The Happiest Hauls on Earth

What’s the most magical place in Walt Disney World? Once upon a time, the answer was obvious: Cinderella’s Castle. However, according to Disney’s most devoted fans, it’s actually a bit further down Main Street at a little souvenir shop called The Emporium.

As Magic Kingdom’s flagship store, The Emporium’s shelves are always dripping with the latest and greatest Disney merchandise. Many fans beeline for the doors right at rope-drop (a short window of time before the rides even open) for the chance to grab the latest lightsaber, Loungefly mini backpack, or limited-edition pin, most of which will be gone before the afternoon parade. Checkout wait times can sometimes exceed Space Mountain’s, and there’s no Lightning Lane in sight.

For the uninitiated, it’s baffling — but for the truest Walt Disney World fans, it makes perfect sense. 

“I think of shopping at Disney as an experience itself,” says Olivia Chavez, who posts her Disney adventures on Instagram as @everafterolivia.mp3 for more than 10,000 followers to enjoy. “There’s just something so fun about walking around with those blue plastic shopping bags or even using or wearing the merch while you’re there.”

A long-distance annual passholder, Chavez visits a Disney theme park two or three times a year, and merchandise is just as important to her budget as dining and travel. Every item in her collection represents a meaningful moment from one of her trips, whether it’s an exclusive Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party Pandora charm or a Star Wars hoodie she stumbled upon by accident. 

“I buy a lot of T-shirts, especially,” Chavez continues, “and sometimes, I think about how I actually enjoy folding my laundry because it’s always a little walk down memory lane. It’s just like when I pull out all the Christmas ornaments to put on my tree — same feeling.”

For Jessica Tagle (@givealittlejess on Instagram), the memory attached to a piece of Disney merch almost matters more than the item itself. Although she usually heads back to New York City with stuffed suitcases, she doesn’t stalk the blogs, track releases, or buy any merch online between Disney World trips. Regardless of how much she loves a piece: “If I wasn’t there, I don’t want it.” 

“[My husband] will buy pins for a festival that he’s never been to if he likes the design, but I won’t,” Tagle says. “Why would you buy a Festival of the Arts pin if you didn’t go to Festival of the Arts that year? ... If I didn’t experience it, I don’t want to display it.”

However, for those after the latest limited editions, waiting until the next trip isn’t always an option. As a result, FOMO-fueled fans are forced to turn to personal shoppers and scalpers, often paying jaw-dropping markups just to avoid missing out on the Parks-exclusive merch. As long as you’ve got the will and the wallet to match, the most coveted collectibles ever created are only a few clicks away, sometimes within hours of their initial release. 

But if the same merch is available online — albeit at exorbitant prices — is it worth lining up to get it in person? For many fans, it’s an easy “yes.” The resale market might offer access, but the magic of the moment isn't something you can just add to your cart. For example, at Trader Sam’s Grog Grotto inside Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort, guests gather in the hallway outside the bar hours before it opens — not to exchange cash or credit for a popcorn bucket or a pullover, but for something much harder to replicate. 

Trader Sam’s isn’t any old Disney dive. As your cocktail arrives in its ceramic tiki mug, available only on-site, this intimate tiki hideaway erupts with special effects, chanting, and sometimes lava, depending on the drink. Between the bursting volcanoes, bubble machines, and the silly, swill-slinging Skippers, every visit to Trader Sam’s is truly one-of-a-kind, never the same way twice.

“The best way I can describe it is ohana, immersion, and adventure,” says Dizz Fernandez, the tiki bartender and mug collector behind @reeldrinkbydizz on TikTok. “The moment you walk in, it feels like stepping through a [portal] into another world: the world of tiki. A place where stories, laughter, and escapism take over for a while, and the outside world fades away.”

According to Fernandez, it’s this highly unique experience that separates a Trader Sam’s mug from any other souvenir you can find on a shelf. “They represent that moment when you’re there with friends and family, enjoying the atmosphere, the drinks, the laughter, the whole experience,” he says. “When you take home a mug, you’re really taking a piece of that feeling with you. That’s what makes it priceless. That’s what you’re
truly buying.”

The merch masterminds at Disney Consumer Products call this “experiential merchandise.” Instead of just grabbing an item off the rack, these immersive experiences are deeply personal, inviting fans to be part of the story and take it back home forever. Examples are popping up all over the Parks — build-your-own lightsabers, DIY droids, the Key to Disneyland scavenger hunt, even the latest MagicBands, which sync to the fireworks and activate hidden statues around Walt Disney World. 

