Animal Kingdom Complaint - need to vent

[cobright]

Okay, I try not to complain. I'm a pessimist so I assume everything will go wrong already and when it does, I'm neither surprised nor upset, but Animal Kingdom kinda through a spanner into my plans today.

Quick backstory: I love character m&g's. The brief interaction between the character and my kids, the autograph, taking pics, all of it. After our first trip created a bunch of autograph books that no one looks through, now I try to do something special with the autograph. My thing this year is to find a children's book for that characters story, or a print on canvas, or a piece of display memorabilia to have the character sign.

So here we are, first day in parks for this trip. We're going to AK and I'm excited to visit Pocahontas. Oh no, that lithograph we bought to have her sign got left on the kitchen table. "Well drat", says I. But no worries, I'll find something in the resort gifts shop or at the park. It doesn't have to be super fancy, even a coloring book or a post card would be fine.

Nope. In AK, where Pocahontas is and Frozen isn't, thete is roughly 9000% more Elsa and Anna (and Sven and Christofle etc...) merchandise than pocahontas stuff. There is no Pocahontas stuff. Besides a couple of pins, I found one Pocahontas thing, a Xmas ornament shaped like her moccasin except it was turned into a tiny stiletto high healed shoe.

I felt both insulted as a fan and angry as a consumer.

Why is she in AK anyway? She should be rocking the colonial areas of MK or Epcot world showcase. At least give some merch options for fans like me. Even the nice storybook kept every princess except Pocahontas.

Is it just me? You can tell me if it's just me.

 

[toonaspie]

Pocahontas used to have an animal-centric stage show there in the early years of DAK before it closed. It could be they decided to keep the character there for m&gs since she "supposedly" represents the nature themes of the park itself. I dunno about having her appear at MK or Epcot considering that Pocahontas takes place over a century before pre-colonial America. It wouldn't make sense thematically.

Realistically though, Pocahontas just isn't as popular as a Disney character that she used to be. I believe merchandising is gonna be based on what is popular and trendy atm and whether we like it or not, that be Frozen. But yeah it is kinda silly that Frozen merchandise is in DAK but keep in mind that DAK's theming makes it very restrictive as to what franchises and properties can be represented there without killing the theme. Doesn't surprise me that they just gave up on that as far as merchandising is concerned.