There have been rumours that all the UK branches of the Disney store will close by the end of 2021. While Disney hasn’t officially confirmed these rumours, it is looking to be more and more likely.
We’ve already seen 60 locations across North America (including all stores in Canada) shut their doors and this week the United Kingdom has been rocked with multiple closures.
The ongoing rumours state that all UK stores, except for the flagship store at London’s Oxford Street, will close.
Locations, where stores have already closed include Blackpool, Southhampton and now the popular store at Bluewater Shopping Centre.
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While small, the branch at Bluewater was popular with many patrons visiting the store at least once on each trip.
Outside of the UK, stores will also be closing in France, Spain, and the Republic of Ireland with only the Dublin store remaining open.
Why All These Closures?
The pandemic has hit many companies and Disney is no exception. With their resorts closed for most of the year and their movies being delayed throughout most of 2020, they’ve been working hard at cutting costs anywhere they can.
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Outside of the flagship stores, Disney will focus their efforts on their ShopDisney websites which have been in operation for many years now.
While stores are closing across the States, Disney will open pop-up shops at 160 Targets. Whether other countries will receive similar pop-up shops remains to be seen, but since the UK doesn’t have Target, Disney could potentially make a deal with ASDA (the UK’s version of Walmart & closest equivalent to Target).
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Thing is with the uk, i dont think disney will get a deal like with target. Disney already has a huge presence with selling toys, clothing, costumes, plushes etc in multiple different stores.
Tesco, asda, primark etc. Primark in particular always has a huge disney offering especially at christmas. I worked at a pop up store in the uk and at christmas so many people would say they preferred the tree decorations in primark. If anything i think they will just double down on those deals but with multiple shops.
It would be nice to get a shopdisney app though if they revamp the UK site. The UK site is massively lacking compared to the USA site.
Heartbreaking to se the disney stores close to keep open just the Oxford street flagship store is crazy. I along with my grandchildren will so miss our visits to our local store along with so many others
Really upset at the loss of the Disney stores, it was soo magical shopping in store will I miss the experience soo sad! Wrong decision by Disney.