For over 20 years, Pin Trading has been a part of my visits to Disney Parks around the world and the yearly EPCOT pin event had been something that I marked on my calendar as soon as the information was available. Sadly, with the events of last year, the gathering of pin fans like myself had to go virtual — but Disney still found a way to make it fun and that continued on to this year's event also.
Turning what was a multi-day experience into a few hour event at first seemed like a bit of a let dow, but having the amazing Faith Boles and Professor H.V. Yensid as our hosts really made the day entertaining. Of course it wouldn’t be an event without a bit of a back story, “Do your loyalties lie with the Disney Heroes… or the Disney Villains? Make your allegiances known at the Disney Heroes vs. Villains Digital Pin Experience” was the question of the day and that was where H.V. Yensid came in. It was his goal to find who the ultimate character is, hero or villain and what makes them that way. Throughout the day attendees of the event had the chance to vote for their favorite characters and the winners would appear on a special pin to be released in 2022.
As this was a multi hour event, instead of having Faith and Yensid talk the entire day, it was broken up to give attendees a chance to chat and trade in the virtual trading rooms or just tune in for what was most interesting to them.
One of the highlights of the live pin events is always the chats with the artist and pin creators. Sadly, this was one of the few shortcomings of this event. With an hour blocked off, I was very excited to hear more about what was to come and what had been changed, but this only ended up being a little over 15 minutes. Still, it was to have the curtain pulled back and see and hear from some of the favorites.
Even though it was listed as “EPIC PACKAGE GUESTS” we were all able to see a sneak peek of some of the pins coming to Disney Parks in 2022 including some of the Pin of the Month sets and the fun Mystery Box sets.
The trivia and “Drawing with a Disney Artist” were both a fun way to fill the time during the day, without live trading available.
The moment we all waited for, as we do at the in person event was the announcement of next year's pin event theme.
Though no announcement of the event returning to the park or not we did get a first ever preview of pins from the Disney One Family 2022 Pin Celebration.
The 14 pin mystery pin set brings languages from not only the real world but films and parks languages, including the first ever Disney Pin to feature braille.
As the Epic Pin Battle drew to a close we found out that the #1 Hero as voted on by the guest of the event was Moana and of course the #1 Villain is Darth Vader. These two characters will appear on a pin together, something I can’t wait to see how it is pulled off, in 2022.
Overall this event was a fun experience. Although I feel that, without Faith or H.V. Yensid, this would not have been as entertaining. For those who have never been to one of the big pin events, normally guests are given a welcome gift pin and a parting pin that is covered by their fee to attend the event and all the other pins are available for purchase through a random selection process. Sadly, this year guests were only given a welcome pin but it was a beautiful jumbo pin.
