frightened 2 year old

[shamrocks]

Good afternoon ya'll!

I was wondering if anyone had any experience or advise on how to ease a terrified 2 year old into the character meet and greets.

He recently "met" Chuck E Cheese and flipped out. He's
scared to death of the characters so I don't think he'll be jumping for joy when Mickey and friends surround him at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom. . We won't be going until July (first time for him) and I really want him to enjoy the whole Disney experience.

Are there things I should be doing before we leave or is it better to leave it alone until July and hope for the best?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Selket]

My son was 2.5 when we were there last (about 3 yrs ago) and he wasn't afraid of the characters...but from what I remember they aren't just literally all over the place - no matter what park you're in. The ones I remember were standing around and it was hard to even see who it was because of all the people around them waiting for an autograph. Of course there are places that you'll be SURE to meet characters - like the character meals - but you can easily avoid those. If your child is that afraid of characters I don't think I'd try a character meal. Or perhaps schedule one for the last part of your stay and cancel the ressie if your child continues to freak over the characters. My son really enjoyed the crystal palace lunch but I think I liked it more than he did! LOL! He wasn't afraid of them (Pooh and friends) however.

Perhaps your question is more "how can I get my kid to like the character" and I have no answer for that! I just think it is easy to avoid them if your child is afraid.

Enjoy!

Carol G.

 

[Barb D]

DON'T PUSH IT.

My 3yo was very frightened of the character at 23mo and at 3yo. The characters realize this, and keep their distance. By the end of each trip she was willing to go near them, but if we had pushed it at the beginning she would never have gotten over her fear. We would wave to them from a distance.

One thing that helped on our last trip was to schedule a meal at 1900 Park Faire the first day and Chef Mickey's the last day. Park Faire has Mary Poppins and Alice, along with some Pooh characters. She was able to get her feet wet by interacting directly with Mary and Alice, and seeing the Pooh friends from farther off. By the last day she was fine, so we were able to get some good pictures with the Mickey gang. I was so glad we hadn't tried doing Chef Mickey's first.

I know you want to get some good pictures with the characters. I feel your pain! Hopefully your child will warm up as the trip goes on. If not, maybe you can get a picture of you holding your child, with the characters in the background.

 

[shamrocks]

Thank you so much for your suggestions and advice.

We won't push him and see if he warms up to them on his own by the end of the trip. He will have his older 5 year old brother with him who he worships (we call the younger one mini-me since he has to do everything the older one does) so maybe when he sees how his older brother interacts he'll want to also.

I like the idea of a meal with face characters like 1900 Park Fair. That may be the way to go since his older brother wants a character meal.

If he doesn't want anything to do with them then as long as he's having fun and not afraid that's what's important.

Thanks again.

 

[beattyfamily]

My DD is the same way. She freaked out age 1. Then age 2 we booked a character meal and she was fine if they didn't come near her and they are good about that. She was also better with the Princesses than the other characters...

So we have NO pictures of her with characters those 2 years although we have a little footage of the dinner with Pooh where she actually shook pooh's hand!

Age 3 she was MUCH better but was still leary of a couple like the bears from Country Bear...we have lots of pictures of her with the characters!

What we did was buy the Disney Sing Alongs that have the characters in them. The Disneyland one and the Beach one are VERY good. Our DD's love them and you see characters and parts of the parks.

We also saw how she did with the Easter Bunny and Santa etc...to see how she might do at Disney.

Good luck!

 

[disneyfan551]

I've read that it helps to keep showing them the Disney vacation planning videos that they send out. My dd was 7 m's when she went to wdw for the 1st time and had no problems, even when the characters held her! But, we aren't taking any chances...we watch Disney videos every chance we get! And, she's used to seeing Mickey & Minnie all around our house anyway! Her mom's a diehard Disney fan, and even has a Mickey Mouse kitchen!

 

[lilsonicfan]

...not sure if your kid might be too young for rationalizing but we tried this with the 3yr old on our trip - her siblings were rushing up to the characters, she had loved them at DL two years ago but freaked out at seeing them at WDW (they were literally "all over the place" at Epcot's showcase plaza after getting off the double decker bus.) Anyway she didn't want to see any of them up close until her mom (the next day) told her that if she didn't go see them, she wouldn't be in any pictures and then people would think that only her siblings got to go on the trip. It had her convinced!

You could also try holding your kid and letting him decide how close he wants to get to the characters. I must say that even I am a little scared of the Country Bears. Ugh!

 

[Shells9]

My daughter (almost 6) is REALLY shy when it comes to these things. What I have done, and I think it has worked, was this: I surfed the internet and photo galleries for pics of kids with the characters. All of the kids in the pics looked happy and like they were having a good time. This way, she saw other kids enjoying it and making it look like fun. She has now agreed (at least for the time being!) to be photographed with whomever we come across.

Your little one might be a little too little to understand that, but it would be worth a try. I took DD to Barnes & Noble once when she was about 2 two meet Cat in the Hat. We waited in line forever and in the pics she is SCREAMING and I am visibly miserable!

