With the beautiful recreation of Belle’s Village at Tokyo Disneyland opening September 28th also comes a trifecta of highly themed shops—La Belle Librarie, Little Town Traders, and Bonjour Gifts. Until today, we’d never seen inside, so it’s finally time for our first look inside the Village Shops within New Fantasyland!
Exterior
The first shop, La Belle Librairie, features a rather understated exterior compared to the other two.
There’s a little bit more happening at Little Town Traders, with flowers adorning the doors above the entrance, as well as shields depicting goods that theoretically could be sold in a village town store. We touched on this in our tour of Belle’s Village earlier this week.
The front doors also have a “LTT” pattern on the front for Little Town Traders.
Over by Bonjour Gifts, there’s more flowers above the entry as well as a substantially larger window display.
Walls along the exterior of the shops feature signs and fake doors for other shops present in the village. This one, according to the project head Imagineer Jim Clark, is a tribute to Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, composers of the music for Beauty and the Beast.
A number of other signs dot the exterior, including signs for a bakery and a tailor.
Also on the wall outside is a sign denoting the village—Ville de Province, established 1691.
Cast Costumes
Cast Members wear two types of costumes in the Village Shops, seemingly divided by gender.
Interior
The three shops all connect to each other inside, allowing for free movement. Since items are only on display and not purchase at the present time, there are no shelves inside.
Instead, items are currently displayed as samples only, along with barcodes Guests may scan to purchase the items through the Tokyo Disney Resort app.
La Belle Librairie is themed to Belle’s favorite bookshop from the film, and obviously features books everywhere as part of the decor for Guests.
Even the registers have miniature books in front of the cash registers, each with different parts of Beauty and the Beast in French.
Things are less interesting over at Little Town Traders, with a number of common and interesting items alike populating props in this middle store.
Above the registers sit these four puppets themed to characters both major and minor from Beauty and the Beast.
By far the most decorated store of all has to be Bonjour Gifts, with a number of fabrics and gaudy decorations that look straight out of any 65+ year old grandmother’s house. So much frills, ribbons, and other rather tacky decor, but it certainly sells the “small town life in the 19th century” look compared to the other two stores.
At this store, paintings of bows help conceal the registers. There’s also a lot of pink on the wall, ceiling, and exterior if you missed it.
The Village shops will open on September 28th and sell two merchandise lines—”New Dreams, More Fun!” Expansion Grand Opening and The Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast,. We look forward to shopping in these stores on Monday, so stay tuned to WDWNT for coverage on opening day of New Fantasyland!
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