We have been covering Disney Springs for a long time. We have seen a lot of things. We have watched lines form for food festivals, merchandise drops, character experiences, and restaurant openings. We thought we had a pretty good sense of what the Disney Springs scene looks like at its most intense.
And then someone posted a photo of lawn chairs set up inside the Lime Garage before midnight on a Monday and we had to sit with that for a minute.
The post went up on Reddit this week. The original poster captured the scene and titled it: “Monday night (tonight) line in Disney Springs Lime Garage before midnight. This is what pin drop Tuesday is now.” They followed it with genuine questions: “Is there some kind of extra special pin coming Tuesday? Is this what pin drop Tuesday is like every week? This makes me super concerned about going to the Lorcana prerelease drop this Friday.”
Lawn chairs. Midnight. Disney Springs had not even closed yet. People had already staked out positions in a parking structure to wait overnight for a pin release the following morning.
We went through every comment in the thread because the community responses tell the story better than we could on our own. Here is what the Disney community actually had to say about this.
Monday night (tonight) line in Disney Springs Lime Garage before midnight. This is what pin drop Tuesday is now.
byu/crazyparkguy inWaltDisneyWorld
The Comments Said Everything We Were Thinking
The first reaction in the thread was the one most of us would have: “Wait people are literally SLEEPING at the parking lot to get… a pin?!” The original poster’s reply was resigned in a way that told its own story: “Apparently. I knew people showed up at like 6am. But this is a new low.”
A new low. From the person who took the photo.
The context for what made this particular Tuesday different came quickly: “It’s for the Kingdom Hearts pins. For some reason it’s super desirable. All the scalpers and people that don’t want to pay crazy prices are willing to wait overnight for them. Been happening every month. A regular pin drop Tuesday isn’t like this.”
That matters for anyone planning a Disney Springs visit and wondering whether this is the standard scene every Tuesday morning. It is not. This is a Kingdom Hearts situation specifically. But the Kingdom Hearts situation is worth understanding because it explains the parking garage in a way that makes complete sense once you have the full picture.
Someone in the thread described watching the reseller behavior play out in person during a holiday merchandise release and it is genuinely difficult to read: “Resellers have really done a number on Disney merch. Anything remotely popular will be sold out immediately and then resold online for profit. People who aren’t local or in the parks frequently have almost no shot of getting it. During the holidays when the holiday merch first came out World of Disney at Springs was absolutely insane. I saw someone rip a box of shirts out of a CM hand and then take all that were remaining in the box. It was obvious people were resellers because they weren’t even looking at the merch sizes or designs. At the parties there was a limit on party exclusive merch of one per item because party exclusive merch can only be purchased during a party and Disney would get way too many complaints if it all sold out in the first 30 seconds of the party lol.”
We want to stop on that detail about someone pulling a box from a cast member’s hands. That is the end result of a reseller ecosystem that has made genuine fans feel like they have no choice but to show up at midnight with a lawn chair or accept that they simply will not get the thing they came for.
A guest planning a future trip asked what we imagine a lot of readers are wondering: “I’m planning a trip early next year, does this happen EVERY Tuesday? And when does the crowd typically disperse? I’m not trying to deal with this while on vacation.” The community reassured them: a regular pin drop Tuesday is not like this. The overnight scene is tied to specific high-demand drops.
And then the comment that made us stop scrolling and actually sit with it for a while. A self-identified Kingdom Hearts fan wrote the most thorough and human explanation we have seen for why this specific fandom ends up in a parking garage at midnight: “There is almost zero merch for KH in general, but especially in the parks. For a Disney adjacent/involved IP, it gets very little representation. I will say this has gotten better in the past year or two, but it’s still hard to find much. Especially because Square Enix lost their North American licensing and merchandise rights for KH. So that also meant orders going from their online store going to North America were canceled. Us KH fans are literally desperate for any type of acknowledgment of the series from Disney, whether that be in the form of merch, park representation, additional products, park snacks, etc.”
They continued: “I would say 50 to 75 percent of the people buying the KH pins are scalpers. The only reason I have been able to get all of the KH Keyblade drops, excluding Month 1, is because I found a lady on eBay who doesn’t mark them up too much.”
And then this: “We haven’t had a full fledged Kingdom Hearts game since 2019. And somehow, even though it seems impossible, that was over seven years ago at this point. They gave us like two minuscule teasers over the years. But Square Enix has pushed so many other releases ahead of KH, that at this point any slight news that Nomura or the game’s voice actors have even breathed near a KH game, the fans go crazy and start speculating. So when we start to see new merch, we think surely, something must be happening. Which of course, is not the case. But we can dream right? I hear it’s the wish your heart makes.”
We are not going to pretend that did not get to us a little bit. A fandom that has been largely abandoned by the licensor, underrepresented at Disney despite being a Disney adjacent property, flooded by scalpers at the few release moments they get, resorting to overnight parking garage stays just to access merchandise at the price it was meant to be sold at. The lawn chairs make sense now. They are not crazy. They are the rational response to an irrational situation.
What This Means for You at Disney Springs
If merchandise is part of your Disney Springs plan, here is what this week’s parking garage scene tells you in practical terms.
High-demand drops happen and they create conditions at World of Disney and around the Lime Garage that are completely different from a standard Tuesday. Resellers are real, they move fast, and if you are not at the front of that line you may find that the item you wanted is already gone. The best protection against that is knowing in advance whether something you want is scheduled to drop during your visit and how much demand it is expected to generate.
For most items at Disney Springs, none of this applies. The shopping district is a genuinely enjoyable place to spend time, the dining options are strong, and the merchandise selection at World of Disney is substantial enough that most guests find what they are looking for without any drama. The parking garage scene is the extreme end of a specific subset of releases and it is not the Disney Springs experience most people are going to have.
But if you are specifically chasing something limited and you find yourself wondering whether you need to arrive earlier than planned, the answer on certain Tuesdays is apparently yes. Earlier than you thought possible.
Before your Disney Springs visit, spend five minutes on Reddit checking whether any pin drops or limited-edition releases are scheduled during your trip. The Disney community is genuinely helpful about flagging these in advance and the thread from this week is a good example of how much useful information is available if you look for it before you go. We will keep covering the merchandise and food side of Disney Springs as new releases come up. The parking garage story is extreme but it is also a window into something real about how this community operates and how much it cares.
