Let's be honest with that headline, shall we?
The Disneyland Resort today announced the latest use for its former ESPNZone restaurant site — a new merchandise location selling "Disneyland Resort Featured Products."
Reservations will be required to visit the new store, and fans appear to have snapped them up pretty much as soon as Disneyland announced their availability today. One-hour shopping windows were available for three days starting next week.
Most of the items that Disney listed on its website for the shopping pop-up event were 65th anniversary pins and other limited-edition souvenirs. Disneyland surely has a warehouse of items it had ordered for the anniversary that it's not been able to sell to fans as its parks have been closed all summer due to the pandemic.
Now Disney could have just listed everything on ShopDisney.com, and, to be fair, you can find many anniversary items there. But so long as Disney makes limited editions of its merchandise, there will be an aggressive market of resellers looking to snatch up those items for flipping on eBay and other online stores to other eager Disney fans. By offering items for sale in-person at the Disneyland Resort's Downtown Disney, the company is at least making the flippers grab a reservation then show up in person to get their supply.
So get ready to see a new flood of Disneyland souvenirs on eBay when the store opens. And prepare also for a rush of social media videos chastising the flippers — some of which, no doubt, will be recorded and posted by very people who had just bought up a stock for their own pseudonymous eBay accounts. (Ooooh, am I sharing a dirty secret there?)
The former ESPNZone restaurant building was most recently the site of the Pop Up Disney Mickey Celebration, which ran in the space for several months last year. If you're interested in a backstory here, Disneyland originally closed the sports-themed restaurant because it was going to use the western edge for Downtown Disney for a new hotel, which the resort dropped after a tax dispute with the City of Anaheim. The former Rainforest Cafe and AMC Theaters spaces remain vacant after that change in plans, though Earl of Sandwich returned.
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Rob, you left off the part where they limit the flippers access to the memorabilia and mark up the prices themselves keeping all the profits.
Darn, when I saw “flippers” I presumed Disney has come into possession of a certain dolphin based IP...
I'm not sold that Disney is using this as a "trap" to track down and eliminate on-line resellers. If Disney didn't like the grey market of their limited edition merchandise, they could have stopped it years ago. I think Disney secretly likes the cache that "limited edition" and special event merchandise has gained through these online outlets, and a store like this is a way to "feed the beast" while the parks are still closed.
Let's face it, Disney knows that it can produce 10 million units of something and still slap a "limited edition" label on it and jack the price up 20-30%. This store is just a way for them to maintain this facade, not to track and punish online resellers.
You are most likely right Russell. The mouse is losing loads of dough, or cheese if you want to keep your things themed, so this is a great way to offload a lot of soon to be out of date merchandise and make a tidy profit. I just really despise opportunists who make it so much more difficult for people who only want to get one of something while on vacation and can't because someone else has bought the lot. And your point is right - if Disney really did want to get back at those who do, they would do a better job of enforcing maximum purchases and track the on-line resellers. Big picture is, the more merch they sell right now in any way means more Cast Members keep working and have benefits and can pay their rent and sleep at night. Win/Win.
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Here is my deep dark desire. To quote Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap!"
Disney is hoping to punish these On-Line resellers so they are setting a little honey trap for them.
By requiring them to get reservations, Disney now knows exactly who has been in the store (above and beyond the need to use their APs for the discount).
The Great Mouse Detective can then monitor Ebay and other reselling sites to look for this unique merchandise on sale, then track down who is selling it at a mark up. They can then void those jerk's APs and make the world a much, much better place.
And, scene.
Fingers crossed.