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Disney Store Coupons and Disney Website Coupon Codes
Disney is closing several of its retail outlets across America. Every Disney store that is closing will be issuing 15% off total purchase coupons that can be used another Disney store retail outlet. They will also have an online shopping code that can be used at ShopDisney.com by entering the Disney website coupon code into the order form at checkout.
Since many cities have more than one Disney store, parents of kids who love Disney might want to watch for when their (mostly) local Disney store will be closing and drop by for both the free 15% coupons, as well as any markdowns and clearance prices that they might have. Rather than ship stuff back to the warehouse, closing stores will likely offer sales and prices below what you can usually get as a great deal at the Disney Outlet website at Disneyoutlet.com
Here is the details from the official Disney press release. All stores will be closing within “the next few months” during 2010. Check and see if there is one near you going out of business and then keep an eye on the local news for details about the closing, or watch the Disney.com website.
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Disney Store Closing Several Stores to Focus on New Interactive Stores
This statement was released by Disney Stores. We lost our Disney Store several years ago in the first round of closings, and it was absolutely heart-wrenching for me. I know there are going to be many people very upset about this, and I just want you to know that my heart goes out to you. I definitely know the feeling of having your local “touch of Disney magic” closed down.
Press release as follows:
Making the decision to not renew a store lease is never easy and we take these types of decisions very seriously. We value Disney Store cast members and our guests, and hope that for those of you affected, you will continue to be a Disney Store fan. The stores that will be closed over the next few months are listed below and will begin to offer discounts and clearance specials soon.
Closing stores will also provide coupon offers in-store good for 15% off your entire purchase at participating alternate locations. DisneyStore.com will offer 15% off your entire purchase and free shipping for all purchases over $50. Limited time only. Offers may vary by store. Please visit your closing store for more discount offers and more details.
We continue to plan for the future and look forward to launching newly designed Disney Stores across the US and Europe. Look for these highly interactive new stores to roll out over the next five years.
Again, thank you for your continued support and remaining a loyal fan to the Disney Store.
USA
ALABAMA
Riverchase Galleria – Birmingham, AL
CALIFORNIA
South Bay Galleria – Redondo Beach, CA
COLORADO
Southwest Plaza – Littleton, CO
FLORIDA
Broward Mall – Plantation, FL
GEORGIA
Arbor Place – Douglasville, GA
IDAHO
Boise Town Square – Boise, ID
ILLINOIS
Yorktown Center – Lombard, IL
Spring Hill Mall – West Dundee, IL
INDIANA
Glenbrook Square – Fort Wayne, IN
Greenwood Park Mall – Greenwood, IN
KENTUCKY
Florence Mall – Florence, KY
MASSACHUSETTS
Silver City Galleria – Taunton, MA
MICHIGAN
RiverTown Crossing – Grandville, MI
Southland Center – Taylor, MI
NEW MEXICO
Coronado Center – Albuquerque, NM
OHIO
Belden Village Mall – Canton, OH
SOUTH CAROLINA
Broadway at the Beach – Myrtle Beach, SC
TENNESSEE
Coolsprings Galleria – Franklin, TN
Opry Mills – Nashville, TN
TEXAS
The Parks At Arlington – Arlington, TX
West Oaks Mall – Houston, TX
Collin Creek Mall – Plano, TX
VIRGINIA
Dulles Town Center – Dulles, VA
Valley View Mall – Roanoke, VA
CANADA
BRITISH COLUMBIA
Metropolis at Metrotown – Burnaby, BC
MANITOBA
St. Vital Centre – Winnipeg, M
ONTARIO
Scarborough Towne Centre – Scarborough, ON
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For those of you in Colorado, you may have noticed that the Disney Store at Southwest Plaza is on the list of closures. The one in the Park Meadows Mall closed some time ago, but there is still a Disney Store up in the Flatirons Mall. So, watch for the Southwest store to start going out of business and then head down for the big sales and the coupon. Then you can use it up at the Disney store in Broomfield.
Extended Warranty Rip-off Scams Ends With SquareTrade – Money Saving Tip
Square Trade offers extended warranties on tons of stuff. In fact, chances are that if the retailer you are buying the product from offers an extended warranty, SquareTrade does too. It operates as an online business at www.squaretrade.com.
