More New Hotel Merchandise at Disney World

We’re back by popular demand with another look at new resort-specific merchandise around Walt Disney World. In this post, we’ll share photos of hotel souvenirs from Yacht Club, BoardWalk Inn, Coronado Springs, and the All Star Resorts.

This is a sequel to our New Hotel-Specific Merchandise at Walt Disney World post, and to a lesser extent, the New Disney’s Art of Animation Resort Merchandise article. As we asked there, we’re curious as to which approach you prefer.

We’re big fans of resort-specific Walt Disney World merchandise and are always keeping an eye out for it when we’re at the hotels. Nevertheless, with dozens of resorts, it’s impossible to stay abreast of the latest releases, so what’s here is new to us, and not necessarily brand presses.

One big motivation for this series of posts is that Walt Disney World resort-specific merchandise has proliferated in recent years. The designs have become less formulaic and more ambitious. Just as we critique things we think Disney is doing wrong, we think praise is in order for what they’re getting right.

Anyway, we’ll start with Coronado Springs Resort:

This isn’t new at all; it’s probably at least 3 years old at this point.

In the last merchandise update, we showed this same look at Old Key West and Caribbean Beach. It’s formulaic but still distinct, and is only really a “problem” when you start collecting similar designs from a bunch of different Walt Disney World resorts.

At first, I was surprised by the lack of options of Coronado Springs, especially after seeing the wealth of options at Caribbean Beach.

However, Coronado is the convention resort, and it wouldn’t surprise me if convention-goers aren’t sentimental about where they stay. If this demo is purchasing Walt Disney World merchandise at all, it’s probably stuff from the parks…and for their kids who got stuck at home. It’ll be interesting to see how, if at all, Gran Destino changes the merchandise scene at Coronado Springs Resort.

Next up is Disney’s All Star Resort. All of them, apparently.

I’d assume this is a similar deal as with Coronado Springs, albeit for different reasons. Many of the people at the All Stars have zero interest in remembering their stay.

Our first stay together at Walt Disney World, nearly 15 years ago at this point, was at All Star Sports.

Let’s just say we could’ve definitely used a toothpick holder and/or measuring cup during that stay. My, how time has passed us by. We so rarely…uh…use toothpicks these days.

Moving on to the more interesting stuff, we head to Disney’s Yacht Club Resort.

Yacht Club has a wide selection of ambitious shirts in nautically-inspired styles. Above are a couple of said shirts.

Here are a couple of classy shirts.

I like the variety here; pretty much something for everyone.

This ornament is also pretty cool.

Much better than the generic ‘Mickey head with resort name on it’ style that we’ve seen elsewhere.

Yacht Club also has a few mug options. Above is the old style with the formulaic design.

Below is the new style, with a ground-up design that’s more distinct to the resort.

Eh, I still prefer the old look.

Nevertheless, variety should definitely be applauded here.

Saving the best for last, we head to Disney’s BoardWalk Inn.

One thing I think is curious about all of this merchandise is that it omits “Inn” from “Disney’s BoardWalk,” effectively treating it like a destination rather than a resort.

This makes sense, as it’s not going to stop most guests from buying it, whereas visitors might balk at purchasing resort merchandise from a hotel at which they didn’t stay.

A couple more shirts, both of which are women’s.

I’m not a stylish fella. If you’ve spent any amount of time reading the blog, you already knew that.

I absolutely love this shirt’s design, but I just cannot get behind the “stretched out and unfinished” v-neck design. I just finally got on board with v-necks generally. I feel like this shirt is asking too much of me, and I truly wonder how many Walt Disney World guests are going to be hip enough to want this? Put this same design on a normal t-shirt, and I’ll bet its sales double. But what do I know?

As we’ve seen more of them, the aesthetic of the new Mickey cartoons has started to grow on me. (Exposure and familiarity have a way of doing that, I suppose.)

Suffice to say, I love this mug. Really cool how the BoardWalk is basically the setting for a ‘scene’ of the cartoon.

Some pins in that same style.

There’s also a really cool water bottle similar to these items, but the photos I got of it were out of focus. Oops.

That wraps up this resort-specific Walt Disney World merchandise update. Hopefully this was a fun, useful, or interesting post. In another week or two we’ll drop in with either another one like this, or a stand-alone update from Wilderness Lodge, so stay tuned for that!

Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!

YOUR THOUGHTS

Have any favorite pieces of merchandise from the resorts? Any hotels you think have consistently better items than others? What do you think of the ‘style’ of the shirts at BoardWalk? Would you like to see future coverage broken down by resort (and cover more than just merchandise) or should we stick to this approach? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!