WHEN New Holiday Ears (and More) Could Be Coming to Disney World

Sorry Halloween, but the holiday season is already creeping in and starting to take over. We haven’t decided on a costume, been trick-or-treating, or even seen all the scary movies that we have planned for this year, but we’re keeping a close eye on stocking stuffers and Christmas tree ornaments even as we embrace spooky season.

Happy Holidays from Hollywood Studios! | 2021

If you’re like us, you may also be looking forward to the holidays! Disney is certainly getting ready to celebrate big, with announcements about EPCOT’s Festival of the Holidays and updates on Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. So now we’re wondering WHEN we might see new holiday merchandise for this year arrive in the parks and online — let’s take a look at holiday seasons past to get a good estimate on when we can start our Disney holiday shopping.

Disney has already released a sneak peek at the holiday Minnie ears and some other merchandise for 2022, but we haven’t seen it online or in gift shops around the parks yet.

©Disney

So when will these new items finally arrive? We can find some clues in the previous years’ merchandise drops.

2021

In 2021, the big day for holiday merchandise arriving in Disney World was November 4th. That was when we saw the main collections arrive in full force at several different gift shops, and the new Minnie ears showed up as well.

New ears alert! | 2021

Some Minnie ears showed up online a few weeks later, on November 22nd. We saw more ears arrive in the parks on November 13th, too!

Holiday Sweater Ears 2021

As you’ll see in the next 2 sections, these November dates are actually a little later than we normally see holiday merchandise arrive in the parks. This may be because October 2021 was the start of Disney World’s 50th anniversary celebration, so the parks were busy with other decorations and merchandise for that month, thus pushing back the holiday items to early November.

2020

In 2020, we saw the big arrival of holiday merchandise (both online and in the Disney World parks) on October 26th — a bit before 2021’s November 4th release.

Disney Merchandise 2020

Some new holiday Minnie ears arrived even before the rest of the collections, with gingerbread ears being released on October 22nd and peppermint-themed ears showing up on the 22nd as well.

2019

Like 2020, 2019 had an earlier release for holiday merchandise. The big collections arrived in the parks in late October, and both Disneyland and Disney World had plenty of holiday goodies by October 31st.

Move over pumpkins!

The new Minnie ears in Disney World arrived on October 24th, and Disneyland got new ears as well on October 27th.

Gingerbread Ears

Both 2019 and 2020 saw holiday merchandise in Disney World by late October. This seems to be a good indicator for 2022, because October 2021 was a bit of an anomaly with the start of Disney World’s 50th anniversary. That means we could start to see holiday merchandise in the parks as early as next week!

Holiday merch from 2021

We’ll of course be keeping an eye out and will let you know as soon as we spot the new items. Stay tuned to DFB for the latest updates from the parks.

Click here to preview the new (and DIVISIVE) holiday Minnie ears.

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