Character autographs have been a staple of the Disney Parks for decades, becoming a favorite part of character interactions for many Disney fans when they visited Disneyland or Walt Disney World. As of right now, it remains one of the few remaining major things Disney has still not brought back from the pandemic.
The longer autographs are absent, the question needs to be asked, if this part of Disney character interactions will ever come back.
Disney meet and greets in the years preceding the pandemic had become more popular than ever, for both children and adults, and autograph collecting became a major part of many people's Disney trips, and a great way to keep track of what characters you met at the Disney Parks.
However, in the last few years before the pandemic, there did start to be some limitations on the practice, with many new characters including those from Star Wars and Marvel not signing autographs, as well as some character sightings not involving autographs.
Following the parks reopening from the pandemic, character greetings were changed due to the nature of the experience. A close greeting with a character was not possible given the circumstances, leading to only distanced greetings being regular for the first year of opening. Even as more character greetings started happening, distance was still encforced (except in Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser).
Disney has also had a problem in recent years with character greetings. They have imposed unoficial time limits on character greetings to keep lines moving. They wanted more people to see characters each hour, and allowing people to get autographs, on top of photos, means people took more time with each character, making lines take longer. This coud be the perfect excuse for Disney to permanetly get rid of character autographs.
Disney has used the pandemic as an excuse to make other major and often controversial changes to the Disney Parks. Things like the reservation system, Lightning Lane, Genie Plus, and more have been the result of these changes.
Disney autographs are one of the few things that have not returned from the pandemic, and as more time passes, it may be time to accept that this may be one of the permanent losses in the Disney Parks from the pandemic.
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