Disney Store exits Wisconsin: five more shops across US shuttered

There’s a little less magic, now, in the state of Wisconsin. The Disney Store’s location at Southridge Mall in Greendale, Wisconsin will not reopen, DisKingdom has learned.

As of 2005, Disney had three stores in “The Badger State”, the others at Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa, and East Town Mall in Madison. Perhaps tellingly, the Southridge location had never been renovated from its original design.

Also gone is the Disney Store in Somerset Collection in Troy, Michigan, leaving that state with just one location.

The stores at Desert Hills Premium Outlets in Cabazon, California, Imperial Valley Mall in El Centro, California, and North Point Mall in Alpharetta, Georgia will also not reopen. The locations have been removed from both Disney’s store locator and the various mall websites.

This doubles the total of closed American stores to 10. There were also three closures in the United Kingdom and one in Germany. A complete list of closed stores can be found at the end of this article.

Since Monday, another 29 locations of Disney Store have reopened in the United States, bringing them to 119 total reopened shops. That leaves 74 stores in the US and Canada that have yet to reopen. The Disney Store at Ontario mall was being restocked today, when DisKingdom visited.

Shuttered locations span decades of design

The closed locations vary the gamut.

The location at Somerset Collection in Michigan opened in 1996, but online photos indicate that it had renovated to the Imagination Park design, which debuted in 2010. Others, like those in Alpharetta and El Centro, sported a red Mickey Mouse head entrance, indicating that the locations were last renovated during The Children’s Place ownership, 2004 to 2008.

But both the location at Wisconsin’s Southridge Mall and one at Indiana’s University Park Mall, looked nearly identical to when they opened in the 1990s.

In 2009, Disney Store announced that it would convert all 340 of their locations to Imagination Park stores. That was sidelined by executive changes at the company, according to Jim Hill Media.

Why is this relevant? Many stores remodel ever 7 to 10 years, meaning that Disney had fallen behind the curve. While it may seem wasteful, studies have shown that renovations actually trigger spending by new customers, and increased spending from existing customers.

Known Disney Store closures, 2020

Title graphic uses an animation cel from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Wisconsin is “Badger State”, and pictured is Mr. Badger.