More autograph book/passport advice!

[TonyS20]

I know many of you have posted that you made your own autograph and passport books. My DH has invited his DB, his DB's GF and their DD6 (our DNiece!) to come along with us for our upcoming trip. I thought it would be neat to create her an autograph and passport book for her.

Has anyone created an "all-in-one" book that incorporates these 2 ideas? I know you can download pictures of the characters, but how do you know who you will meet? Which charcters do you typically include and why (ie you know they will be at a character meal, you know they are usually in a particular park, etc)?

My DH and I don't have kids and don't stop to see the characters or plan our days around finding them, so this is all new to me.

How many blank pages do you leave in the autograph book? What do you do for pages where you put character clip art and didn't find them? Do you write about your adventure trying to find them or do you tear those pages out?

What about for the passport book - what sort of space do you leave on the page? I'm not sure what they do at the various stations for the kids, so I don't know how much area I would need to save. Anything interesting you include on the page like clip art? Do you add pictures to this book when you are finished as well?

As you can see, I'm at a loss! Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[janette]

I don't think you'd need anything for the passports. Just go to the kidcot stations. They had a mask that you could pick up at the first one you went to and build on it for the others. The kids like this the best.

We tried passports our first trip when my DDs were 9&6. It took too long to try to do the stickers and get autographs. We stopped trying pretty quickly. They did love the kidcot stations though.

If you are doing stickers for the autograph book I'd just leave them blank and maybe keep the stickers separate. Use a every other page so they can sign on one page and the kids can put the pictures on the other and decorate with stickers. The only disadvantage to having autograph books with characters on them is that it takes a few minutes to get ready and you might not see all the characters. A simple book would be a nice keepsake for her.

 

[JulianneP]

Just got back on Thursday and used a 7x7 CM album already decorated. I had so many complaiments from other tourists and characters! Characters went crazy and spent extra time signing their names and adding little extras to the pages. Little Mermaid said it is so nice to see a different book that she gets so tired of signing the same old thing. I was hoping to add pictures to the pages as well but since the characters added so much and we were able to get so many there really is no room. So I may add a few pages or just really crop or scan some smaller. Either way it is a very special book and with all the extra attention we got because of it it has become my kids favorite souviner.

My kids really liked making the kidcot masks at Epcot but they are young and we really ran out of time to get all of it done. Plus finding characters, doing pressed pennies, seeing all there is to see everything gets very overwhelming. I felt like I was rushing through just to get stamps. I did notice that some people were having the kidcot folks sign and stamp there autograph books instead of a passport or mask. Maybe if you made a book you could add a page for that.

I used the CM snap pack stickers for our autograph book. But i should have added a page of animals for the Lion King Characters in AK. I also did a tinkerbelle, peter pan page and you can not get theirs. I did two pages just with Mikey heads for extra characters (ex. country bears, alladin, Stanely) because CM did not have stickers for them.

Gosh I'm so tired does this help you at all???

 

[TonyS20]

You guys have offered some great ideas!

janette - I don't know if my DN would be interested in the masks. I haven't seen them, but I don't think she's into those. I thought incorporating them with the autograph books might be an interesting idea.

I think we will spend most of our afternoon in Epcot going to the kidcot stations. I don't think she will be disappointed if we don't get it signed in all of the countries, so I'm not worried about making sure it gets signed in all the countries.

Julianne - You offered a lot of advice! I have the CM pack that you were talking about, so I will use that as a starting point. I am hoping she will get extra attention from the characters by having a "custom" book. Plus, I enjoy working on those things! I will have to start a list of characters and see what I can come up.

 

[eeyoreforever]

My dd's always use the back of their autograph books when we are in Epcot. They don't make the masks either, but they have the CM in each country write something in their autograph book and then translate it for us. I always write in English what they wrote in their language. I am working on my scrapbook now and plan on scanning these and putting them next to the pictures of each country. By the way, when I say always-that means both times we went to Disney!

 

[Memaw2Wm]

Originally posted by Julianne Pasco
I was hoping to add pictures to the pages as well but since the characters added so much and we were able to get so many there really is no room. So I may add a few pages or just really crop or scan some smaller.

