Big things are happening for Disney's colorful cast of criminals. With a brand new stage show at Disney's Hollywood Studios and an upcoming expansion at the Magic Kingdom, it's a good time to be a Disney Villains fan.
That said, one detail affects both the villain characters and the rest of Disney's animated entourage. Although villains like Maleficent, Cruella De Vil, and Captain Hook might frighten viewers on screen, how creepy should their Disney Park appearances really be?
Is it time for a magical makeover?
Meeting Disney's cast of characters has been part of the Disney Parks experience for decades. In this writer's opinion, it's practically sacrilegious to go to Disney World and not have your picture made with Mickey. However, some of Disney's meetable character's have a few design flaws.
If you're a longtime Park Hopper, you know that there are two types of characters: Face and Fur Characters. The fur characters are your typical huggable (and often silent) mascots, and the face characters are the more interactive beings like the princesses and a few heroes, namely those characters that are outright human in appearance/design.
While that is the case for most, it is not the same for all. In fact, there are many fur characters that should have been made face ones long ago. Case in point, this footage of Captain Hook and Mr. Smee from Magic Kingdom this week (seen here) demonstrates their borderline creepy nature.
Although these rare characters were a delight to see out and about, it feels like they should be a lot more vocal and interactive than their grinning, unchanging mascot heads would allow. With the new Villains expansion coming to the park, Disney has the opportunity to give them a massive upgrade.
This has already been attempted with the new Villains: Unfairly Ever After at Hollywood Studios. So, would it really be so hard to give the rest of them a similar treatment? But it's not just the villains that have this flaw.
Several fur characters like The Incredibles, Frozone, Wreck-It Ralph, and others feel unnatural in their mascot forms, and Disney has made the jump from fur to face in the past, just look at some of the parks' earlier examples. How long will it be before things make the next evolutionary step?
Walt Disney designed his parks to be in a constant state of change, and it feels like the Character Meet and Greets at Disneyland and Walt Disney World would be the easiest to tweak first. While it might be some time before we see the after effects of Disney's new expansions, it's certainly a good place to start.
Which characters would you change?