I'm just catching up on posts I missed while overseas.
Thanks for the great report on Tokyo. I agree with the character issue - you really have to be quite mercenary there (as opposed to everything else in Japan which is quite ordered!). Della stands right in front of them and waves and then jumps beside them for the photo. I don't enjoy character interactions there at all and have rarely had my photo taken with a charater there. Paris was exactly the same when we were there - I reserve Hong Kong and Anaheim for my character fix!
The lines are very seasonal - Gerard seems to have found a great time to go in April-May before Golden Week sets in. When we last went during halloween in 2010, the weekends were insane and the weekdays busy but not unbearable.