Talking Mickey leaving Town Square theater

We will be taking our 4yo niece for the first time in April and really looking forward to this! Fingers crossed they don't move the May date, but with Toy Story Land opening in May it's not unexpected they need to shift staff around to account for that increase at DHS.
 
Could honestly be a throughput issue. I was there November 18 and after an hour wait WITH fastpass Mickey didn’t talk. Figured because that day would be so busy they would want to have more people experience it rather than more unique experience. Especially watching the waits the past two months it does make me think that this is more so a throughput thing than cost but I believe it, this was just my observation
 
We waited for an hour to meet him this past Sunday. When we arrived, it was the normal “non-speaking” Mickey. I was so disappointed even more so now.
 


People should email Chapek and Kalogidis about your frustrations with the constant cuts that chip away at the experience. They may not respond but usually someone does. They are regularly cutting staffing that may not look like much at first but begins to pile up and strip WDW of what made it great.

Both of those guys have no business being in the positions they are in.
 
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People should email Chapek and Kalogidis and them your frustrations with the constant cuts that chip away at the experience. They may not respond but usually someone does. They are regularly cutting staffing that may not look like much at first but begins to pile up and strip WDW of what made it great.

Both of those guys have no business being in the positions they are in.
This is a park operation cut so Kalogridis would be the best person to contact. Chapek likely didn't have much of anything to do with this one.
 
So is talking Mickey already gone? I made a fastpass for our last day for our trip in mid-March. If it’s already the non-talking version then I don’t want to waste a fastpass. We will already be doing a Tusker House character breakfast. So no need to see two non-talking Mickeys.
 


I don’t know specifics but this will cut costs by cutting a CM basically.

This meet and greet is spontaneous so they can’t pre program which is why there are extra CMs involved.

I thought that at the meet and greets the talking Mickey just had a dozen (couple of dozen?) programed responces that could be triggered. Are you saying that there is/was a way to program Mickey's responses "on the fly"? As in, Mickey could say more than the pre-programed lines that were triggered by either Mickey or the CM near Mickey?
 
So is talking Mickey already gone? I made a fastpass for our last day for our trip in mid-March. If it’s already the non-talking version then I don’t want to waste a fastpass. We will already be doing a Tusker House character breakfast. So no need to see two non-talking Mickeys.
No he’s there until early May.
 
I thought that at the meet and greets the talking Mickey just had a dozen (couple of dozen?) programed responces that could be triggered. Are you saying that there is/was a way to program Mickey's responses "on the fly"? As in, Mickey could say more than the pre-programed lines that were triggered by either Mickey or the CM near Mickey?
There is a list of already programmed responses however a CM behind the scenes controls what Mickey says. So if a guest says Hello Mickey! The CM chooses the response to best fit which might be “Hello there pal!” Or something like that.
 
There is a list of already programmed responses however a CM behind the scenes controls what Mickey says. So if a guest says Hello Mickey! The CM chooses the response to best fit which might be “Hello there pal!” Or something like that.

That is what I thought. So, the responses are all pre-programmed.

I'd guess that it takes one extra CM for these meet and greets then?
 
That is what I thought. So, the responses are all pre-programmed.

I'd guess that it takes one extra CM for these meet and greets then?
It takes more than one extra CM. I mentioned either earlier here or in another thread it takes 9 CMs to operate a talking Mickey meet and greet. That included photopass and character handler.
 
It takes more than one extra CM. I mentioned either earlier here or in another thread it takes 9 CMs to operate a talking Mickey meet and greet. That included photopass and character handler.

Normally, for meet and greets, there is the character, the handler, and the photopass person.

That's 3 cast members. How can it be that 6 additional cast members are needed for talking Mickey?
 
Normally, for meet and greets, there is the character, the handler, and the photopass person.

That's 3 cast members. How can it be that 6 additional cast members are needed for talking Mickey?
You have to remember there is always two Mickeys per meet and greet. They rotate for breaks. With this venue you have others behind the scenes and managerial types on hand. I am giving you all first hand information directly from someone working in entertainment.
 
This is disappointing. Was there for my now 5-year olds 3rd birthday. Cast member sees my son's bday pin and says, "hey mickey, today is his b-day." Mickey says, "well, hot dog." then asks my daughter, "when is your birthday?" She answers and Mickey says, "well, I'll sing happy birthday to both of you." Then, he proceeded to sing happy birthday to both of them. It was fantastic.

So sad that other kids will not get to experience something that fun.
 
That's sad. Talking Mickey is great. I better go meet him before he loses his voice.
 
This is a bummer. My son is on the spectrum and the characters freaked him out. The fact that Mickey talked to him really eased him into meeting characters. We now have a ton of pictures of him with characters, mainly because Mickey broke the ice.

It makes me sad that other families won't get that.
 

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