So
they’ve gone and decided to close the Castle Heraldry Shoppe,
reportedly to extend the queue area for Peter Pan’s Flight. While I
am sympathetic to this purpose—the spillover for Fantasyland’s
most popular dark ride really was getting out of hand—it’s still
disappointing to lose yet another unique and classy feature of the
park. It’s nowhere near the travesty committed by walling off the
Court of Angels to the general public, but dangit, I like the
Heraldry Shoppe, and not just because I have an interest in heraldry
itself. It's one of the few places in Fantasyland to have something
going for it with more substance than just animated characters
presented without comment.
And
the thing is...we didn't have
to lose it, per se. Shops come and go all the time—the
Heraldry Shoppe itself only goes back to 2004—and sometimes they
simply move. There’s no particular reason some other
location couldn’t take up the mantle of Disneyland’s purveyor of
fine coats of arms and bladed weapons. This is definitely true of
Fantasyland, whose retail spaces tend to be underused or redundant to
begin with.
So here are my picks, in descending order of preference, for where
the Heraldry Shoppe should be moved. Even though it won't be.
