October 16 doesn't just mark the prerelease of Hyperia City for Disney Lorcana. Two additional premium products are also dropping this week, giving collectors even more to chase.
The Curator’s Collection: Beauty and the Beast Edition and the I2I Foil Playmat will both be available on October 16, but there’s a catch. You’ll only be able to find them at select Disney locations.
The Beauty and the Beast Curator’s Collection features six fan-favorite glimmers from previous Disney Lorcana sets, all with new artwork celebrating the film’s 35th anniversary. The cards use a stained-glass-inspired design that feels like a perfect fit for Beauty and the Beast.
This is actually the second Curator’s Collection released for Disney Lorcana. The first was the Heroines Edition, which included six borderless foil promo cards featuring Ariel, Elsa, Jasmine, Mulan, Anna, and Tinker Bell. That set originally retailed for $99.99, but good luck finding it for that now.
The Heroines Edition has sold for upwards of $400 on sites like eBay and TCGplayer, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens with the Beauty and the Beast version. The Beauty and the Beast Edition has an official retail price of $99.99, though secondary market and presale prices have ranged between $280 and $500 dollars due to high demand.
The other premium product launching on October 16 is the I2I Foil Playmat. It features the Enchanted artwork from I2I in Fabled, illustrated by Jochem van Gool, along with foil embellishments and stitched edges.
Disney confirmed that both products will be available at the following locations:
- Disney’s Pin Traders in Downtown Disney District at Disneyland Resort in California
- World of Disney in Disney Springs at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida
- World of Disney in Disney Village at Disneyland Paris
- DisneyStore.co.uk
And this is where things could get messy. The Heroines Edition drew huge crowds when it launched, particularly at Disney Springs, with collectors lining up early and queues stretching through the parking garage.
Now you’ve got another Curator’s Collection coming, people already know what happened to the value of the last one, and Hyperia City prerelease events are happening on the same day. It feels like a recipe for another hectic launch.
I get that these are collector-focused products, but limiting them to just a few Disney locations is frustrating. If you don’t live near California, Florida, or Paris, you’re basically out of luck unless you want to pay secondary-market prices. Even if you do live nearby, there’s still no guarantee you’ll get one without dealing with long lines and a lot of competition.
I’d much rather see Disney and Ravensburger offer some kind of online option for releases like this. A virtual queue, lottery, or randomized purchase system would at least give more collectors a fair shot without having to camp out at Disney Springs. We’ve already seen similar approaches used for highly sought-after Pokémon TCG products, and something like that would make a lot more sense here.
Limited products are always going to be hard to get. That’s part of the appeal. But when there are only a handful of places selling them, it starts to feel less like a collectible hunt and more like a geography problem. And if the Beauty and the Beast Curator’s Collection follows anything close to the path of the Heroines Edition, October 16 could get pretty wild.