When we went in August I used a CM 5x7 book ... I had the characters sign the front and back of each page. Now I'm going to add pages in between the signature pages for the character photos.

My only problem is that the kids collected 51 signatures, so I'm going to have to move half the signatures to another book as the books are already overstuffed looking w/o putting in another 25 pages, LOL!!!

 

[TonyS20]

You guys are great! I'm sure I'll be able to use some of the ideas you presented. I'm thinking my DN can pick out some of the paper that she likes and we will adhere it to a CM book. Then the characters can sign on the "colorful" pages. Plus, it will give my DN a "project" of her own. We can add some generic stickers to the book and then save a space for pictures or additional stickers.

I think we'll do a "Passport" style book in the back incorporating flags and stickers from the various countries. Then she won't have to do the mask, but can still have something to do in Epcot.

Thanks again for all of your help!

 

[Memaw2Wm]

CM has limited edition "Pizzaz" 7x7 refill pages ... they are a deep/bright blue with red jeeping (edges) ... perfect for a Disney album and you can get the 7x7 "Starzz" album ... blue bookcloth with red stars ... again perfect for a Disney album.

 

[vhoffman]

Making aan autograph book with a dedicated page for each character sounds like a nice idea, but I think it could lead to frustration. Our experience was that sometimes the characters just sign whatever page in the book, they don't go sequentially. My kids used a blank book, so that was no big deal. However, imagine the frustration if a character just signed whatever page and you had a special one just for him. It would ruin two pages, his and the other character's. Also, a dedicated page could lead to a lot of fumbling trying to find the right page per character while others are waiing. IMHO, keep it simple. Just buy the official autograph book, let them sign it, then when you get home get creative. You can put stickers on the pages and leave the book intact, or remove the pages and make them into a scrapbook. Just remember, all this sounds like a cute idea now, but when you're in a hot, crowded park vying with many others for autographs, the whole thing can get wearing. Also, do realize its one more thing to lug around. The official autograph book is small and lightweight. Do you really want to lug around some bulky arts & crafts project? And, believe me, everything gets heavier the longer you carry it.

 

[Jill0526]

We just returned from an eight day visit to WDW. I was tired of the autograph books that became useless as soon as we got home. We tried something new... I bought a bound notebook of 4 inch by 6 inch index cards. The cards have lines on one side and are blank on the back.

My daughter had the characters autograph the blank side of the card. I used the lined side to record the date and location of where we saw the character (particularly if it was at a character meal). The cards are perforated and are easily removed from the wire binding of the notebook.

I also took her picture with each of the characters and had the pictures developed in the same 4 by 6 inch size as the index cards. We are now creating our album with a picture of my daughter with the character above (or below) the character's autograph. The picture and card fit nicely in a photo album with two 4 by 6 inch slots on each page.

Just thought I'd share........

 

[KSgirl]

I didn't want to use one of the traditional Disney books that Disney sells....I wanted something unique and different. I bought one of those 7 x 10 spiral bound "scrapbooks" at Michael's. I chose one with a black cover and black pages, and then purchased a paint pen (slick writers work well too) in a couple of different colors that would show up well on black. I decorated the front cover with Disney stickers and fabric glitter paints, as well as the inside cover. The rest of the pages were blank. When we went to the parks, as other posters have said, the characters LOVED it and spent LOADS of time adding extra embellishments. I had the characters only sign one side of the double page (folding the book back onto itself, so that there was only one page showing). I then took photos of the kids with the characters to adhere to the page opposite the autograph. Because of the larger page size, I could get a couple of full sized photos or several cropped photos. Some of the BEST photos were taken when the character was just signing the autograph book, because then you had the signiture right next to it!

The CMs at the Kidcot stations will sign just about any book you give them. Usually, they will also add the "stamp" from the country and a little bit in thier native language. China also adds the stamp of the year the child was born in (ie: year of the rooster, year of the rat, etc.) which was kind of fun as well as spelling thier name in Chinese. Since I have four children, you can imagine this took just a bit more time, but it was a fun souvenir for the kids!

The kids each took their book (which we shared between the four of them) to their classrooms when we returned to share. I also had the kids keep journals each night of what we had done that day....a neat glimps into their perspective of the entire experience.