Good luck, and enjoy your visit!

 

[cinmell]

Our daughter was 22 months old when we took her on her first trip to WDW. Before we left, she would watch the Disney vacation planning video and Disney Sing Along Videos with the real characters in them. The ones we watched were Campout at WDW, Disneyland Fun, Beach Party at WDW and Happy Haunting. She watched these videos all the time and became familiar with the characters. It gave her a chance to see what they were like and to see what some of Disney is like.

She LOVED the characters at the meet and greets and at the character meals. We are going back in May and I hope she loves them in May as much as she did in September. She still watches the sing a longs and loves to look at pictures of her with the characters and watch the video we took while on vacation. I also told her that the Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, etc. were going to be big maybe even bigger than mommy and daddy (I don't know if she understood) but I was trying to give her an idea in advance. Luckily it worked out for us. She also has toy figures of characters she likes so she was anxious to meet them.

 

[mommystieg]

To prepare our 2 y/o dd for our first visit to WDW last summer we bought several of the Disney sing-a-long videos. These are live action with Disney characters interacting with kids of all ages. Some of them are filmed in the parks so that also can help prepare your child for what they might encounter. The videos we have are:
Disneyland Fun
Campout at Walt Disney World
Beach Party at Walt Disney World
Flik's Musical Adventure at Animal Kingdom
There is also a sing-a-long of the characters at the circus. These and the vacation videos were all our dd would watch last year. I think they really helped--as I have posted here many times-by the end of our trip she was chasing Goofy with her autograph book and pen!!

 

[Gaiusrex]

My daughter will be almost 3 when we take her. I'm more worried about the crush of kids and insane parents around the characters. That seems more scary than a 5ft. mouse

 

[ToyStory Fan]

On our '01 trip we started out with a character breakfast (our DS was 2-1/2 at the time). He was terrified of Pluto for some reason (I guess I would be too of a 5ft tall walking dog). Anyway, CHip and Dale came over he sort of warmed up enough to take a very quick photo. Dale (great CM in that suit THANK YOU whoever you are), Dale took my DD's placemat and drew a picture of himself, and started to joke with him and made him laugh...next hing you know Chip and Minnie are back and my DS is thrilled to see them all. Pictures and smiles galore. We were at the Garden Grill above the Land in Epcot.

 

[NotUrsula]

Out in the parks they wait for kids to come to them. We have never had any problems whatsoever staying away from characters in the parks.

If you really feel that you MUST do a character meal with a child who is afraid of characters, may I suggest the Ice Cream Social for a start? That is MUCH less expensive if it turns out to be a bad experience. You will not be happy campers if you pay $60 for the privilege of spending 90 minutes trying to coax your child out from under a table.

DS will not go near characters. He knows that they are just people in costumes, but he still hates them. He's nearly 6, he's been to WDW 5 times, and DL once, so it isn't like he hasn't had the opportunity to change his mind, but he is not budging on this.
He enjoys watching them, but his optimal distance is about 30 feet; any closer than that, and he dives for cover.

However, he WILL do the ice-cream social, because he likes ice cream more than he fears characters. We have some very funny photos of DS threatening MM with a fork for coming too close to his ice cream. (Of course, DS doesn't think they are funny, he was deadly serious about stabbing that rodent if he came one step closer to the ice cream!)

The other thing I'd like to have you consider is that there is a BIG upside to having a child who dislikes characters. No big outlays for lots of character meals, and no wasting time standing in interminably long (not to mention blisteringly hot) autograph lines.
We just sail past all those people on our way to the rides.

 

[mickeyfanz]

We took our DS last year when he was just over 2 yrs old. We prepped him in every way - have all of the Sing-A-Long videos with characters, showed him the WDW vacation planning video, etc. He loved watching the videos but characters in person are a whole different deal to him.

He was very apprehensive when he saw the characters but what really helped was an autograph book that I had made for him. I used a spiral-bound small scrapbook (maybe 5"X8" in size) and pasted pictures of all of the characters in it. We got the characters to sign the book by their picture. It became kind of a game for him that when we'd see a character, he really didn't want to interact with them except to say "sign my book". He would watch them sign and was close enough we could take pictures. The characters enjoyed seeing the pictures of themselves and were great at sensing my son's discomfort. They never tried to get too close to him.

He did ease up a lot towards the end of the week but certainly wasn't running up to any of them for a hug or anything! He did talk to Chip and Dale one morning in MK and told them he was going to ride the racecars (Tommorrowland Speedway). Good luck!

 

[deb305]

We took our 4.5 yr DD and 1yr DS in January. The 1 year old's first intereaction with characters was GF's Cinderella dinner the first night. He freaked on Perla and Suzie (who were non-talking), but warmed up to the face (talking) characters. Next morning went to Cinderella's breakfast, and he really liked the face characters. They could sense his feelings, and were excellent on bringing him out of his shell. By mid-day he got used to the masked characters in park. My advise, if possible, try the face characters first.