Pin Trading AND Autograph Books?

[tmonferdini]

Do your kids do pin trading AND autograph books? Which do they like best. We've never done either & I'm planning on getting the pins before we go, but not sure about the autograph books.

 

[pixiewings71]

My girls do both. Every trip they take their autograph books because they never know who they will see. And they also pin trade. Visit Walts Basement.com for some great deals on authentic pins, Darlene and Nena are great to work with!!!

We got/get our autographs books off site, the ones they are filling now are journal style books I got at Target in the dollar spot. They have Cinderella, Snow White and Belle on them and the girls love them. We do buy the bigger pens in Disney though, they are easier for the characters to hold.

 

[Momvic5]

Depending on the age of your children, I think that they will love doing both. My children are 11, 8, and 6, and they really enjoyed both pin trading and getting autographs. The autograph books are fairly cheap but the pins can get costly. I have to say that on our first trip, we did not pin trade so my children really enjoyed the autographs, but on our last trip in mid-December, we did pin trade. It was one of the highlights of our trip. My oldest two were always on a mission for certain pins while my youngest just looked for his favorite characters and rides. All of the cast members were extremely kind and patient. Now, we can't imagine going to WDW without pin trading. I would have to say that at this point my children would choose pin trading over autographs.

Have fun!!

 

[I'mNoPrince]

Dd went from autographs ( from 8 to about 11) then switched to Pressed Pennys and Pins.

 

[5/4Disney]

My girls love doing both. I must say however; we spend all this time picking out pins they like and then they feel attatched to them and don't want to trade any of them. If you are going to let your kidos trade pins, I would suggest buying one of the starter kids they sell at the parks with two of each pin. This allows them to trade 3 yet still have 3 of their own. This eventually dies off after a few days. However; the books they love the entire time and every time we see someone they are always asking for their book.

 

[Momvic5]

I thought I would mention that we purchased a set of 30 pins off of ebay for a great price and took those to WDW. That way, the pins had no meaning to the children and they were willing to trade away. My only advice is that you are very careful when purchasing pins from ebay. Some sellers are not always honest and the pins are not always authentic Disney pins. However, you can find some great pins at great prices.

 

[mickeylove2]

Both of my DDs, 6 & 4, did both. We bought a grab bag of 50 pins from a site called mousepinsonline and paid less than $2 a pin at the time, I got lanyards from disney shopping and each of my girls traded like maniacs, 50 between the 2 of them were definitely not enough! I also did the autograph cards at home, they were all cute and fancy but after the 1st set of autographs I went to a kiosk and spent $15 or so on books, they filled an entire book and 3/4 of a second. Both books hold a photo on each page. They had a blast meeting the characters and getting autographs and pics and pin trading!

 

[truedisneyfan]

We bought Disney's Junior Encyclopedia of Animated Characters and let the characters sign on their page. This way as they get older we can read about the character and they can see that they signed it. Some of them do not have a page. So they either signed the inside cover (2 pages in the front and 2 pages in the back) or on a page with their picture (Smee signed on Captain Hook's page near his picture). We might take out all of the pages and put them in a Disney theme book where they are in a protective sleeve and will not get messed up.

We also do the pin trading. DS likes it, but I think next year he will really get into it since he is only 3 right now.

 

[mandysbus]

We went the other summer not planning to do either and ended up doing both. I am now 27 and the last time I had been there was when I was maybe 10 or 12 so it had been quite a while and from my familys past experience, we did not see many characters the 2 times that we were origninally there.

Reading on here before our most recent trip, everyone was talking about buying autograph books and I had to laugh remembering my trips with none or very few characters, thinking that buying a book would be a total wase of money and that everyone on here must be nuts. And of course they did not have pin trading back then.

Well, we get there and there are characters galore (I think I was more excited to see them then DS (then 5). So of course I ran into the nearest gift shop and got an autograph book and had DS stand in line at everyone we saw. And I ended up getting DS the starter pirate pin set (had a heck of a time finding that since the pirate movie had just come out and they had just refurbished the ride) and he had fun looking for pirate/skeleton related pins.

And I'll mention that i can see where the special locking pin backs would come in handy. We were at universal and DS had wanted to wear his lanyard there and when we were at one of the shows (I think fear factor?), one of his black rubber pinbacks came off and the pin fell through the bleachers we were sitting on. Luckily after the show we found an employee that took pity on us and went on a pin search since the underside of the bleachers was all fenced in (and he found it).

 

[hygienejean]

We do all three! I get some pins from Ebay for them to trade. I get a new autograph book for them on each trip...they love the autographs! Now it's the pressed pennies. Now they are on the hunt for those darn machines. Arm yourself with lots of quarters and pennies to press. All are lots of fun!