Duffy the Disney Bear Debuts at Disney California Adventure

Thursday, October 14th was the official opening day for Duffy the Disney Bear at both the Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resort.  I had planned to attend the release at both Epcot and Disney California Adventure for my Worldwide Disney Theme Parks column, but sadly had to cancel my brief trip to Florida due to unfortunate family circumstances.

The information release for Duffy’s opening ceremony indicated it would be at 9:45am with the official park opening time at 10am.  I had sent a request for clarification on the official time, however, I never heard anything back.  We arrived at the DL Resort around 9:20am and were surprised to find pretty lengthy lines to get in.  After about 10 minutes, they began letting people in who all went running towards Grizzly Rapids.  My mother figured they were headed to get FastPasses for the World of Color show and I had no idea what they were doing.  I just knew we only had 10 minutes to get to the ceremony.

After mistakenly trying to go down the straightest route by the Wine Country Trattoria, we were met with a sea of guests and a rope.  A CM told me we could go around by Grizzly Rapids to get back there so off I went with only two minutes to spare!  As I passed the FP area for World of Color, there were probably already 200 or more people in line!

I arrived to find numerous kids in the media area, which ended up working fairly well since I was able to see over them.  The area was pretty packed, but not everyone was there for Duffy.  Paradise Pier itself was blocked off with a rope so the hundreds of people waiting to get back there were now in the middle of the Duffy ceremony about to begin.

Disneyland Ambassador, Danielle DuBois, and Michael O’Grattan, Senior VP of Entertainment and Imaging led the ceremony where they invited Mickey and Minnie on stage with their own stuffed Duffy Bears dressed in the sailor outfit.   The ceremony finale included a short processional to bring the Duffy the Disney Bear character up on stage, followed by an explosion of streamers.

Everyone posed for a few media pictures and I made a beeline for the store to see what was merchandise was available.  I was mainly curious to see how many outfits were released and what the store displays looked like.

I was surprised to see Duffy taking up such a small area of Treasures in Paradise.  There was just a corner of the store devoted to Duffy merchandise, but the theming was cute.  They are really capitalizing on the travel aspect of Duffy and the bears were placed in suitcases and trunks that have country stickers all over.  There is a sign that says, “Where will you take him?”  There were six outfits released — sailor, Canada, Mexico, China, a baseball jersey, and a safari outfit.  They brought back the 12 inch “My First Disney Bear” as “My First Duffy Bear” with the classic Tokyo bear style.   There was also a 12 inch Holiday Bear that was quite cute and a keychain that is similar to the ones you find at Tokyo DisneySea.  The 17 inch bears and 12 inch dressed bears retail for $25 each, outfits are $15, $8 for the keychain, and the large size bear retails for $60.  I have since learned that Epcot received quite a bit more merchandise than DCA did — including several different outfits, a WDW 40th Anniversary 12 inch bear, and the zipper pouch and magnet that are popular in Tokyo.

There has been a lot of discussion online about the quality of the outfits and bears here versus those you get from TDS.  There are definitely differences and the outfits here seem to be more kid friendly – lacking a lot of separate pieces and adornments.  Many of the designs on the outfits you would probably see done in layers and/or embroidery if they were released at TDS.  As my mom pointed out, the $40 price tag would not work for the Disney Parks here so they needed to be simplified.  I think some of the outfits are quite cute and I like the inclusion of the Mickey heads in select areas (like the material used for the China outfit).

Of course, I had all six of my bears in attendance for the event, while my Mom had her three.  One of my bears was wearing his Halloween costume — the Tim Burton version of the Mad Hatter.  Needless to say, he drew quite a bit of attention from the get go.  I ended up talking with Sarah Tully who writes the awesome blog “Around Disney” for the OC Register and later found her video counterpart cornering me as I was shopping.  LOL.  We also had the opportunity to chat with Monty, who designs the Duffy merchandise for the US Parks, and he was in awe of Chuffy (yes, my Duffy Bears all have individual names that end in “uffy”) in his Mad Hatter outfit.  Chuffy was treated like an absolute celebrity and Mom and I were the lucky recipient of some cool stuff – one CM gave us each a Duffy pin (the mystery ones released previously at WDW), while another went in the back and gave us both one of the Duffy chocolate cups and Rice Krispie treats!

After buying one of everything released (sans the sailor outfit, and 17 inch and 28 inch bears since Mom was able to get me a sailor suit bear at the passholder event), we were off to finally have our photo taken with Duffy.  The grand total for everything with the 20% passholder discount was only $115 – about 1/4 of my first purchase at Tokyo DisneySea a few weeks ago for the Halloween merchandise!

We headed out for the Duffy line, which was quite minimal, and found Duffy trying to count how many bears we had in tow (had to bring them all for the official release day!)  After finishing up with Duff,y I went back in to finally get some photos of the merchandise and ran into two girls from Japan.  They spoke very little English, but I managed to find out they flew out from Tokyo just for the event.   After that, I spotted someone else with a Shellie May and turns out, it was the person I was hoping to meet.  Margaret is a member of my Disney Theme Parks Facebook page and we’ve chatted a bit online about Duffy and the event.  It was great to meet her and Norio and find out how much we really have in common.  She’s from Taiwan, which is where I have lived for the past 1 1/2 years, and I hope we will get to meet up when she visits early next year.   We chatted a bit more and managed to draw a few more interesting stares from passersby.  We went back and took a couple photos together with Duffy….and again, no real line.  Oh, if that was only the case in Tokyo whenever I am there!

After saying our goodbyes, Mom and I headed off to Disneyland to nibble on the Halloween treats and meet up with my aunt and cousin who were also visiting the resort.  We ended up coming back to Treasures in Paradise around 4pm and found the shelves were nearly bare.  Only a few 17 inch bears remained, a few 12 inch “My First Duffy” bears, one 28 inch bear was on the shelf, and a few Mexico outfits were spread out to keep the wall hooks from being empty.  That was pretty much it.  One of the CMs said they should get more keychains an hour or so later, but we had World of Color dinner reservations and didn’t have time to go back.

Walking back to Paradise Pier again, we spotted the balloon vendors that had the Duffy balloon.  It is cute — a large Duffy is on one side and the other has Mickey holding Duffy.  I had planned to come back and find out how much they were, but we never saw anyone else selling them again and of course, everything was shut down after World of Color.

The last Duffy item I spotted was the kid’s menu at the Wine Country Trattoria.  It’s an activity placemat and has different mazes, games, etc., along with Duffy dressed in his various costumes — again focusing on the travel aspect of Duffy.

All in all, the event was handled well, the ceremony was short, but cute, and Duffy seemed to be well-received by those in attendance.  There was a number of management level and above Disney employees on hand for the event so there is definitely a lot of eyes monitoring how everything went.  I hope Duffy succeeds and people keep an open mind on what a cute and lovable character he is.  Personally, I would’ve preferred he stay exclusive to Tokyo, and I am a bit surprised to see him making his way back to the Parks.  I figured it was inevitable and even predicted it in my earlier Duffy article on Examiner this week, but I learned that Duffy will be coming to Disneyland Paris in December.  I will probably not make it back to Paris for his release however…maybe not until February or March sometime.

I will post separate entries on our foodie experience at the Wine Country Trattoria as well as photos from World of Color.  I just have to end this by saying I managed to talk my Mom into adopting another Duffy Bear so now she has four bears (a Duffy and Shellie May from Tokyo and two from Disney California Adventure).  She bought 5 outfits so she really needed another bear to wear some of them!  Be sure to check out the gallery below for the rest of the event day photos.