They sell thick-barrelled pens in the gift shops, but ours ran out after just a few uses. I happened to have a sharpie in my backpack and one of the princesses said, "Ooh, that's better!" so we used it the rest of the trip.
We thought that too, but then we noticed some of the characters had sharpies themselves! On a recent trip, I tried to hand Daisy our "fat pen" and she showed me she had a blue sharpie.
In May, we used silver sharpie markers. I had made a homemade autograph book with black pages, and the signatures look awesome. Not a single character had a problem handling the sharpie, but I was also very careful about handing it to them.
There are also the sharpie click-it markers now.
Amy
P.S. The characters can get the pens on themselves as easily as the sharpies too. We've seen Lilo and Tweedle Dee with pen marks on their faces.
I bought a pack of Rose Art, thick barrelled, washable markers. Plan on using a different color for each park so I can remember which character was in which park....
I bought some colored sharpies on sale at Target, but when I was still at home I tested them and they bled through the page. So we bought one of the large disney pens and used that.
My daughter had an "Aussie" style hat signed by the characters this week and she had them use a blue sharpie. None of them seemed to have any problems holding the sharpie - she just made sure she opened it for them and handed it to them with the point facing her. BTW the hat turned out great! Several of the characters seemed to get a real kick out of it! Mickey signed right across the front band!
They sell thick-barrelled pens in the gift shops, but ours ran out after just a few uses. I happened to have a sharpie in my backpack and one of the princesses said, "Ooh, that's better!" so we used it the rest of the trip.
Ours ran out too, and the CM with the character told us to take it back and we'd get a new one. So I ran into the firehouse in MK(we were right outside) and told the CM my pen that I had bought the day before had run out and he took it and told me to pick a new one.
We used a fat sharpie last year. I opened it and handed it to the characters and it seem to work well. In fact some of the characters were glad to see we had it.
In May, we used silver sharpie markers. I had made a homemade autograph book with black pages, and the signatures look awesome. Not a single character had a problem handling the sharpie, but I was also very careful about handing it to them.
There are also the sharpie click-it markers now.
Amy
That's a great idea! I'll have to try that next time
We used a sharpie as well. To keep it from bleeding through, I bought a small sketch book from the art store. It was about 5 x 8 and spiral-bound with thick paper. When we got back, my sister put the picture of each character we had taken on the back of the page in front of it so that it was above that character's signature.
we used supersharpies as well, and the characters really showed us their appreciation - pointed at the marker and gave a thumbs up, one hugged me -Timon tried to steal it from us.
The click type Sharpie is very convenient for the costume characters and works great if you have smaller children because you don't have to mess around with a cap.
We used the pens that have 4 colors to it last year and they worked really well. They are fat enough for the characters to hold too. Sometimes the characters would choose a certain color (Peter Pan wanted green, Queen of hearts red, etc) and other times, my kids picked which they wanted.
I used a dozen different color Sharpie's on our last trip and didn't have a problem with the autograph's bleeding through the blue Disney autograph book. We did only have them write on the right side of the pages since I'd be using them for our scrapbook. I used a color that would blend well with the character's colors and it really came out perfect. I noticed that the characters had just as many regular pen stains on their hands as markers. On previous trips we only bought large Disney pens and out of 4, 3 ran out before our trip was over. 2 of them we bought at Downtown Disney and had to go back there to exchange them (we brought our receipt) because we couldn't find similar ones in any of the parks. We also had a few character's with their very own Sharpies and Alice said how much she loves them.
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