“When guests go through immersive experiences like build-your-own offerings or highly interactive retail environments, the product becomes a reflection of their choices, their creativity, and their personal story within the Disney Parks,” says Robert LaFlamme, director of merchandising at Disney Consumer Products. “Customization and personalization transform the item into a one-of-one expression of that visit, making it deeply personal in a way traditional retail cannot replicate.”

Although these experiences are once-in-a-lifetime for most, for Shannon Shaffer, whose more than 135,000 followers know as @pincessshannon, they’re a twice-a-week reality. Even before moving to Florida, Shaffer and her husband spent most afternoons making the most of their Disneyland annual passes. Now, as a certified Orlando resident, Walt Disney World is basically Shaffer’s backyard, whether she’s passing time riding rollercoasters or grabbing lunch with a friend. 

“I feel like there is so much to do around the Florida Disney Parks that we never run out of ideas on how to spend our days,” Shaffer says. “Because we can go so often, it gives us a chance to try so many of the overlooked things that we might not have had time for if we were just visiting.”

Living so close to Disney is like having the keys to the kingdom. While long-distance fans constantly miss out on the latest drops, Shaffer can simply shuffle her schedule, and the latest shelf sensation is hers. However, without the now-or-never panic, Shaffer is a lot more selective about which pieces are worth the price of gas.

“It’s easy to find yourself with more items than you can handle when you’re collecting Disney merch, especially when you visit so frequently,” she says. “In my case, I have been trying to be more particular about what Disney accessories I buy … Instead of buying multiple bags that only represent niche movies and characters, I’ll try to get one bag that can match them all and accessorize it with different keychains or pins.”

And yet, as often as she visits, the magic never gets mundane. Disney is constantly rolling out new merchandise — from rotating capsule collections to limited drops tied to specific events and characters — so guests like Shaffer always have something to look forward to. 

“The key is that ‘new’ is not just about product introduction,” LaFlamme says. “Each visit should feel like it has its own set of discoveries that connect directly back to what guests are seeing, doing, and feeling in that moment.”

While Disney puts considerable thought into the items on its shelves, some of the most meaningful parts of merch collecting extend well beyond them. The married couple behind @disney_pintopia, who affectionately go by Mr. and Mrs. Pintopia on TikTok, started collecting pins in 2002, but it wasn’t until 2020 that they stumbled upon the digital Disney pin trading community.

“During the lockdown, like many others, I found myself bored at home,” Mrs. Pintopia says. “I started sorting through my collection and made little
videos featuring some of my favorite motion pins, glow-in-the-dark pins, hinged, slider, and lenticular pins, and posted them on TikTok. I realized there was a much, much larger community out there that extended way beyond the Parks when one of my videos unexpectedly gained more than a million views, and we grew to 200,000 followers.”

Since then, Mr. and Mrs. Pintopia have become incredibly active in the pin trading community, from swapping pins in the Parks and filming content for their followers to discovering new friends who share their love for the chase. While limited-edition drops like Pin-Tastic Tuesday can create long waits and intense competition, when Mr. and Mrs. Pintopia look around the line each week, they always see familiar faces smiling back at them. 

“I even met my VIPP, or my Very Important Park Pal, through the wider community,” Mrs. Pintopia continues. “She lives in Wisconsin and visits every couple of months, and we enjoy hanging out at the Parks together. We trade pins and talk about them all day, and believe it or not, you can easily spend 12 hours doing just that!”

These types of connections don’t stay within the Disney Parks bubble. For many fans, merch collecting has slowly woven its way into their everyday lives, whether that’s joining tiki mug Facebook groups, meeting fellow fans in the wild, or even, like Jessica Tagle, building a relationship around a shared love of Disney.

Tagle and her now-husband both discovered the Disney theme parks as adults: Tagle as part of a graduation gift, and Brendan shortly after they began dating. In the years since, the couple has been on a mission to experience everything Disney has to offer, from Shanghai and Paris to Aulani. They got married this spring at Disney’s Boardwalk Inn Resort, and they even found a way to incorporate their passion for pins into the most magical moment of their lives. 

“For our unity ceremony, we started a pinboard together,” Tagle says. “We surprised each other with pins and put them on a special board [during the wedding]. I bought him a wedding pin from Shanghai Disney, and he got me a Shelly May pin from Tokyo Disney because I love Duffy and Friends … Over the years, we’ll keep buying each other pins and slowly fill the board.”

In a way, every Disney Parks fan’s collection is a lot like Jessica and Brendan’s pinboard: Whether they walk out of The Emporium with plush, pins, T-shirts, or tiki mugs in those little blue shopping bags, over time, fans’ shelves become a sort of scrapbook — filled with the people, places, and moments that make the
Disney fandom a dream come true.