A photo posted to Reddit this week shows the inside of the Lime Garage at Disney Springs before midnight on a Monday night. Lawn chairs. People settled in. Disney Springs had not even closed yet.
The caption from the original poster was direct: “Monday night (tonight) line in Disney Springs Lime Garage before midnight. This is what pin drop Tuesday is now.” They followed with a pair of questions that reflected genuine confusion: “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.”
Pin drop Tuesdays at Disney Springs happen weekly. Guests line up for limited-edition pin releases at World of Disney and other locations around the shopping district. Most weeks, the scene is manageable. Some weeks, people sleep in a parking garage overnight to get to the front of the line by morning. This was one of those weeks.
The reason, according to commenters in the thread, is Kingdom Hearts. And once you understand why Kingdom Hearts pins specifically drive this behavior, the parking garage scene makes considerably more sense, even if it does not become any less extraordinary.
The Reddit Thread Explains Everything
The comments on this post are worth going through carefully because they build on each other in a way that tells a complete story.
Start with the initial reaction from someone who had no context for what they were seeing: “Wait people are literally SLEEPING at the parking lot to get… a pin?!” The reply from the person who posted it captures exactly how quickly this behavior has normalized within the community that follows pin drops: “Apparently. I knew people showed up at like 6am. But this is a new low.”
The identification of the specific release came from another commenter: “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 framing is important for any guest who is wondering whether this is the typical Disney Springs Tuesday experience. It is not. The overnight parking garage queue is a Kingdom Hearts phenomenon, not a weekly reality for every pin release.
The reseller dimension was documented firsthand by someone who has watched it play out at the World of Disney store during high-demand releases: “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.”
That account is significant because it extends the picture beyond pin drops to the broader merchandise release culture at Disney Springs and the parks. Resellers treating these releases as commercial operations, grabbing items by the box without looking at what they are taking, have pushed genuine fans into increasingly extreme behavior just to access merchandise at retail price.
The practical question from a guest planning a trip came in the thread as well: “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's answer was reassuring on this specific point. A regular pin drop Tuesday is not like this. The overnight stays are tied to elevated-demand releases.
The most comprehensive explanation in the thread came from someone who identified as a Kingdom Hearts fan and laid out the full picture: “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 the passage that reframes the entire overnight parking garage scene as something more than irrational fan behavior: “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.”
Read that and the lawn chairs in the Lime Garage stop looking like irrational behavior and start looking like what genuine scarcity, compounded by years of neglect from the licensor and flooded by resellers, produces in a dedicated fan community.
Monday night (tonight) line in Disney Springs Lime Garage before midnight. This is what pin drop Tuesday is now.
byu/crazyparkguy inWaltDisneyWorld
What This Means for a Disney Springs Visit
The parking garage overnight scenario is the extreme end of a spectrum. But the dynamics that produced it exist across the Disney merchandise release calendar in varying degrees.
For guests visiting Disney Springs as part of a Walt Disney World trip, the key practical question is whether your visit coincides with a high-demand drop. If it does, the area around World of Disney and the Lime Garage can feel very different from a standard shopping district visit, particularly early in the morning before stock sells out and the queue disperses.
The broader implication for merchandise on any Walt Disney World trip is the reseller reality the thread describes. Popular limited-edition items sell out fast. Knowing in advance which items are on your list, whether those items have a scheduled release date that overlaps with your visit, and what the demand context looks like for those items gives you a realistic picture of whether you will be able to purchase them at retail during your trip or whether you will need to seek alternatives.
Most of the merchandise at Disney Springs and the parks is available without any of this complexity. The items that are not, the limited-edition drops that generate the parking garage behavior, are a specific subset of the release calendar. Knowing which category your target items fall into before you arrive is the most useful preparation.
Before your Disney Springs visit, check the Disney community on Reddit and social media for any pin drops or limited-edition releases scheduled during your trip dates. The community is reliably good at flagging high-demand releases in advance and giving an accurate picture of what the morning scene around World of Disney typically looks like for specific drops. A few minutes of research before you travel sets realistic expectations and helps you avoid being surprised by a queue that started the night before.
