Limited Time Magic: Long Lost Friends ("Character Fan Days 2.0!")

Welcome to those of you joining me from Disney Babies Blog and those of you just hopping aboard. I am the Final stop on our Magical Blogorail.

---

As many Park fans know (both on the East AND West coasts) Disney has for some time been running their annual programs; this year's has been aptly dubbed (to the chagrin of many, though) "Limited Time Magic". Over the course of the last few months, they've had (for limited amounts of times) different special occasions occurring all over The Parks, including bringing the Golden Horseshoe Revue back to the Golden Horseshoe in Frontierland, Mardi Gras in New Orleans Square, and the world famous Dapper Dans singing tunes from boy bands (no comment on that one).

A couple of years ago, Disneyland ran a similar program called "Family Fun Days" on consecutive weekends, and the star of that particular promotion was by far one weekend dubbed "Character Fan Days". In this particular instance, readers of the Disney Parks Blog were invited to vote on several sets of Disney characters who hadn't been seen in The Parks in quite some time, and the winners were brought out over the course of the weekend for a very special meet and greet in the Festival Arena behind Big Thunder Ranch BBQ.  This was back in January of 2011, and since then I've been telling anyone who would listen that Disneyland needed to bring this ultra-popular weekend back, and soon!  Imagine my surprise when I suddenly found out last weekend that they were doing it again this year, only allowing it to last for an entire week, and calling it "Long Lost Friends".  I could not have been happier!  There were ten different groups of characters in rotation this year, and I managed to meet all but one group; unfortunately, I missed the group from "Pocahontas" which was the one I really wanted to see by a lousy three people, but in the end my three hour trek through line after line was more than worth it, and I had a really wonderful time meeting characters I had never seen out and about before, and I thought I would share that with the readers today.

Hopefully my happiness is evident in all of the pictures here.  All good things have to come to an end, and we've already moved on to another "Limited Time Magic", this one with Tinkerbell and her fairy friends (although Vidia and I certainly need to meet and have a chat!).  I hope that Disneyland will continue to do weekends like this and allow the hardcore among us to continue to meet these special characters we so rarely get a chance to see.  Judging by the number of people who were there on Sunday afternoon, I can only assume the week was a huge success, and I certainly hope that Disneyland was watching.  As Park hounds, we were truly grateful for this awesome opportunity set before us.

---

Thank you for joining Magical Blogorail Blue this month. We will be back Friday, May 10th with an all new theme. Keep checking in with our blogs in between loops to keep up to date with our Disney info, photos and stories. If you are looking for more Disney magic, you can make your way over to The Magical Blogorail website to see all our members and their blogs, as well as all our previous loops.

Here is the map of our Magical Blogorail should you happen to have to make a stop along the way and want to reboard:
1st Stop ~ Pursuing the Magic
2nd Stop ~ The CanaDisney Blog
3rd Stop ~ Disney Babies Blog
Final Stop ~ Days in the Park

Vinylmation Domination: Prince John

Imagine waking up to THIS at night! That's why it's in our closet now.

There's a reason why Villains, and Villainesses, form such a huge part of the Disney canon of animated features.  Everyone loves a good "bad guy".  It's the reason why characters such as Darth Vader, and the list could just go on and on, prove so wildly popular with the masses.  Maybe it's because we know before the movies have even started that good will win out, the bad guys will go down, and because the whole world loves an underdog.  And who's more of an underdog than a villain, really?

It made our choice for our Vinyl of the Week a cinch to pick.  We went with one of our favorite Disney Villains of all time this go around, Prince John from the 1973 Disney Animated Classic, "Robin Hood".

We think Prince John's problem might just be a raging case of Pink (and green) Eye

We knew as soon as they announced that there would be a Villains Series of Vinylmation, that we just had to have them.  Everyone loves the Disney Villains, so rather than buying them all individually at a Disney Store (they weren't available in The Parks when they first came out), we (Amy and Chad) decided to buy an entire case and take the guesswork out of it all.

There were 11 different Villains (and "nesses") included in the set along with the standard Chaser, but Prince John quickly became one of our favorites based on principle (and our love of the movie) alone.  We absolutely loved the crazed look in his eye, and it doesn't hurt either that this dude has everything in the world going for him; well, at least for a while.  Roaming the countryside in a wagon full of riches, a snake named "Hiss" at his beck and call, ruling jolly old England (albeit ineligibly) with an entire fist.  What's not to love?!  And let's be honest here, we think it's all just a psychological misunderstanding.  How else do you explain the constant sucking of his thumb and his yelling out, "Mommy!", every other second?  It's obvious to us that Richard received all of the love and care in the family, leaving poor little Johnny out in the cold.  It's only natural for him to have longed to seize power by any means necessary.  And he would've gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for that fox and his meddling band of merry men.

So there you have it, our pick for Vinyl of the Week.  We'll be back next with with another one of our favorites.  Hope you'll be back to see who we feature!

Oo De Lally!