Just got back from Disney on Monday ... I took 2 Creative Memories Razzy Red 5x7 albums and two black CM round tip pens. My intention was to get the characters to sign on each page (front and back), then come home and insert blank pages in between the signed pages.
Well, it didn't work out as well as I hope ... the kids marked themselves, the books AND the characters with the round tip pens (the ballpoint pens we used last year were much less messy! ) ... I'd open the books to the proper pages, but as another poster said the kids would close the book ... so the autographs got out of order ... my grandson even managed to get one autograph upside down ... of course that was the Queen of Hearts so she may have done it on purpose, LOL!!! Plus it was a pain pulling those bulky autograph books in and out of my bag and they took a bit of a beating.
Now before I decided to drag the 5x7 albums with me I bought several spiral bound 3x5 "sketch books" from Michael's ... the paper in these are white and pretty thick ... I planned on having the characters sign in these, then cut the page out, mat it and place it in the 5x7 albums and put the photos on the opposite side. My daughter ended up using one of the sketch pads to collect signatures.
This worked out really well and the small size was easily to store/handle ... not to mention that she'll be able to put Alice, the Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, etc. together in her photo/autograph album, while my grandkids have the autographs all scattered around ... somehow my granddaughter ended up with Chip'n Dale's signatures in the middle of the Cinderella characters signatures ... I'm still not sure how that happened as we were collecting Cindy's signatures at a dinner ... guess those mischevious chipmunks skipped some pages when they signed her book!
So when we go back next year, the grandkids will be using the sketch books.
I also planned on pre-decorating the album, but decided that it would be a pain to find the proper page, and what about the unexpected characters ... like the green army men? Also we got a BUNCH of Mickey's ... Space Mickey, AK Mickey, Chef Mickey ... not to mention getting Chip and Dale, and Pluto several times.
HTH, Cheryl