I went to the West Edmonton Mall location today. I was shocked to see it so empty- the ENTIRE back wall was cleaned out, and almost every single doll had been sold. Only the "Shelfwarmers" (Tiana, Pocahontas, Cinderella) were still there, and only on one tiny little shelf in the middle of the store. All of their mannequins and displays are down already.
Pretty stunning- they announced the closures Monday and only 4 days later it's 30-40% empty? I should have been by earlier, but I'd already had most of what I wanted (I've been shopping regularly, even stuff I'm on the fence about, partly in anticipation of possible closures and to keep the stores in the black... didn't work). Still, it would have been nice to see the store "in good health" one last time. This time you can tell it's in clearance mode.
The workers there told me they'd had people come all the way from B.C. & Saskatchewan to pick up stuff, as the B.C. stores were already done. Even at only a 20% discount, it's been wildly "successful" as sales go, with almost anything good gone already. Heck, they finally sold out of all their
Raya and the Last Dragon dolls, which could have been major shelfwarmers!
I think the only stuff I might have wanted to get were the solo Anna & Elsa dolls from F2- these had slightly different (ie. cheaper and less detailed) clothes than the ones in the two-doll set and the "Nokk" one.
I wasn't quite as sad as I expected to be. I guess anticipation had been there that it could close since April... and the store had honestly gone way downhill since 2019. The video wall being shut down actually made the place seem more dull, never mind the deliberately thinned-out crowds and how there was never anything special or unique there anymore (since there were no more limited edition dolls and such). So by the time I fully got the news, I had been guessing it for months, and the store hadn't been near what it was at the peak anyhow. Like it died by a thousand cuts or something. I think the peak for the
Disney Store may have been the year they came out with deluxe Limited Edition dolls for the Double-Sets (Ariel/Triton and stuff), Elena of Avalor, and Olaf's Frozen Adventure all in the same calendar year- now THAT was a haul!
Kind of said my goodbyes to the workers there- some of whom I've been seeing for ages. I'll probably be there a time or two before they're fully done, but they probably won't last all the way to Aug. 18th. They had a solid presence of like 7-8 people. But the DS team here is VAST- one admitted to me once there were like 50 employees at that location, though they never offer full-time. I don't even know which one was the manager (there used to be that one tall, very stoic guy who worked there, but I haven't seen him in years).
Now I'll probably never know what happened to a couple of them I always used to talk to- the younger guy with the glasses and the one blonde girl who knew stuff about
Duck Tales! They also vanished years ago and I figured it would be weird to ask. So if any of them are reading this, the bald dude who always had a Lion King or Disney Store bag and was in the mall every Saturday remembered y'all!
