Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me?! Well I guess it’s still Mickey even though it’s not the Mickey Mouse Club! D23 is the official Disney Fan Club! Thats the short answer of course. There is some history on how it came to be and lots of other fun details about the club that we will dive into today. We have been members of D23 for about 6 years now, we literally joined as soon as we found out it existed. D23 holds lots of events throughout the year, gets special access to movies and merchandise and even gets some cool discounts on Disney property! We will dive into all of that in this post, hope you enjoy!
Overview
I’m sure you’re wondering what D23 even stands for? Well, I’m sure you guessed the D is for Disney, the 23 stands for 1923 or the year that the Disney Company was created! D23 was founded in 2009, so newer than you would expect for a 100 year old company but there were Disney fan clubs long before D23. The club is mainly known for it’s biennial event, the D23 Expo and the Destination D23 events that we will talk more about later.
There are three membership levels as of the date I am writing this:
- Free Membership: This membership level gets you access to a very limited amount of events, the e-newsletter, special giveaways and sweepstakes entries
- Gold Membership: The membership is $99/year and includes all of the perks from the free membership plus: a member gift box, membership card, the quarterly D23 Magazine (one of my favorite perks), Discounts for D23 Expo tickets, Access to ALL D23 events and experiences, special merchandise and discounts.
- Gold Duo Membership: This membership is an add on to the Gold Membership and is $30. Essentially it took the place of the Family Gold membership and allows you to share a membership with someone else and they receive all the same benefits as the original Gold Member.
Events
D23 hosts lots of events throughout the year but just because you are a member doesn’t necessarily mean you will get to go. I wish that were the case but these are ticketed events so they do sell out even though they are only available to D23 members, mostly Gold members only and they are paid events. Some of the events they have are:
- Walt Disney Studios tours in Burbank, CA
- Special Screenings of past movies (September has a screening of The Goofy Movie at the El Capitan Theater in CA and last Christmas they had a screening/singalong of Muppet’s Christmas Carol at the AMC in Disney Springs)
- Members Night for things like Disney on Ice shows and Disney Broadway shows.
- Black Flame Ball celebrating Hocus Pocus in Salem, MA
- D23 Lounge and Special Viewing area for Hollywood Nights
- Destination D23
- D23 Expo
Destination D23
This event is held biannually and this year is at Walt Disney World at the Contemporary Resort. They offer very limited edition shopping items that are set up in shops like Mickey’s of Glendale, Ink & Paint and more. They also have two full days of panels that are hosted by Disney executives like Bob Igor, Josh D’amaro and other Disney Legends. These panels cover everything from a celebration of what has already been to making announcements on new and upcoming things in the parks, movies and merchandising.
Tickets for this event were sold out within seconds this year and sadly, I did not get one. BUT, I did get a ticket to be able to go shopping ($15) and I will be there with Corkcicle one day as well. Holding out hope somebody is scaling a ticket for an affordable price out front when I arrive! Hahahaha! Tickets for the event were $329 for general admission and $549 for preferred admission. So no cheap trick! I will have another full article all about everything at Destination D23 in a couple weeks after the event is over.
D23 Expo
The D23 Expo is similar to Destination D23 but it typically happens in Anaheim, Ca and Tokyo. Just like Destination D23 there are lots of pop up shops, celebrity speakers and announcements. They also do the Disney Legends awards here. This is definitely a bucket list event for me and I hope I get to go one of these years.
History
As I mentioned before, D23 has only been around since 2009, but to be sure there were Disney fan clubs long before that right?! Correct! There were actually lots of Disney fan clubs and still are, D23 is just the official Disney fan club. The Disneyana Fan Club is one that started in the 80’s along with many others. They used to have Disneyana events at the Contemporary Resort where people could buy, sell and trade their Disney memorabilia or just display it to other Disney fans. This went on for a long time before Disney stepped in and took over, creating the events like the D23 expo and Destination D23. I wish I could have seen one of those events and really appreciated what was going on there! How cool to have so many avid Disney fans just sharing their love of Disney. They even invited their own guest speakers from the Disney Company and the Disneyana Fan Club actually started the Disney Legends awards!
Merchandise
Throughout the year there are special edition D23 only items that go on sale through Shop Disney. Things like pins, shirts, plushes. These are also first come first served so when they are gone they are gone! There is also a member gift package that goes out every year as well as a really cute magnet. These are always so much fun to get and full of so much fun stuff! This years is a Disney 100 Mickey Mouse statue and I can’t wait to get it at the end of the year! You will receive these when your membership renews each year. I think my most favorite box was the one that had the D23 lunchbox and I always love the pins we get! One year we got a Skeleton Dance pin and I could have died I was so excited!!
D23 Magazine
This is one of my favorite things about D23! Every quarter or season we get a big, pretty magazine with lots of Disney news, sneak peeks and fun stories. They are always beautiful and have so much in them that we go back and look at over and over again. We keep ours as coffee table books. Definitely worth the membership fee just for the 4 magazines and the member gift every year honestly!
Conclusion
If you guys know me, you know there is no way there could be am official Disney fan club out there and me not be a member! BUT, even though we have not been able to attend the events I still feel like it’s worth it every year. We love getting the member gifts and the magazines and now that we live in Florida the likelihood we will be able to attend an event is higher now. We actually got tickets to the D23 shopping event next weekend so that will be our first official D23 event! I wish it was for the whole Destination D23 weekend but I’ll take what I can get for now!
If you love Disney and love getting exclusive items and things only D23 members can get then you NEED to join! You can join here! That’s it for now, I’ll have a recap of the Destination D23 event in two weeks so stay tuned for that! As always, thank you for reading this week! Have a magical day!