I love characters at theme parks. While I don’t usually spend a lot of time standing in lines to get a picture with Mickey Mouse when I’m at a place like Disneyland, I love to see characters from Disney's best animated movies wandering through different lands, waving at guests, giving hugs, or just generally bringing the parks to life. It’s fun when guests and characters like Chip and Dale interact casually, but do yourself a favor and make sure you call those characters by the correct name.
A TikTok recently went viral on the Disney Parks account that shows a Disneyland guest casually greeting Dale, of Chip and Dale, as he walks by. However, she accidentally calls him Chip. While the guest quickly corrects herself, realizing her mistake as soon as she's made it, the damage is done, and Dale is visibly upset. He honestly looks completely crushed in the viral video.
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In the original Chip and Dale cartoons, the two chipmunks, it’s true, looked remarkably similar, but some artistic flourishes were added that quickly helped viewers to tell them apart. The simplest point is the nose. If the nose is black, you’re looking at Chip. If it’s red, you’re with Dale. (It honestly always makes Dale look like he’s perpetually drunk.) Also, Dale is clearly the more emotional of the two, so if a chipmunk acts like you’ve mortally wounded them after you call them the wrong name, it’s got to be Dale.
It’s fun to see costumed characters interacting with guests because Cast Members are always getting creative. Unless they’re portraying a “face character," aka one that doesn’t include a full mask, they can’t speak, so they’re limited to pantomime responses to guests. At some point, you have to overdo it because it’s the only way to be sure what you’re trying to communicate gets across.
These sorts of more casual interactions became more common during the global pandemic. Characters would be put in places that guests could see, but not reach. Or they would just walk by and wave, rather than stopping. It's also become a big part of interactions at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge or at Avengers Campus as Star Wars characters and more get added whenever a new Marvel movie or Disney+ show is released, who are supposed to exist in the land as if it were a real place, and so they're not just there for photo op.s.
Honestly, the highlight of the video is the person taking it, who is actually the one who gives the guest the hard time for calling Dale by the wrong name, going so far as to audibly boo them, which seems pretty harsh honestly. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess Chip and Dale get confused by guests a lot. They’re easy to mix up, especially when they're in their traditional cartoon look and not their Rescue Rangers outfits, which is usually the case in the parks.
While I don’t make a huge point of getting pictures with characters, I will admit that I embrace the fiction as much as anybody when I do interact with them. Saying hi, shaking hands, giving them a fist bump, and generally just acting like they really are the character they pretend to be really does make the magic of Disneyland feel real.
