For the Visa Meet n' Greet - do they let you know in advance who the pics are with?
Last year in WDW, we happened upon the Meet n' Greet picture location and there was a fairly long line waiting for the free pictures. We were at that spot in the afternoon where we were just plain worn out, and thought if we knew who the picture was with, it might be worth it. But the CM wouldn't say who the pictures were with. Just curious. Thanks!
According to a CM I asked about this.......Part of the reason they won't say is because they change out quite often and if CM tells you that Mickey and Pluto are in there and you get there and Mickey has been replaced by Donald, you might be upset if you were in line only because she said Mickey.
According to our pictures for our November, December and May visits
Disneyland's Disney VISA Meet and Greet were Chip, Dale and Pluto. Sometimes it was just Pluto, Chip/Dale always appeared together, but seemed to take breaks more often.
A tip: At WDW you can't peek because it's inside a separate room, but you can ask people as they come out who they saw. At Disneyland you can actually peek, but you do have to technically break the rules.....the Meet and Greet takes place behind a building and you line up next to the building....but there is a walkway behind some planters to the right of the line.....if you scoot over there and walk quickly up to the end of that walkway you'll be far enough away from the building wall to peek and see who's there. But be quick before the CM figures out what you're doing and calls you back. Just saying. Perhaps a more honest way is to wait and ask the people leaving who they saw, because to leave you walk right past where people would be standing in line....assuming there was an actual line. Each time we went at DL there was often no one in line, or only two families at most. At WDW it was usually a much longer line.
Do keep in mind that even if you peek, or ask someone who they just saw, the characters can change out quickly. We got in our two family ahead of us line because we peeked and saw Chip and Dale were there, but sadly we watched them walk away before we got to go in.....so we went away for about 20 minutes, came back and they were back...and the line didn't exist, lol.
It's disappointing that the characters don't switch out day to day or even month to month, but we love Chip & Dale (my kids are twins too so the characters always make a big deal out of it) so we keep going. I've often thought they do that so that you don't go every day and they have to give you free prints, maybe they're hoping since it's the same characters you'll only do it once a trip or once in a lifetime, lol.
Now...one thing that has happened to us quite often at both WDW and DL...when you go to get your free print you are SUPPOSED to only be allowed to pick from the photos at the actual VISA meet and greet, but almost every time we've been allowed to get our free print of anything on our photopass card. So if you're not thrilled with the M&G photos, well, keep that in mind. I can only remember one CM who told us only M&G photos....we had done the "any photo" so many times that we were a bit surprised and choose to skip it....then we went back later and got a different CM and any photo we wanted, lol. At WDW we always get the Photopass CD so it's often not even worth waiting in their long lines for any print because for just a few pennies we can get a print made off our CD later....but in DL we don't get the CD every trip because there just aren't always enough Photographers around, so getting that "any print" is nice.
