With ‘Cool Kid Summer,’ Disney World tries new approach to character meet & greets
Cool Kid Summer at Walt Disney World is the Florida resort’s testing ground for character meet & greets beyond the typical photo-and-autograph routine.
It’s a staple of the Disney theme park experience: wait in line, pose with a Disney character mascot for a formal family photo, and perhaps add the character’s signature to your autograph book. Disney makes a mini-business of the operation by staffing these meet & greet spots with professional photographers and selling the photos as digital downloads or prints, not to mention selling their own deluxe autograph books and Mickey pens.
Enter Cool Kid Summer, Walt Disney World’s summer 2025 marketing campaign that seeks to upend the character mascot establishment by swapping formality for spontaneity.
There’s more to Cool Kid Summer than just character interactions; custom maps for each theme park share the most kid-friendly experiences to look out for, and Disney offered some promotions for families traveling with young kids.
Photos by Matt Roseboom
By and large, though, Cool Kid Summer seems to be a testing ground for Disney World guests’ behavior when faced with character interactions more fluid and play-based than the typical photo-and-autograph routine.
Some of the Cool Kid Summer activity spaces are more or less a version of the character dance parties commonly implemented at seasonal after-hours Disney events. Big Top Bash at Magic Kingdom, for instance, features a DJ, stilt walkers, and Pluto dancing with guests.
Photo by Mariah Wild / Disney
Photos by Blake Taylor
Other activities are more inventive, such as “Get Animated!” in Animation Courtyard, which transforms a sleepy plaza at Disney’s Hollywood Studios into a vibrant area of characters roaming around, characters coloring at picnic tables, characters dancing, and characters posing for traditional photos (not to mention a streetmosphere juggler).
Photos by Mariah Wild / Disney
At Epcot, Goofy conducts kids in gymnasium-like games inside CommuniCore Hall. At Disney’s Animal Kingdom, a back room of Restaurantosaurus has been dubbed “Daisy’s Dig,” commanded over by Daisy Duck as a hub for arts and crafts.
Photo by Mariah Wild / Disney
Unadvertised at Magic Kingdom, characters roam Fantasyland during the park’s Early Entry period, the 30 minutes prior to the official park opening time exclusively for Disney resort guests. Jeff Jones on X saw Dale attempt to snack on some ice cream while Ashley Simpson on Facebook rode the carousel with Mickey. The same is true at Epcot, where MickeyTravels spotted Mickey and Minnie as well as Mirabel and Bruno from “Encanto” roaming World Celebration during Early Entry.
Additionally, MouseSteps.com captured video of Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and Daisy riding Dumbo the Flying Elephant with guests at Magic Kingdom prior to starting their all-day shifts inside the nearby Pete’s Silly Sideshow character greeting location.
While these kinds of “roaming free” character operations are commonplace at Disneyland in California, to the Florida mind it’s baffling to imagine Mickey Mouse roaming about a theme park as he pleases and not immediately getting mobbed.
This hypothesis is, I expect, at the heart of Disney’s Cool Kid Summer experiments: how will the Disney World visitor, trained to stand in a line and pose for a picture, respond to a more spontaneous method of entertainment? Does a longer, more individualized moment for fewer guests outweigh the larger volume of quicker interactions a systemized meet & greet location can manage?
Granted, mixing up the character norms does have some precedence. Around 2010, Disney World experimented with what it called “play & greets.” These involved characters interacting with guests in a group activity prior to a session of traditional photos-and-autographs. For example, Rapunzel and Flynn led guests in a group dance at the top of their set; Phineas and Ferb “made a movie” with guests’ help at the beginning of their shift. These were attempts at offering something different, but still involved a degree of structure, taking place at a designated time and location — and always accompanied by the traditional meet & greet format after the interactive portion was over.
Does your family meet characters during Disney trips? What kinds of character experiences do you prefer in the theme parks?
More Attractions Magazine stories:
Follow us:
Whether you’re ready for your next Disney Destinations vacation or your first, our trusted partner Mouse Fan Travel will handle the planning so you can focus on the memories. They offer free vacation-planning services and have nearly 20 years of experience creating memorable Disney vacations. Visit Mouse Fan Travel for a fee-free, no-obligation quote today.
