Mini Trip Report: Times Square Disney Store, D23 Member Mixer

Post Mixer Lunch, Photo from Michele!

I thought I'd do a mini trip report about a recent trip to the Times Square Disney Store.  My first trip to the new store, actually.  At the beginning of February, I had heard that there was going to be a D23 event in New York City.  Unfortunately, I am not a D23 member.  Also, all the tickets were sold out.  So as you may expect, I completely forgot about the event.  That is, of course, until Michele tweeted at me on a Friday, letting me know that she had extra tickets to the event two days later.  I jumped on them, telling her that James and I would love to go.

We left for the city bright and early, since the meet started at 10, and we wanted to meet up with Michele around 9:45.  James and I left school around 7:30, and we got to the train station around 8.  (We decided to go to the train station near home rather than school, since there were more trains from there, and the trip is shorter.)  Our train was at 8:0-something, and we were at the city around 9:15.  After walking to Times Square from Penn Station and James getting an overpriced breakfast at McDonald's, we made our way to the Times Square Disney Store.  We found Alison and Dana waiting in line outside the store, so we hung out with them for a while.  Soon, we met up with Michele and her friend.  After waiting for 10 or 15 minutes, we went into the store to sign in, and we were directed up the escalator to the second floor.

Trivia and D23 CMs! Photo by Michele

Once on the second floor, there was a trivia game that we played on the big screen.  The cast member gave us the hardest quiz, knowing that we were Disney fans, but almost everyone got a perfect or near perfect score anyway.  Then two D23 cast members came out, Laura Sanchez and Becky Cline from Disney archives (disclaimer: I totally didn't remember their names, so I got them from the review of the same event on the allears.net blog).  They came bearing prizes for even harder Disney questions, but none of us won any.  We were kind of far away from the speakers.  Before they allowed us to mingle on our own, they let us know that they wanted to talk to all of us about D23.  Also, we were told that there were little gifts for us!

The gifts we got: a keychain, a magnet, and
a set of 23 vintage Disneyland postcards.

It was really cool that people that really had an effect on D23 events wanted to talk to us about what we wanted to see.  Since many New York based D23 members can't make it to all of the events in Florida and California, we were glad that we were being heard as well.  There was mention of possible events being movie screenings, possibly of old silent cartoons, and we were asked if Boston or Washington DC was too far for us to travel.  We were also asked if we were willing to pay for future events, since the D23 mixer we were attending was free (although note that there was no food).

After the event was over, we explored the Times Square Disney Store for a while.  Here is the highlight reel of what we saw:  Magic mirrors are cool.  They have the Harveys bags but no Dooneys.  There is one 3 inch and three 9 inch special edition New York Vinyls.  They also were carrying Villains, Animation, and I believe Nightmare Before Christmas Vinyls.  They had some Urban 5 9 inch Vinyls.  There was a lot of kid stuff, including one section full of princess merch and one section full of Marvel and other superhero merch.  There is a section devoted to "I [Mickey] NY" merchandise.  There is a section with the couture princess merch that they sell in TrenD.  Although I was tempted, all I bought was a 3 inch New York Vinyl.

After we checked out, we left the store and went to have lunch at the Brooklyn Diner with Michele and her friend, Dana, Alison, Leslie, James, and I.  We discusses D23, and they made me really want to join (though I haven't bit the bullet yet).  After lunch, we were ready to head our separate ways, and before we knew it, James and I were back on the train home.  It was a fun event, and although some people were a little disappointed with the actual content of the event, we knew it was a one-hour, free event.  I thought it was great all things considered.

Have you ever been to the Times Square Disney Store?  Have you ever been to a D23 event?  Are you a D23 member?  Why did you become one, or why did you decide not to?  Let me know your thoughts in a comment, a tweet (@discollegeblog), or on Facebook!