Everyone loves a good birthday party, and what’s a good party without party favors? Disneyland is no exception to this.
As part of Disneyland’s year-long 70th anniversary celebration, I got the opportunity to spend two days at Disneyland and California Adventure, getting a curated look at the experiences, merchandise and food the parks will offer.
Disneyland is unveiling four new merchandise collections that each celebrate a different element of the park’s history: the Celebration Collection, the Walt Disney Nostalgia Collection, the Castle Collection and the Disney Vault Collection.
The Celebration Collection
The largest of the anniversary merch lines, the Celebration Collection, which includes clothing, toys and bags, launches on May 16 when the celebration begins and will be available until 2026. Most of the items will be available for the entire duration, but some new items will be added throughout the year to coincide with different events and anniversaries. Some key partnerships include Loungefly, Pandora and Dooney & Bourke. My favorite of the items might be a special Star Wars-themed astromech droid that has a stylized “70” hidden in the color scheme.
“Our tagline for the 70th celebration is ‘Celebrate Happy,’ so we really wanted to capture the essence of happiness,” said Parks Retail Strategy Manager Lilly Switzer. “That’s what Disneyland brings to us, the ‘happiest place on Earth.’ The colors really exude that happiness, the brightness.”
The centerpiece of the collection is the Key to Disneyland. Guests who purchase a Key will venture around the park and “collect” each of the nine Lands by visiting them throughout their visit and putting the key in a special lock station kiosk. The Key will gain a new lighted icon that will allow the Key to glow a different color and play different theme music based on which Lands they have unlocked.
When guests have collected all nine icons, they can then place the key in a final lock station which will unlock a flurry of bubbles and sounds. A compartment on the back of the key will open revealing one of nine commemorative pins based on the different sections of the park.
Guests who purchase a Key to Disneyland, which costs $59.99, don’t need to complete it in a single trip. The Key will save their progress so if you’re not quite able to visit the entire park in one day, you can come back and pick up right where you left off. The experience will only be available during the anniversary celebration, and unfortunately, guests who do not complete the key before then will not be able to open the Key to get their pin.
“This is exclusive to Disneyland and it’s the first time we’ve done it, so it’s super exciting,” said Switzer. “We always want to see how we can interact with out guests and interact with the park with our merchandise. The Lands are what really inspired how we created that experience and to tie back to the nostalgia of the park.”
Another first for Disney merch is the new bubble wand. Each wand comes with a character hat themed to Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy and Stitch that alter the lights and sounds that the wand makes. The hats are interchangeable, and guests can purchase them individually with the base wand and one hat costing $49.99, and each additional hat costing $12.99.
Switzer said that she is excited for guests to experience the interactivity of the Key and bubble wand, and hopes that they help set DIsneyland’s merchandise apart from the offerings at the other parks.
“These are completely new product types for us,” Switzer said. “We’re really excited to bring in that innovation with that collection. We’re having them launch at Disneyland and they will be exclusive here.”
The Walt Disney Nostalgia Collection
Inspired by the man himself, the Walt Disney Nostalgia collection was influenced by Disney’s quotes, maps, drawings and other works that would have been seen in his office.
Some of the items showcased for this collection included a faux leather notebook with Disney’s initials pressed on the cover and some of his quotes inside, a valet tray, a mug, pin and clothing.
“This collection was really looking back to what was sitting in our archives,” said Disneyland Spokesperson Andrae Gill. “This is stuff you might have seen if you walked into Walt’s office in the 1950s. Our mood board features some different maps, quotes and reminiscing back to the look and feel of his office with a lot of the different browns.”
The Castle Collection
Probably the most iconic element of Disneyland is Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, and that, along with a few other key landmarks, helped inspire this merchandise collection. According to Entertainment Manager and Spokesperson Victoria Robles, this line looks to “the past, present and future of Disneyland’s legacy,” featuring designs that showcase the castle, Space Mountain, The Matterhorn, Carthay Circle and Mickey’s Pal-A-Round, highlighting both parks in the Anaheim resort.
While the Castle Collection includes more standard Disney merchandise like a spirit jersey with a watercolor painting of the castle, athleisure items, a pin and an ornament, it also features some more upscale or formal items like a black denim jacket and a dress for what Robles called a “vintage feel with a modern twist.”
“This collection is definitely inspired by the park’s past with Sleeping Beauty Castle being the very first castle in all of our parks,” Robles said.
Of the items shown, what stood out to me was a big tapestry blanket that had the full castle design on it.
“If you need to snuggle up in you own castle, you can bring a bit of our castle to your home” said Robles. “The blanket also has some inspiration from Ivan Earle’s original concept art for Sleeping Beauty Castle and the castle in the film, so we have that as a little bit of film and park inspiration for this collection.”
Disney Vault Collection
Inspired by “nostalgic artwork that harkens back to the past, present and future of the rich history of the Disney resort,” according to Senior Manager in Merchandise Emilio Martinez, the Disney Vault collection is the second largest line that will be featured for the anniversary celebration.
The Disney Vault collection focuses mainly on adult apparel and home goods and replica items like clothing with artwork inspired by vintage map artwork, replica vintage clothing, a Mickey shirt with googly eyes, a Mickey push with articulated hands and feet, an Alice in Wonderland inspired lantern, pens, a clutch bag, a sticky note pad inspired by the Disney E-tickets and themed Crocs with spinning Jibbitz.
“This collection really looks at the nostalgia of the past and how you modernize it with new types of items, like some of the new silhouetting and materials and things like the plush figures that have articulation,” Martinez said.
Many of the Vault collection designs feature a more classic, Gothic-style lettering and contain elements highlighting the Gothic Disney D and the classic Disney map featured in the lobby of the Disneyland hotel.
“The vintage maps are really iconic for our resort guests and it really speaks to what Disneyland is and what Walt created for the park,” Martinez said. “If you really love vintage, nostalgic artwork this is the collection for you.”