D Street – Page 4 – WDWNT Archive

D-Street B-Day

WDWNT on April 15, 2011

One year ago…
Kick Ass and How to Train Your Dragon were leading the box office. Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now” and Kesha’s “Tik Tok” we topping the music charts. Park 4 had just hit store shelves. It was April 16th, 2010 and a new store just opened in the West Side of Downtown Disney Orlando. This store would not only offer new merchandise choices geared toward a younger audience, but would also help lead a Mickey Mouse shaped collectable into a whole new era.

Opening Day was met with much fanfare. Of course Mickey was there. He jumped out of an oversized Vinylmation box to kick things off.

Many artists were on hand to greet guests and sign autographs including Thomas Scott, Lisa Badeen, Randy Noble, Monty Maldovan, Dan Howard, Eric Caszatt, Tyler Dumas, Quynh Kimball, Maria Clapsis and Adrianne Draude. The even also featured world-renowned speed painter Rock Demarco painting his interpretation of Mickey Mouse.

Some One-of-a-Kind Vinylmation went on sale last April as well.

Guests to D-Street on opening day were encouraged to sign this 9″ Vinylmation:

From the start, Vinylmation would play a large part in D-Street, and D-Street in Vinylmation. Vinyl figures are a main focus in the design of the store. Check out this video Disney released giving a tour of the store when it opened.

The D-Street opening would also be the first place Vinylmation trading occured at Walt Disney World. First tested at D23 in California the previous summer, both Open and Mystery trading boxes were unveild to guests in the store.

Wow, looks like the open box staple figures have hardly changed in a year. Trading would soon spread into the theme parks.

D-Street would go on to host numerous activities and be the sight of many Vinylmation fan get-togethers. I remember the early morning Nightmare Before Christmas line. And who could forget the chilly 7 hour wait for Star Wars?

Release Day Line

Mike Sullivan

Happy Birthday D-Street! It’s been a fun year getting to know eachother. DV wants to thank Disney for giving us a fun themed place to visit, collect, trade and talk. We appreciate the hard work by all the cast memebers that make the store possible. We look forward to many years to come.

What are your favorite D-Street displays? What was your favorite release day wait?

We dug into the Disney archives and found these links to Opening Day that you might also enjoy.
http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2010/04/vinylmation-visuals/

http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2010/04/vinylmation-creation-station-coming-to-d-street-in-florida/

Some photos courtesy of Disney Parks and Vinylmation Blogs

D-Street Florida gets their own signing event 4/15

WDWNT on April 11, 2011

Update: 4/11/11 First, Disney announced Doug Strayer (Nerds Rock!) will also be attending this event. Also, a pirate vinylmation has appeared. It’s by Casey Jones. This is interesting timing, if this is the pirate that Art of Disney says will be released one May 21st. Interesting…..

While Californians are waiting to talk to Monty about his new Muppets 2 set, Florida will get a chance to meet several artists as part of the one year anniversary of D-Street Florida! From 10 AM to 12 Noon Vinylmation™ artists Maria Clapsis, Casey Jones, and Eric Caszatt will be at D-Street Florida to sign Vinylmation from the Cutesters Too, Tron, Urban #6 and Park #6 collections.
As always there are rules: Each Guest is limited to four pieces signed per artist.
“So get out your party hats and horns for a celebrational, Muppetational, Vinylmational (new word!), anniversary” -Disney Vinylmation.com
All these artists have been wonderful and design great figures, so go, take some figures to get signed, and let us know how things went. We’ll be setting up a post to display all the pictures our readers send in, so take a picture or two!

Noah’s 3″ Custom Tron Figures at D-Street

WDWNT on April 9, 2011

If you missed your chance at the very limited edition of Noah’s 9″ custom TRON figures, then here’s another chance at a similar product. Originally sold in the Pop Up Shop in Culver City, these 3″ versions are $150 each and of very limited quantity. Each was only available for a week last year, but right now at D-Street (Florida) you can buy all three flavors at once! It will just cost you $450 bucks.

Star Wars Weekend Wrapup with Star Wars Chasers

WDWNT on January 14, 2011

If you missed all the Star Wars news from the last 24 hours here it is:

The crowd was out in full force last night as hundreds of people lined up outside of the D-Street Florida store to get their Star Wars Vinylmation. Nick and MC arrived at 6pm to check out the festivities and join the line. After several hours the wonderful cast members brought out several heat lamps borrowed from Bongos. At around 11 PM the store closed to set up and a DJ started to play outside. During the music, the DJ asked trivia questions for prizes. The winners got to pick Vinylmations from a bag. MC won a NBC Sally and an Holiday 1 American Flag. Nick scored a Buzz Lightyear Vinylmation.

Nick and MC were one of the first groups in, and the first customers out of D-Street. They instantly ripped into their box to find the chaser, a Darth Vader, and a Stormtrooper. They got Vader and the Stormtrooper signed by the artist Mike Sullivan (who was there from 12-2 AM).

Then the rumor started to spread that there was a variant somewhere in the cases, so Nick opened up his case. He was lucky enough to find the chaser variant! (Click on the mystery chaser to see a picture of both the chaser and the variant chaser.) Nick was the first, and as far as we could tell, only person to get the variant that night. Lots of people came over and took pictures of Nick and his variant. (In fact, as of now, every picture online of the variant IRL has Nick’s hand in it. Including the official picture from the Vinylmation.com blog)

We had a lot of fun and look forward to the next event. We met a lot of cool people in line and got some good trading done while waiting. Also we would like to thank the entire staff of D-Street Florida as well as everyone from Disney Vinylmation. Thanks to Steven Miller for creating the event, Donald Ferro for making the stormtrooper the extra figure, and especially Mike Sullivan for all the designs.

Now for some photos we have from this morning. Click to see larger.

Did you go to the event? How was it? Let us know what you think!

Waiting for Skywalker

WDWNT on January 14, 2011

The line outside of D-Street for the release of Star Wars. The line wraps all around the back of the Pretzel/Ice Cream/Bathroom building across from D-Street.

Urban 5 Mickey Hats with Vinylmation

WDWNT on January 14, 2011

Update: 1/14/11 According to @EPCOTCENTERed the Creatures hat was accidentally sold in Disneyland back in October or November of 2010. (Confirmed)

1/13/11-We found these at D-Street Florida while waiting for Star Wars. $49.95 each. The top one is based on the Hidden 28 9″ and the bottom one is based on the Creatures 9″ 3″ set. Both sets will be out on January 21st at both D-Street locations.

Banks Lee’s 1/7/10 Downtown Disney Photo Report

WDWNT on January 8, 2011

After hearing that Pleasure Island was starting to crumble, we sent WDWNT Reporter Banks Lee to investigate the preparation work for Hyperion Wharf and here’s what he saw:

The AMC has closed their side entrance to convert it into the new “Dine-In Theater” entrance

Animated IRL

WDWNT on December 31, 2010

The D-street store in Orlando had this on display yesterday 🙂

First Pictures of Disneyland A-E Ticket Booklet Set!

WDWNT on December 10, 2010

A BIG “thank you” to one of our listeners and twitter friend: TheRealWeinbeez, for these great pictures. You made us first on the web with the following:

Here is a first look at the backs of the Vinylmation: