Trade City, USA - Trip Report

Hello again, everyone.

It's been a while since I did my trip report on here, so I thought this will be a good time to do it again. The trip this time will be a short one, and it is mainly to attend this year's Pin Celebration event at the World Showplace at Epcot. The theme of the Pin Celebration event this year is "Trade City, USA", and it also commemorates the 10th Anniversary of Disney pin trading. So it promises to be a lot of fun.

I fly out to Orlando very early tomorrow morning, and will be there until late Sunday. As with my previous trip report, I'll try to post each day's summary of all my activities whenever I'm back at my resort. This time, we will be staying at the Boardwalk, which will make it very convenient to go to the World Showplace. I've also signed up for the event dessert reception on Saturday evening, which will include a special viewing area for Illuminations.

If you wish to follow my "live" reporting, visit my Disney blog where I'll try to post reports and pictures as they happen. As for now, I need to go finish packing and make sure I'm not forgetting anything.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

Welp, I'm all packed and ready to go. We head out to the airport in about an hour. And no, I didn't sleep much at all last night - too excited.

My next transmission will be from the Most Magical Place on Earth.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

Greetings from the Most Magical Place on Earth.

We are checked in to our resort at the Boardwalk. Our room overlooks directly at The Swan, and it is not a bad view.

We have been busily unpacking, and will now try to hunt for food - probably go to the Boardwalk Bakery. We then plan on going to DHS for a bit of fun (hopefully the ToT doesn't have a long line). Our other friends are flying in later in the afternoon, so we plan on meeting up with them for dinner this evening.

Weather is cloudy, but no rain. It isn't too warm, so that's good.

Will report more later, with pictures.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

I have a little bit of time to update my report, so here it is.

As I've mentioned earlier, our room at the Boardwalk overlooks the water canal and the Dolphin. Here is what we see on our balcony.

The Boardwalk area itself is rather empty.

We went to DHS, and managed to do only ToT and had an ice cream cone. It was extremely humid, even though it wasn't too warm. Most of the indoor activities are quite busy. The Disney Animation class was very full, with a line outside the waiting area, so we skipped that.

When we got out, it looked rather ominous, so we decided to leave and rest a bit in our room. The rain came while we were waiting for the boat to go back to our resort.

Are are back in our room, and resting a bit. We are planning on going to the DVC Members Welcome Wednesday at 4 pm today. This is assuming that we don't doze off and miss it completely.

Zz.

 

[EaglesfanNJ]

Thanks for the update! I have a cousin who went to DHS today too and it's funny, he led off his text messages to me with "It's extremely humid today"

Keep the updates coming if you can!

 

[mouselvrmom]

Love that view from your room! The empty boardwalk is a bit sad though.

 

[KnK]

thanks for the updates. making my trip that much closer.

 

[ZapperZ]

Spent the late afternoon at Downtown Disney. There was a very respectable crowd there in terms of numbers. Bumped into more friends from the Chicago area who are here for the pin celebration as well.

We made our way through what's left of Pleasure Island, and visited a Vinylmation store on the West Side. Not something I collect, and personally, I find those vinylmation to be scary.

We didn't stay long. We made our way to Dakshin in the Crossroad Mall. Had a wonderful dinner of southern Indian cuisine. Then we drove down to a Winn Dixie nearby to do our shopping. So we're all loaded up on yogurt, fruits, and other snacks that we will need for the rest of our stay.

We're back at our resort and will turn in early. We plan on doing Animal Kingdom tomorrow morning, and then at Noon, make our way to the Yacht/Beach Club convention center where the early registration/merchandise pick-up for the pin event will commence. Even though there will be pin trading and pin trading night going on tomorrow there, we don't plan on staying that long, just long enough to say hi to people we know and haven't seen since... well, since the pin event last year. We plan on going over to the Magic Kingdom after the merchandise pick-up. Hopefully, the Electrical Parade is still going on.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

This is a catch-up report from yesterday.

We went to the DVC Welcome Home Wednesday for DVC members. We've been to a few of these before, so we kinda know what to expect, but we've never seen this many people showing up before. So this one is definitely well-attended. Or maybe there are just more people wanting free refreshment and a respite from the humidity.

They give you this coupon for snacks.

Once inside, we found a good place to sit down.

The typical game they play is to pick out 4 audience members to play a Jeopardy-type game of Disney trivia.

It was fun, and even though we didn't get selected to win one of the gifts they were giving out, we still had our parting gift, a nice DVC baseball hat.

We then met up with friends and went to Downtown Disney. Did some pin shopping (of course), and then walked over to the West Side since someone in our party wanted to go to D-Street.

This store is scary, simply because I find Vinylmations to be scary. Sill, if they sell this chandelier, I may be tempted to buy one!

A wonderful first day. Today is going to be a long one based on what we've planned. This is also the day we pick up our merchandise for the Pin Celebration event.

Will report more on this later...

Zz.

 

[sweetpee_1993]

Great report! Enjoying the read. Never done a pin event before so I'm interested to hear all about it. :wave:

 

[ZapperZ]

We spent the morning at Animal Kingdom. Again, the crowds were that bad at all.

We of course did EE. The standby line was 15 minutes, but we did single-rider line. We got on in less than 5 minutes.

We did the Safari after that. It was quite enjoyable since we got to see many animals rather up-close. John, our tour cast member, was quite good in spotting any of the animals and also their Swahili name.

We then made our way to the Beach/Yacht Club convention center for the early registration and merchandise pick-up for the pin event. There was a long line of people

This is the line to pick up the merchandise...

.. and this is the pin trading area, already filled with many pin traders.

We picked up all of our merchandise and gifts, and walked back to our resort to cool off and rest a bit. We plan on going to the Magic Kingdom this evening.

Zz.

 

[DecWDW]

I love reading all WDW trip reports, but this one has something different! Looking forward to more!

 

[ZapperZ]

We spent yesterday evening at the Magic Kingdom. As expected, the crowds were rather small, but the humidity was still very high. There was just no breeze at all, which made it even more sticky.

We had a quick dinner at Columbia Harbour House. Is it me, or are the fish there looking more and more like fish fingers? They use to have some resemblance to fish fillet before, but now....

We then did Splash Mountain, which had almost NO wait, and then did Haunted Mansion. After that, we staked our place in Liberty Square to watch the electrical parade.

Here are a few sights from the parade:

It was a wonderful parade. The last time we saw this parade was in 2005 at DCA.

[cont...]

 

[ZapperZ]

[... cont]

We then made our way to Main Street to catch Wishes. I think we had a good spot.

Here are also a few shots from Wishes. It was very humid and the smoke/vapor lingered a lot longer than usual.

We then followed the horde of the masses in leaving MK. We took the ferry back to the Transportation/Ticket center.

It was a tiring but fun day. Today is the first official day of the Pin Celebration event. It opens at 9:30 am at World Showplace, but we're not going to get there as soon as it opens. We might sleep in a bit, and try to make our way there at around 10:00 am. Will try to snap a few pictures from the event.

Zz.
​

 

[ZapperZ]

Phew! It was a very long day! As tiring as it was, it was also a lot of fun. Met up with old friends, had fun doing pin trading, and had nice conversations with other pin traders while I stand in one of the long lines for the pin trading games.

The day started off with us getting into Epcot, or in this case, getting into the World Showcase since we came from the Epcot Resort area. Instead of our bags being checked by the Security people, pin traders attending the pin event get their bags sniffed by one of the security dogs. We nicknamed the dogs "Rin Pin Pin". (you have to be a bit older to get that reference)

Going through the gates that brought us to the World Showplace, we see the statue of Mickey that welcomes us to Trade City.

The following are the sights around the main pin trading games and stage area of the event.

[cont...]

 

[ZapperZ]

[...cont]

This is towards the front of the line at one of the pin trading board. As you can see, the board faces in the opposite direction. Each pin trader gets to trade 2 pins within 1 minute when he/she comes up to the pin board. They replenish with new pin boards every half hour. So if you are the first person to get a fresh, new board, you have tons of good pins to choose from.

The other major area of the event is the pin trading area. Here, pin traders can trade pins with other pin traders. This is why you see traders hauling in luggages and bags to the event. They have pins to trade!

