticeable.
Overall we’ve had excellent character meets across the board. We particularly have found Ariel, Tiana, and Rapinzel to be outstanding no matter where we meet them! That said, Elsa was less than magical for us in 2016 and it stuck with us. (She was decidedly cold… see what I did there?). And Pocahontas was totally bland when we met her. I did suggest maybe it was us who hadn’t warmed up yet. She was our first character on that trip.
We found Elsa to be blah as well. She was very business-like: I’ll sign your book, you stand here, smile at camera, good-bye. Then we went on to Anna–completely different. So fun.
Maybe it’s intentional?
I can’t recall where, but I’m sure a very quick search on the web will find you huge lists of CM accounts of horrific character “abuse” by guests, and it sounds like it’s pretty frequent. Who knows if someone before any of us in line for a meet&greet got pretty “handsy” or turned into a jerk in some other way.
I met Anna and Elsa and thought the same about Elsa. My thought was this is how Elsa is supposed to act? Anna is fun and friendly but Elsa is really not a people person.
True. She is the Ice Queen after all. I just figure if you are going to have a M&G that involves a line, there should be some interaction (within character of course) or something.
That would be my thought. “Conceal, don’t feel.” She should come across as “icy”, but literally and figuratively.
We’ve had the same experience with Elsa, every time. I always assumed it was intentional. Anna has always been really bubbly and sort of scatty, just like in the movie. 