oh if you're going to be doing groups involving character meals you may have sucked me in....DH and I are trying Tusker House this summer!
Tusker House is tasty!
I am personally a fan of single elements myself, but wouldn't mind a couple mini page kits as long as those groups don't get too huge. For the MK swap, the group I was in required me making 7 or 8 kits! I think 5-6 should be max.
Oh! And if we do some mini kits, I think a Fairies group is in order!
Edit: Another thought on the single element matter... what if we group by movie? You say you would like a variety of elements for each character, so what if we try:
Aladdin (You can potentially meet Aladdin, Jasmine, Genie, Abu, and Jafar in the parks):
1. Person #1 - Aladdin
2. Person #2 - Jasmine
3. Person #3 - Genie
4. Person #4 - Abu
5. Person #5 - Jafar
This way, you can get a variety of characters from the same movie... so if you only have a picture with Aladdin, using the Abu element could still work on the same page. Any thoughts? This could also be an easy way to sneak in rarer characters, like Jafar.
Then if we run into a movie, say Beauty and the Beast, we could just repeat characters (Belle, Belle, Beast, Beast) for extra elements or go with generic characters from the movie you may not be able to meet, but still fit the page (Belle, Beast, Lumiere, Cogsworth). Afterall, Lumiere is in a parade!