Advice needed, daughter scared of characters?!

[jacknsally19]

we have loads of character meals planned and just happens upon a man dressed up as a teddy bear (so in the vein of Mickey, Donald etc)and she was absolutely past herself, hysterical scared. I have no idea what to do now about our holiday plans?!

My daughter is totally fine with characters that she knows well - Mickey, Donald, Minnie - but unrecognizable characters freak her out. So you might find that you are ok. That being said, I would definitely recommend decreasing the number of character meals - perhaps no more than 2. Honestly, those kind of meals are pretty stressful!

 

[Crystal824]

It may help if she knows the character versus some bear she doesn't know.

FWIW, my 6yo daughter froze up in the presence of the princess, but insisted we meet them all. She thought they were really Merida, Ariel, and Cinderella, etc. so despite needing to meet them an get their autographs she couldn't talk and looked really upset in all of the pictures. She was upset we didn't get a chance to meet Mulan because of her limited hours even though I know had we met Mulan it would have been the silent treatment. With the head characters she was fine, because she realized they weren't real. My 3yo thought they were all real and loved them all.

This was true for our oldest daughter too. It really depends on the character and costume. At the age of 2, she was terrified of the Easter bunny. We got to Disney a few weeks later thinking she is going to be scared. She loved all the characters at Disney because he knew them from Disney Jr. and/or movies.

 

[Alfiegeorgina]

Thank you all. We have reduced to 2 or 3 character meals (1 of which is CRT so human characters) and changed the entire holiday by reducing to dining plan (from deluxe), less planning, more QS and have upgraded parents into our hotel (GF) from POR so that we aren't using character meals as a meeting point in the evenings. 2 or 3 spread over out 10 days in Disney should be much more manageable for her, and if she is really distressed someone will take her outside. Thank you so much for all of the advice.