Help...Child is scared of Characters!!!

[asramears]

Hi. I am new to the list...and loving all the great tips!!! We are planning a trip in July and I have a problem. My 6 year old son is terrified of "the puppets" (characters). If we are at a fair etc. and a puppet is around he will RUN as far away as possible. I don't know how to handle DW with him. Does anyone have any ideas? Going

 

[lost*in*cyberspace]

I don't think this will be a big problem, especially if you are going in July. The parks will be so jam packed that any Disney character wandering around will be completely surrounded by people. Your son probably won't even notice. You should easily be able to avoid any chance encounters.

 

[melk]

I agree, you don't have to be near the characters if you don't want to be, you have to stand in line (usually) to meet them. If you're planning a character meal, that's a different story. They roam the tables and are hard to avoid. When my dd was younger she didn't care for them either. We ended up taking her to meals with "face" characters (Cinderella, Snow White, etc.) They speak and are far less intimidating.

 

[disneymom3]

We have done character meals with our DS who has had a history of not liking the characters. What you do is seat the child in the middle of the table so they characters are not waking close to them. We also tell the hosts checking in that we have one who does not want to talk to the characters and they let them know. Especially good at this are the CMs at Crystal Palace. Piglet shyly waved to DS who hid his face and then Piglet hid his face back and scurried away. It was very cute! CHef Mickeys also works well with this arrangement as we have DS sit in the middle of the table sort of where the other table next to you is close on that side.

When you have two who really want to do the character meals and one who will only talk to Mickey, you have to get creative.

Other than that, we just don't wait in the character greeting lines with big sis and it's fine. (The younger DS will only talk to characters at meals--go figure!)

 

[tictoc]

Stick to the face characters--the ones whose faces show--and he will be fine. After a couple of days of fun he may warm up. Disney characters are very familiar to kids and sometimes not as scary. My dd would run from Chuck E Cheese, but not Mickey at 2 and 3.

 

[christinadei]

I just wouldn't book any character meals and he should be fine!

 

[belle&beast]

We were really worried about this, too, before our trip in January. Both DD4 and DS2 were afraid of Chuck E. Cheese and Santa Claus, so we thought we were going to have a lot of tears at WDW. And to our surprise they were both really into the characters and not afraid at all! We had an autograph book for DD, so she was more interested in finding the right page and checking out signatures, but it was a real icebreaker for her to hand them the book. We arrived on a Saturday evening and headed to see Spectromagic and they saw all the characters in the parade. The next day we went to Epcot and saw the characters in the Character Connection. DS ran to Mickey and gave him a hug and that was the end of their fears. Just be ready for anything and have a great trip!

 

[scammermom]

My then 4 & 6 year old were afraid of the characters. I booked the Crystal Palace lunch with the Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, etc characters because it's a good meal and they could stay at the table and not be right next to them if they didn't want to. The characters came around several times peering and trying to interact with them. Towards the end of the meal, my kids warmed up to them and had their pictures with them. I knew they weren't threatening characters. It actually helped them become less afraid.

They're still not very fond of characters but really enjoyed this experience.

 

[susykt4]

Your son may surprise you! My son is very shy and also hated Chuck E Cheese, Santa, any other costumed character. DH and I agreed before our first family trip that we'd take turns keeping DS away from the chars while DD (who was very much looking forward to meeting princesses) met them. Our first chars were the princess line in ToonTown. DS stayed FAR away from them. After, we noticed the Pooh line was short so we went in and were SHOCKED when DS ran and hugged Pooh. He absolutely loved all the costumed and face characters after that. Gigantic Goofy ended up being his favorite!

I agree with the other posters that characters should be easy enough to avoid. However, the park opening ceremonies all have lots of characters, but they are far away and don't actually interact with anyone so maybe they will be ok?

 

[TONNIE]

This reminds me of our first trip to disney we paid all that money and my kids then 6 and 5 spent the whole first 3 days running from the disney characters. We had ressies for crystal palace and they were scared of pooh(who is scared of pooh)

This went on and on but the characters when they see that the child is scared wave and walk away. Finally we went to see Ariel and she talked and hugged my daughter and signed her book, then after that it was heaven no more problems.

 

[nin8jc]

Well my DD4 has been several times and is still afraid of the characters we found her under the table several times. We too put her between us and reassure her that she is safe and on occasion told her to just put her napkin over her head. We never pushed the characters on her she just knows there's a stranger in there. She is fine with them as long as they don't try to touch her, wave away. I only hope she will out grow this soon. Good luck.

 

[cpbjgc]

You already have some great suggestions here, I just wanted to tell you our story.

Our DD3 is much the same, will not go near "characters" or costumed mascots at public events and would not approach within 10 feet of Santa Claus (Pictures with Santa are her being held by DW or myself and reaching to collect a candycane from an understanding Santa at arms length).

When we went to DW in January we didn't know what to expect, but decided to try the breakfast at Chef Mickeys on our first day, as we would at least know how she would do in the parks. While waiting in the lobby to be seated, out came Goofy who is about 3 times as tall as DD. How do I know? Because DD is yelling at Goofy "Hey, its Goofy! Hey Goofy! Come here! I want to see you!".

She and DS lined up with their autograph books and that's the first autograph of many that she got. She had a real blast at the breakfast and we have lots of great photos with both kids and the characters. After that she wanted to see all the characters we ran across with the exception of Rafiki .

Whatever you decide to do (you know your son best), have a great trip in July!

 

[alloyd1170]

We went through that when my son was about 2. He wouldnt go near Santa, the Easter Bunny, etc. In prep for our WDW trip, I got him the Sing Along videos with the live characters (not cartoons), and the planning dvd. We watched them and he got excited about WDW. Once at the parks, he was nervous about the characters, but we went up to meet them with him and he did fine. We saved the character dining for the last day and by then he was ok with the characters that he had seen in the videos, and in the parks. If it was a new character, then he was scared.

alison