Disney’s announcement that Splash Mountain will be rethemed to a Princess and the Frog attraction has created a merchandise frenzy. Guests visiting the Magic Kingdom have been spotted buying huge quantities of merchandise, creating multi-hour waits to enter the Splash Mountain gift shop. Unfortunately, a lot of those items have ended up on eBay at insane markups.
The demand was so large that Disney had to set up a virtual queue just to enter the store. Who could have guessed that one of the longest lines in all of Walt Disney World this year would belong to the Briar Patch shop?
Once inside, some guests took advantage and bought up enormous quantities of items. Some looked like they were struggling to carry everything they bought.
As you might expect, eBay is now full of newly-listed Splash Mountain items at outrageous prices. Some guests didn’t even wait to leave the Magic Kingdom before posting their items on eBay.
It may be years before Splash Mountain transforms into a Princess and the Frog attraction. Disney has not released a timeline and have stated they are still in the initial planning phase. That means there could be years of Splash Mountain merchandise available for guests.
Everything about this is disappointing. Guests who try to make a quick buck by buying up all of Disney’s merchandise to resell it online are the bottom of the barrel in the Disney community. At the same time, Disney should have had a policy ready to go that would limit how many items a guest could purchase. Too often this exact scenario has played out. Remember when guests even stole and resold the sporks in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge? Disney should be able to anticipate this kind of behavior.
Hopefully new policies will be introduced and additional merchandise will be stocked. It’d be a shame to see these guests stuck with a bunch of unwanted items and wasted money.
