We had a VERY full month of news last month!

Cinderella Castle

From Disney World’s 50th Anniversary to spooky Halloween fun, there has been some BIG Disney news this past month. Now, we’re taking a look at the three most UNEXPECTED things that happened in Disney World in October!

1. Character meet and greets are BACK…sort of.

In early October, Disney World shocked us with the news that character meet and greets would be returning in November. One on one character meet and greets have been suspended since the parks reopened last year. Instead, characters can be found around the parks where you could say hello from a distance.

Princess Fairytale Hall

The new form of meet and greets has been dubbed, “character sightings,” and takes guests through a traditional meet and greet queue (such as the one at Town Square Theater) to have one-on-one, still-distanced time with their favorite characters.

Nice to see you, Mickey!

Even more shocking, though, is that this offering launched EARLY! Last week, we were delighted to find that we could once again meet Mickey Mouse at Town Square Theater and some of the princesses at Fairytale Hall in Magic Kingdom!

Click here to learn more about this offering!

2. Disney Genie didn’t crash My Disney Experience — but it does have some weird rules.

October brought Disney Genie, the new planning service and paid replacement for Fastpass+, to the parks and the rollout brought a few surprises. For one, we thought the update would totally crash the My Disney Experience app as guests tried out the new tech…and it didn’t!

Disney Genie has launched!

There were a handful of glitches, but mostly, the service ran smoothly. It certainly didn’t overload the whole app like we were worried it might! What a surprise!

Lightning Lanes Have Replaced FastPass+ Lanes

Plus, the service brought with it some weird rules. Maybe this wasn’t all that surprising, but it was surprising just how confusing it could get. The two-hour cooldown window if you don’t use your current Genie+ Lightning Lane reservation was especially confounding!

Want to learn more about this new service? Click here!

3. Kites crashing in Disney Kitetails is better than we could’ve imagined.

And our third surprise comes from Disney World’s 50th Anniversary celebrations! As a part of the 50th, Disney launched a new show in Disney’s Animal Kingdom and it. is. amazing.

Disney KiteTails

We knew the kite-based show, Disney KiteTails, was coming to the park on the 50th, but we didn’t know just how good it could get. The show requires the performers to CRASH THE KITES to stop flying them (and sometimes the crashes happen when they’re not supposed to hit the water!).

KiteTails Kite

We didn’t know how much we needed to watch a giant Baloo kite slam face-first into the rivers of Animal Kingdom, but, boy, is it a beautiful and HILARIOUS sight.

To see more of KiteTails, click here!

And there you have it! That’s the news that REALLY surprised us in October! As always, stay tuned to DFB for allllll the latest Disney World updates.

Want to check out some tips for each month in Disney World? Click here!

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What news surprised you in June? Tell us in the comments!