Kayla Coleman ’14
Television ads urging viewers to track down one last, limited-edition copy of Beauty and the Beast, or the latest Blu-Ray version of The Lion King, all preach the urgency of such purchases with the threat that soon these beloved classics will be resealed into the elusive ‘Disney Vault.’ The Vault, a mysterious black hole into which the Disney Princesses of the current generation’s childhood seem to have been swallowed, is in fact no more intriguing than a suspension on release for a period of time as a tactic for increasing sales. Since the Vault’s inception in 1937 with the re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, every few years Disney Studios takes classic films that have been “in the vault” and releases them for a limited time, advising customers to buy these films while they can. Disney does this in order to keep these movies fresh for younger generations through advances in technology, as well as to control their market by producing a temporary boom in sales for a certain film as nostalgic fans flock to checkout counters, Disney DVDs in hand. This system of release, suspension and re-release is called moratorium, and is not a practice exclusive to Disney – Universal Studios placed a short-lived moratorium on the box set of the Back to the Future movies, and George Lucas did the same with the Star Wars box set. Disney, unlike the above mentioned examples, has consistently executed its moratorium plans since the system’s beginning. With the exception of Aladdin, all of the currently vaulted films, once placed on the moratorium list, have remained there. Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King are only a few Disney movies being re-released in 2011 out of over twenty from the Disney Vault. On campus, feelings about the Vault are decidedly mixed. Meredith Manley ’14 found the Disney Vault useful and effective, saying, “Technically you can get it from places, and it’s easy to buy. It seems like when they’re doing it, it has gotten better because they use things like high definition.” Brady MacManus ’15 concurred. “I think it’s a good idea because people obviously like the movies. Personally, I like Disney movies, so I think it’s helpful.” However, the Vault system can produce confusion and frustration among Disney lovers. Emily Wagg, a third grader at Episcopal, complainsed “It’s not helpful because people who want to get [a movie], can’t get it and lose their money. It makes me feel mad because I can’t get [a movie] for ten years, and I think they should stop doing this.” There are those still who find no point in lingering over the Disney Vault system. Chelsea Lowe ’13 said, “I don’t care. They should stop. It takes away from the originality, and people don’t care about it.” A Saturday Night Live clip aired on April fifteenth, 2006, used the Disney Vault as a conduit for poking fun at the company, largely through political satire and rumors surrounding the company – an example being that Walt Disney’s frozen head is locked inside of the Vault. Whether the reader chooses to believe in Saturday Night Live’s vivid image of a frozen Walt Disney hibernating amidst stacks of straight-to-DVD sequels is up to him or her.