Back in the Day: The Disney Store

Those of you who don’t remember the Disney Store before the early 2000s, you really missed out. 

Nowadays, if you want Disney merchandise, all you have to do is go to DisneyStore.com. 

But in the 80s and 90s, it wasn’t that easy. Until the first Disney Store opened in in the Glendale Galleria in Glendale, California on March 28, 1987, Disneyland and Walt Disney World were really the only retail locations Disney had. In a world before online shopping was as easy as it is today, having a retail store that sold Disney merchandise outside of the parks was amazing. The stores were an extension of the parks, and they strove to capture that same atmosphere. 

I can remember dragging my poor mother through the mall to get to the Disney store. It was the center store in a large, 2 story high rotunda. 

The facade of the store was big and inviting, with a film motif and large display areas for promoting new movies and sales, just like the original store at the Glendale Galleria below.  

Photo courtesy of The Walt Disney Company

The store had shelving along all of the walls, and above the shelving, there were more statues and scenes. 

These photos are from Loren Javier.
Head over to Flickr to see more of his photos.

All along the sides of the store were walls of shelves perpendicular to the side walls, which formed little nooks. Each nook had a theme to it: One would be for a certain movie or character, the next would have stationary supplies and coloring books, another would have t-shirts, another would have dolls, and so on and so forth. 

But the best part of all was the back wall. 

Photo courtesy of the Disney Store's official blog

I am amazed that I was never yelled at for running in a Disney store, because I always booked it to the back wall, which had a pyramid of stuffed animals piled up to the base of a movie screen.

The movie screen showed clips from Disney movies and announcements of new products or movie releases, and would also play clips from the "Disney Sing Along Songs" videos. I would actually sit on the floor at the base of the stuffed animal pile and watch the screen like I was in a real movie theater. 

Photo courtesy of the Tampa Bay Times

Looking at photos now, the pyramid was probably only about 4’ high, but in my memories, this thing was a mountain! Stuffed animals piled so high over my head, I’d never be able to get to the one up at the tippy top. 

By 2001, there were 700 Disney Stores operating worldwide, and mounting cost of operation and the loss of key executives who had driven the success of the Disney Stores led The Walt Disney Company to convert Disney Stores into a licensed operation. In 2002, the Japanese stores were sold to Oriental Land Company (which owns the Tokyo Disney Resort), and most of the North American stores were sold and licensed to The Children's Place in 2004. 

In my opinion, when this happened, SO much of what made the Disney Stores special was sucked away. Hoop Retail, the Children's Place subsidiary operating the Disney Stores, bought the stores with the intention of making money, not keeping the feeling of the Disney parks alive. Almost all of the stores were remodeled and lost all of the statues and character displays, and in an effort to keep prices down, the company cut back on the quality and quantity of merchandise. 

By 2008, Hoop Retail filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sold the Disney Store back to The Walt Disney Company. (The Oriental Land Company sold the Japanese stores back to Disney in 2010.)

In November 2009, Disney announced that they were planning a massive "re-launching" and re-branding of all Disney Store locations, spearheaded by Apple's Steve Jobs, who pioneered the Apple Retail Store concept. They wanted to go back to the days when going to the Disney Store was an experience, but in a much more modernized way. Many of the new stores, including the new Times Square New York Flagship Store, now have interactive displays and technology, such as hidden Mickeys that pop up every few minutes, or mirrors that have images of the Princesses pop up and tell you how beautiful you look in that Cinderella dress. 

Photo courtesy of Mel, from her blog.

When Hoop took over, the store in my local mall moved from the extravagant storefront in the middle of the mall to a generic storefront next to The Children's Place and behind an escalator. 

It moved into a new space and was updated and it's opening tomorrow. I'll be there with my friend Kevin of 2 Men and the Mouse to cover the event, and I'm excited to see it. Hopefully it will bring back some of the old feelings from the original store. We'll see tomorrow :)