If you were among the thousands of shoppers that descended upon the shopDisney website on Saturday morning in an attempt to obtain items from the latest “it’s a small world” release for the Minnie Mouse: The Main Attraction collection, then you probably shared in the collective frustration of website glitches, sold-out items, and in some cases, hundreds of dollars charged to your account.
Knowledge of the website’s issues on Saturday morning was widespread, with many merchandise fans taking to social media to vent about lagging or unresponsive pages, getting logged out repeatedly, or payments that refused to go through.
I was among the lucky few who couldn’t even get the website to open at 9:59 AM (EST). Instead of loading, it’d give me a blank, white screen with a tiny “Refresh” button in the middle. (In the aftermath, I did read that many others using Safari experienced similar issues, and I’d probably recommend using a different browser for the next release.)
By the time I did manage to get through and get the items I wanted into my bag, the system refused to log me in. I’d enter my username and password only for it to refresh and still not have me logged in. Guest Checkout did not work, either. Like many other shoppers that day, I eventually gave up and figured this was a divine message telling me to not spend $80 on park accessories in the middle of a pandemic.
However, some lucky guests who were able to complete checkout were then in for a not-so-lucky surprise, as many reported to be severely overcharged. One of our contributors here at WDWNT mentioned in our chat as the shopDisney issues persisted, “You know those horror stories of people having thousands taken from their cards when transactions revert back to their cart? Yeah, it just happened to me. Disney took $500. I’ve only succeeded in a $27 purchase. Been on hold for an hour…” Throughout the remainder of the weekend, we’ve had multiple others contact us with similar issues of being charged multiple times (11 times in some cases), resulting in an astronomic charge for merchandise.
If you were affected by these website crashes or glitches, you can give shopDisney Guest Services a call at (800) 328-0368 in the U.S., or otherwise click here to check in on the status of your order. The May release is set to go live on May 16, and will be themed to the Enchanted Tiki Room. With Disney Parks and Disney Stores closed throughout the nation until further notice, shopDisney is currently the only way to obtain these limited-release items.
We’d love to hear about your experiences with shopDisney’s latest limited release. Were you able to get the items you wanted, or were they sold out before you got to them just minutes into the release? Were you among those charged multiple times? What’s your strategy for the next upcoming release? Let us know in the comments below.