Many pin collectors and those who are new to pin trading find this area a bit intimidating. There are certain people who we call "pin sharks", those who will try to take advantage of you if you don't know what you are doing. But there are also plenty of decent pin traders who would trade with you fairly, and would not try to pull a fast one if they know that you don't have a clue as to what you are doing.

At the end of the day, we went to Marrakesh for dinner, which is always one of my favorite places to eat.

We did plan on either going to Downtown Disney later in the night, or even go to MK, since they have the extra magic hour, but when we looked at the impending weather, we decided to just hang around the resort and turn in early.

Tomorrow is the last day of the pin event (Sunday will be the vinylmation event and then the pin trading will be opened to the public in the afternoon). We will be attending the Trade City pin dessert reception in the evening, with a special viewing area for Illuminations. So that should be fun, but it will be another long day.

Zz.

 

[David Roberts]

Wow I definitely wanna go to an event like this

 

[Thumbelina]

Thanks for letting the non pin traders in to your world. It looks like a lot of fun.

 

[adamneely]

I'm loving this TR! I wish i was able to make it to the event (but for the Vinylmation :X) Have you been meeting tons of cool people? Is the event causing crazy crowds?

 

[ZapperZ]

I'm loving this TR! I wish i was able to make it to the event (but for the Vinylmation :X) Have you been meeting tons of cool people? Is the event causing crazy crowds?

Actually, the crowds have been rather light. The event is adding only, at most, 1200 people or so, since I think that's around the limit for the registration.

And yes, I've been meeting a lot of cool people. After coming to one of these since 2005, many of the faces become familiar. So it's almost like a yearly reunion where old friends meet again. There are also many pin traders from outside the country, especially Japan and the UK. So it is truly an international crowd.

Today, we get our parting gifts. If it is on the same level as our welcome gift, it will be good. The welcome gift is causing the biggest news of the event so far. In one of the MOST EVIL AND BRILLIANT MOVE that Disney Pin trading event has ever made, the welcome gift is enticing those of us who did not want to buy the street sign mystery pin set to scramble and buy them, along with trying to find the rest on the pin trading board. If you haven't read my blog, let me explain....

The mystery box being offered this year is a number of Trade City Street Signs.

http://eventservices.disney.go.com/pintrading/pin?id=51817

I first looked at it and didn't think I want to collect all of them (there's only 2 randomly selected pin in a box).

But then, our welcome gift is THIS:

When you open it, the inside reveals this:

The top left and bottom right are pins. The rest are just images of street signs. If you compare the mystery pin and the images in the box, you'll notice that 10 of the pins are represented here. The rest you CAN ONLY get from the pin trading board game at the event! So it caused many pin traders to scramble and stand in line for the pin trading game in the hope of getting the rest of the pins. That's why the lines for the games have been very long.

But that's not all. You'll also notice that in the mystery box set, there is a question mark. This is the "chaser" mystery pin. While all the other pins are "limited release pins" of the same edition number, the chaser pin is limited edition of ONLY 100. This means that there are only 100 of the chaser pins around, and you can only get one by luck! Since there are more than 100 of us here at this event, it means that the majority of us will NOT get it and will therefore not get a complete set! You can just imagine the "feeding frenzy" among the pin collectors in not only buying the mystery box to try and get one of these chaser pin, but also the furious trading going on just to get as many of the street sign pins to match the images in the box. Even someone like me who didn't plan on buying the mystery pins is being sucked into it.

Like I said, it was an evil and brilliant move all at once. And it is cause quite an excitement among the pin traders. Each year, there's one pin or one thing that creates the big news. A couple of years ago, it was the Mickey's Scoop Sanderson pin. Last year was almost a dud since there wasn't anything that caused any excitement other than the Figment/Dreamfinder jumbo pin. But this year, hands down, the mystery pin set IS the biggest talk-of-the-town here. Whoever thought of doing this struck gold for Disney.

Since I'm talking about the welcome gift, I might as well show you the t-shirt we got as part of our registration:

So far, what most of us thought that it could be a ho-hum event, is turning into a very exciting one.

Zz.