After over 5 years, Disney seems to be giving up on making Duffy the Disney Bear the must-have souvenir at Disney Parks.
The Duffy the Disney Bear walk-around character will greet guests in World Showcase at Epcot for the last time on October 3rd, 2015. A Daisy Duck meet and greet will replace the current Duffy location.
The nearby Duffy store at Epcot was stripped of the bear a while back and is now a shop that sells Star Wars and Marvel franchise items.
The Disney Bear was reintroduced on both coasts in 2010 as Duffy after years of unbridled success at the Tokyo Disney Resort. Other than the Epcot meet and greet experience, other theme park experiences with Duffy were planned, but never came to fruition. Supposedly, sales of the plush were never quite what Disney expected and those cast members who launched the project were promoted within the company, leaving Duffy in the hands of those who never envisioned leading the charge for the plush bear.
There was even a media event celebrating Duffy’s arrival at the park back in 2010:
Disney also shuttered the Duffy meet and greet at California Adventure a few months back.
Despite all of these changes, Duffy will still be sold at the parks and there are no plans to retire the nightly bedtime story on Walt Disney World Resort TV as of right now.
Please please please bring back Duffy meet and greets. We booked our trip last may 2015 to arrive beginning of November just to meet Duffy and found he had left a few weeks before. My daughter is still crying. Can you please bring him back? – Heather