When the Disney World parks reopened nearly four years ago after the pandemic, they made a big change to how we met characters in the parks.
For a while, all four parks had different versions of character cavalcades, where pals like Mickey, the princesses, Pixar friends, and more would do a mini parade through the park and you could see them at a distance. These cavalcades ended as Disney World began to bring back traditional character meet and greets…except at one park!
For four years now, Animal Kingdom has continued with its cavalcades, which were known as flotillas — boats that drove through the park on the Discovery River. The flotillas featured everyone from Mickey Mouse to Scrooge McDuck to Rafiki to Pocahontas. But now, the character flotillas have officially ended their run!
Now, the only flotilla remaining is the Discovery Island Drummers, which is a boat with a band that plays songs from movies featured in Animal Kingdom. You can find their scheduled times in the My Disney Experience app, and they do a full lap of the river, starting and ending at the Discovery River Amphitheater.
In place of the character flotillas, you can now find some of those iconic Disney pals as regular meet-and-greets! We spotted Pocahontas in The Oasis, where she meets multiple times throughout the day.
Goofy and Pluto can be found behind Chester & Hester’s Dinosaur Treasures, with alternating meet-and-greet times. Keep in mind that these character meets are subject to weather — we didn’t get to see them during our visit because of rain.
But what about the other characters from the flotillas? Mickey and Minnie meet at Adventurers Outpost, and Donald, Daisy, Chip, and Dale can be found at various spots throughout DinoLand.
Unfortunately, there are currently no scheduled meet and greets for some of the other characters from the flotillas, including Meeko, Rafiki, Timon, Launchpad McQuack, and Scrooge McDuck. We’ll be on the lookout to see if we spot these guys around the park!
Stay tuned to AllEars for more updates on all the happenings in Disney World! We’ll keep you in the loop.
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What do you think of this change? Tell us in the comments!
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