A Visit to the New Disney Vault 28

Today Tim and I used our freshly-purchased Disneyland annual passes and spent a couple of hours at Disneyland. One of the things I wanted to check out was a new experimental urban apparel botique at Downtown Disney that had just opened a few days prior. The store is called Disney Vault 28, a reference to the year that Mickey Mouse made his debut in "Steamboat Willie."


The newest arrival to the Disneyland Resort (10/06)

The store is targeted to fashion-conscious shoppers. For example, t-shirts aren't $20, or even $50. Most run about $75. And a pair of jeans will set you back upwards of $200.


T-shirts run up to $75. (10/06)

According to Disney, it's the only store of its kind, and was developed for customers who wanted products that were not available in other locations. The store will be stocked with two new Disney brands, Kingdom Couture and DV28, as well as celebrity-favored designers, including Chip & Pepper, Paige Premium Denim, Tarina Tarantino and Red Monkey.

To depart from other Disney stores, the store will have less movie tie-ins, focusing on classic characters, like Mickey, Tinkerbell, Alice in Wonderland, etc.


Doesn't look like your typical Disneyland store. (10/06)

The first thing we noticed while there was the lack of any extensive men's clothes. They had a little tiny section in the corner, and that's it. And although the store is cool to browse at, we saw very few people actually making purchases.


The paltry men's section. (10/06)

Although we certainly wish Disney the best with this new concept, our prediction is that the store won't be around in a year's time. We briefly toyed with the idea of buying one of the Vault 28 shot glasses, since it could become a collector's item once the store goes out of business, but we opted not to when we saw that it cost $18.