If you're planning to renew, then any AP can register you as their guest.
Rare characters and special character events are a double edged sword. The lines grow and are cut off very quickly. I went to one after hours event where you basically had to choose 2 of the 4 because after 20 minutes the lines were capped for the night. At the Long Lost Friends events it reached the point where the same pool of people were coming every day so they could go through the lines over and over to get pictures with characters while they wore various outfits/disneybounding/costumes. And again, lines got cut off before guests who didn't want to dedicate hours to waiting could get in lines. I completely understand why it's not worth it to manage those lines when the majority of guests are satisfied with the current rotation of characters. They could change some of the characters meals, like switch out Chip & Dale from one. But I also understand why they have some overlap between parks and meals. If people didn't have an option to pay to see Mickey, Minnie or Goofy, they'd complain about how hard it is to meet them in the parks and vice versa if they weren't in the parks people would complain about having to pay for the meal.
