Is it a mistake not to do the autograph books?

[arcticdisneylovers]

We leave tomorrow and my DD5 is really looking forward to getting her first autograph book We have a character meal booked everyday so we won't be in the park line hogging character time

 

[6disnuts]

We have done the autograph books several times. We have also bought caps at the World of Disney store and had them autographed, the kids seemed to like those better. The characters interacted with the kids because they could see who had signed their hat, e.g. Captain Hook and Peter Pan always made comments. We just gave each kid a sharpie and they were ready to roll. The kids got attention when they would wear their hats at home. The characters will sign any Disney Merchandise.

 

[Goofy_Dad_24]

My son was 2.5 our last trip, and meeting the characters and getting autographs was BY FAR the highlight for him. We got the autographs on one side of the page only, and then on the facing side we glued a picture of him with the character in there. This trip was Jan 09, and he still looks through the book at least once a week.

 

[dmank]

Well, the first night there right before dinner at 1900PF I bought the kids autograph books. The kids got into it. After the first two meet and greets I was sure to have the books open to a blank page to get it over with very quickly!!

DD4 has a book with a photo on one side/autograph on the other so we can add the pix. Cute idea, but space for less autographs. Anyway, it was pretty fun and lines moved fast. The kids like the pix with the characters so I think it was worth getting the books.

 

[ginnymack]

I am another fan of index cards. We put them in a 4 x 6 photo book along side of their picture with the character. My girls love it and look at it frequently. (And my youngest knows exactly who's siggy it is thanks to the pic!)

 

[lindsey]

I think some of it depends on the child. My oldest never cared about meeting the characters or autographs, but my younger enjoyed it. We are going with the grandchildren in September, and I think I'm going to try the index card idea.

 

[mamaLori05]

I make scrapbooks for the kids out of their autograph books. We get the books in the park, but when we get home I tear out each autograph and place it by a picture of them with the character. They LOVE looking at them, and so do I. We've always had good luck with character interaction, and that is when I make sure to take the pics. Not of them getting the signature, but of them interacting with the kids. Such cute pics. One of my fav pics is when Pluto was trying to steal my dd's cupcake (when she was 3). The look on her face is priceless! She is giving him quite a look, like don't you DARE touch my cupcake. And then there is the picture of the "I can't believe I am actually meeting Belle" look. They are priceless!!!

 

[cissy]

I did custom autograph pages for the characters and my two DD's had a blast getting them signed. They also got a ton of attention from the characters who LOVED the one of a kind pages. But we saw characters that spent extra time with lots of kids for different reasons. I never felt slighted when a character spent time extra time with any child. Kids who wore costumes always got extra time. Kids that were in wheelchairs got extra time. Kids that were twins got extra time. Crying kids often got lots and lots of time. So what? I saw parents taking WAY more time to figure out how to use their cameras than it takes to sign a page. Just relax, the characters know the drill and can sign a book in about three seconds. Just be courteous and have the page and pen ready for signing.

I also agree with the OP who went to character meals to get autographs. We did that as well. More time to enjoy the parks!! That said, we would not do it again unless the kids asked because once was enough for us.

As for trading pins, I got some amazing deals on Ebay. I just bought a grab bag of them and the kids were thrilled. They loved the trading and could have cared less about which pins they gave away, so I was glad I did not spend a lot of money.

Finally, I made the passport books from the Dis Board and that was the one thing I could have skipped. My girls still love their autograph books and pins but could care less about the passport. I, however, loved having it for the scrapbook.

Have fun, whatever you decide!

 

[Riviera510]

I wasn't planning on having my kids do the autographing or the Pins. I think I would probably be the one going up to the characters to do these things for them since they would be too shy to. I also didn't want 1 more(actually 3) thing to have to lug around Disney.

However after reading this thread I think I will buy a tshirt or ballcap for them to have signed by their *favorite* character if they want to.

Thanks for that idea!

 

[clanmcculloch]

We skipped the autograph books on one of our trips because I thought they were just one more thing that sits around collecting dust in the house. The kids still wanted to go up to every character that didn't have a long line and we still did character meals. I realized though the my kids didn't know what to say to the characters. With the books, at least they could start off by handing over the book.

This past trip I used shutterfly to make books using pictures of my girls with the characters from past trips. It became a bit of a game to see which pages we could get signed. I made sure to add some extra blank pages at the end for characters we hadn't met which was a good thing since we did meet some new ones, and they liked using those pages for characters we met twice during the trip. This book made for some fun interactions with the characters. I always made sure the girls had their books open to the correct page while we were waiting. This allowed the characters to see that the girls had already met this character previously so they could say something like "it's so great to see you again" making it just a bit more magical because the character "remembered" them. Yes my girls are old enough to know that these are actors and actresses, but they love to get into the magic just as much as little kids. Some characters also enjoyed looking through the books a bit. Sorry that we took more than our 30 seconds that some seem to think we should have been allotted.

I just don't get pin trading. We tried it once by buying a huge lot on ebay. It occupied maybe 15 minutes of our whole trip (a minute per trade) and then they didn't want to trade the pins they traded for. They didn't have any idea of what they wanted so they just chose whatever was available on the first CM they encountered (they only traded 1 pin per CM, but they'd trade as soon as they'd see somebody regardless of what pins they had to offer).

To each their own. What works for one family won't necessarily work for the next. It's great that Disney offers so many different options. There's bound to be something for everybody. It is the most magical place on earth after all.

 

[i'mfluffy]

My DS has had an autograph book for years. He rearely used it up until last year. All of a sudden he was all about getting autographs.

 

[Mrs. Charming]

I think we're going to do a shirt for DD with fabric markers. She'll be 3.5 at that point, so I'm *hoping* just to do a quick "hey, can you sign this quick?" and not make a big production out of it. If not, no biggie. It'll get stuffed right back in the bag.
If the line is super long, we probably won't be in it anyway.

 

[paul_toria96]

I vote yes for the autograph books. We went 2 years ago when my kids were 5 and 3 and got the ones that you can put a picture in as well. My kids were just looking at them last night and love them!

I vote yes as well, my daughter got a very expensive one that you can put the photos in but ran out of space on the 2nd day so we went for a cheap option and just stuck the photos in ourselves. They can't wait to get more this year and the pin trading,

 

[monorailsilver]

I used an autograph book once in the 3 trips I took my kids.

The last time I just got a large matte for a picture & had the fab 5 sign it at Chef Mickey's. This way I didn't have to deal with a book & finding a the pen at each location.

Then my kids got hats so we had a few characters sign their hats & they still wear them.

 

[kwitt]

This will be our first Disney trip but I came up with something a little bit different for the autograph collecting. I'm making family t-shirts (one theme per day per park) and we will wear these while visiting the parks. I've also ordered OPAQUE iron-on transfer paper, created a design/space for character signatures on it, and will be taking a Sharpie marker (recommended by the manufacturer) for the characters to use to sign the transfer paper designs. The opaque paper does not require a mirror image of wording to be read properly. When we get back home, I'll iron on the autographed design to the back of the shirts for the kids. It will only have the characters from that park on it so we'll be able to remember who we met at which park.