Brisbane just landed the biggest Disney pop up store Australia has ever seen

Queen Street Mall has basically turned into Disneyland this winter, and if you have a niece, nephew or an unshakeable Toy Story habit, you are about to lose money in the Wintergarden.

Disney Store's pop up opened in Wintergarden on 4 July and runs until Sunday 27 September, and organisers are calling it the biggest Disney retail experience Australia has seen. This is only the brand's second Australian pop up this year, after a smaller run in Perth back in April, so Brisbane pulled a genuine coup landing the flagship version.

It is not just tourist tat either. Shelves are stacked with Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars gear, including a dedicated Pixar 40th anniversary range and a Brisbane exclusive set of collectable cards you will not find anywhere else in the country. Stock refreshes weekly, so a July visit and a September visit turn up genuinely different shelves, which is a smart way to get repeat customers walking back through Wintergarden.

There is also a Disney Store Japan angle, with the brand's Urupocha-chan plush range sitting alongside the regular merchandise, product lines that rarely make it to Australian shelves at all.

Opening day back in July had queues out the door, the first 50 people through the door scored a free gift, and Brisbane even hosted a ticketed pin trading event called Tails of Friendship alongside sister events in London and Dublin. That one has been and gone, but it says plenty about how seriously Disney is treating this location.

Trading hours run late on Fridays until 9pm if you want to dodge the weekend crush, and Wintergarden sits smack in the middle of the mall so there is zero excuse for "I didn't know it was on."

The bigger picture is Disney doubling down on physical retail while most brands retreat to online only. A pop up in a regional Australian mall still pulling crowds nearly two months in says something about how much goodwill this catalogue still has, decades of theme park price hikes and streaming price rises included.

Get in before Sunday 27 September, because once it packs up, that Brisbane exclusive card series goes with it. And good luck walking out without buying something for a kid who is not even yours.