PAJAMA PARTY – In Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Wish,” Asha’s pajama-wearing goat Valentino is confident and opinionated—he follows Asha wherever she goes. Adorable and wise, Valentino could teach humans a thing or two about perseverance. Featuring the voices of Academy Award®-winning actress Ariana DeBose as Asha and Alan Tudyk as Valentino, the epic animated musical opens only in theaters on Nov. 22, 2023. © 2023 Disney. All Rights Reserved.

When unsold Walt Disney World merchandise is clogging the shelves, Disney removes it from stores and sends it to one of two places. Some of the unsold merchandise goes to the Disney Character Warehouse stores at Orlando’s two premium outlet malls where its sold at a discount. The rest of it goes to a store called Cast Connection. This is a store specifically for Disney cast members.

A rack of LGTBT-themed clothing at Disney’s Cast Connection

Cast Connection is where you’ll find a lot of unsold apparel, toys, decorative items, and even furniture from the resort hotels, all offered at huge markdowns for employees of the Disney company. To shop at Cast Connection you must be a Disney cast member or be accompanied by one. On a recent trip to Cast Connection, accompanied by a cast member, I spotted something very interesting.

The entire store was awash in merchandise from the failed Disney animated film Wish and Disney’s massive LGBTQ Pride celebration from the month of June. The sheer volume of the stock, shown in the accompanying images, tells a very specific story about the merchandise Disney is offering and its fanbase’s collective willingness to buy it.

Disney-themed pride merchandise at Disney’s Cast Connection

Wish was meant to be a huge success for the Disney company that ended up being one of its most spectacular failures. This animated film was set to mark 100 years of Disney animation. The original pitch was reportedly an origin story for the classic Disney song “When You Wish Upon a Star.” However, according to Film Threat’s Chris Gore and Alan Ng, things went off the rails when the more extreme political voices within the Disney company started to inject modern day activism into both the film’s story and its staff.

This information was relayed to Gore and Ng by current and former animators who worked for Disney. That Park Place’s own LW Ghost summed up these findings in an article from November 2023, saying:

“First of all, the pressure from management to hire people based on their sex or ethnicity over talent caused much friction, and many of the talented animators of the past, Disney greats, left in frustration, leaving behind a culture where the remaining people are being suppressed and are afraid for their jobs.

The anonymous sources who reached out all used the word “activist” to describe what was going on and how such people were openly attempting to overthrow the traditional animators and talents in the company.”

Baskets of discounted Wish toys at Disney’s Cast connection

The move was a massive critical and commercial flop, earning only $255 million at the box office. This includes a measly $64 million from the domestic US box office. Deadline Hollywood estimated that the film saw losses of more than $131 million. Compare that to Inside Out 2, a film with no modern day activism in it.

The Disney Pixar film made $1.629 billion, becoming the highest grossing animated film of all time.

Boxes of Wish toys at Disney’s Cast Connection

Disney’s celebration of LGBTQ Pride month goes on for the entirety of June every year, with special photo ops all over the parks and a slew of rainbow colored merchandise. This includes everything from bags to mouse ears to keychains, apparel, and more. But you don’t need me to tell you about that. You can see just about all of it in the images included with this article.

While Disney’s Pride celebration goes on for an entire month, the company has scaled back its Fourth of July celebrations in recent years around the same time period.

Boxes of LGBT-themed backpacks at Disney’s Cast Connection

Disney was extremely aggressive with merchandise for both Wish and Pride, which many saw as the company doubling down and investing more in “woke” ideology.

However, the fact that so much of this merchandise is currently warming pegs in Cast Connection shows a large scale rejection of both merch lines by Disney’s customers.

Rows of LGBT-themed Star Wars toys at Disney’s Cast Connection

So, that begs the question, will the House of Mouse abandon its push for identity politics in its films and theme parks in search of the almighty dollar? Or have Bob Iger and his ilk only begun to fight? Sound off in the comment section and let us know.