The difference between them and electronics stores or other retailers, is that they aren’t trying to make up their low profit margins on pricing by selling way over-priced warranties. (Circuit City went out of business when they couldn’t sucker enough people into buying warranties anymore.) Instead of price gouging naive customers with overpriced extended warranties, SquareTrade operates more like a traditional insurance company. What they do is estimate how frequently a certain product or type of products requires warranty service, and the average cost of each warranty service. Multiply that out, and you get the overall expense of offering the warranty. Then, you add on a normal profit margin to each warranty sold and, voila, a profitable company that sells reasonably priced warranties. This is a good business model, unlike trying to squeeze the maximum dollars out of every customer’s pocket ,and then hope that they don’t realize that they have been cheated. That means that their warranties are priced like they should be without a huge markup.
The other very important difference is that when you have a SquareTrade warranty, you have a warranty that was explained, represented, and sold by Square Trade. When you buy a store warranty, you have a warranty that was sold by an employee at the store, who may or may not have fully understood it. Either way, that warranty is NOT a product or service of that store. That warranty will be from some third-party that you have never heard of. That means the store will only be able to say, "Sorry, we aren’t who you need to talk to."
However, the most important difference between a SquareTrade warranty versus a regular warranty from the store is that the warranty company doesn’t care if you have a good experience or not. You didn’t know who they were when you bought the extended warranty in the first place, and you won’t know who they (or one of their many subsidiaries) is when you are contemplating buying a warranty next time. In other words, they have no incentive to give you good service or worry about getting a bad name. On the other hand, SquareTrade is a stand alone company that would quickly go bankrupt if it got a bad reputation. In fact, they need your repeat business. The only way that is going to happen is if you are a satisfied customer, which means giving you a much cheaper price than in the store, and actually trying to satisfy you if something goes wrong while your product is under their warranty.
Don’t take my word for it. Go online before you go shopping for something. Get a quote for what the extended warranty from SquareTrade will cost. Then, go into the store and let the salesperson tell you how much their extended warranty will cost. The price difference between a SquareTrade warranty and store warranty will shock you. In many cases, the warranty offered by the store is double the price of the Square Trade warranty or more!
Cheap Christmas Toys 2009 Shopping Deals and Tips
With Thanksgiving falling on pretty much the last possible day in November, Christmas has come hurtling toward Moms and Dads like a runaway freight train with a turbo-booster. That means time is tight for shopping for Christmas presents for children, toddlers, and babies. Now, anyone with good parenting skills wants to provide a Merry Christmas (or other happy holiday) for their kids with plenty of presents without breaking the bank or raiding the college fund.
Additionally, no one wants to spoil their kids either. Add to that the fact that a lot of children already have more toys than they can play with, and you have parents torn between buying lots of toys for Christmas to fill up that space under the Christmas tree, and Daddies and Mommies wondering if they shouldn’t buy any new toys at all this holiday season.
Fortunately, it is possible to have it all when it comes to Christmas. The plan is simple. Get great deals on as many toys and presents as fit into your budget, thus satisfying both the no-overspending need AND the have tons of fun Christmas toys to play with on Christmas morning. What about the over-filled toy boxes and closets and shelves?
Before Christmas have a frank, but not depressing, talk about how not everyone is as fortunate as them. Use this as a time to play up how lucky your family is, and how great it is to be part of such a loving household, instead of dwelling on how sad it must be to be in the reverse situation. At the end of the conversation ask them to go through their toys with you and decide which ones should be donated to other kids who might have more fun playing with them. If you have a particularly green child, play up the recycling angle. If you have a got to have it all kiddo, play up the need for plenty of space to put those new Christmas presents.
Make the donation before Christmas to open up some room. As an added bonus, make sure to keep the receipt. Donations to charity are tax deductible, and nothing helps cushion the expense of the holiday season like parents saving money on taxes.
Find Great Deals Online for Christmas Toys and Presents
When it comes to finding the best deals online, there are too many Johnny-come-latelys, deceptive websites, advertising filled webpages, and sites pretending to list only great holiday savings deals links, when they are in fact, listing whatever links offer up the highest commissions to webmasters who send paying customers their way. Get suckered into using one of these bait-and-switch online "deals" scams and you could actually end up paying more than you would have by walking into your local store and grabbing the hottest toys right off the shelf.
To avoid these issues, use online deals websites that are community based. That is, online deal lists that are submitted by, ranked by, and commented on by an active deal community.
One of the best online deals websites is SlickDeals.net (notice the net, not com)
[That is not a paid link or an affiliate link or anything. Hover your mouse over the link and you'll see it goes straight to www.slickdeals.net, or if it makes you feel better, just type it directly into your browser. – The only ads I get any money from on this website are those Amazon ads and the Google Ads]
Slickdeals has a Frontpage that lists what the moderators have chosen as the absolute hottest deals as submitted by their readers. These deals are displayed as a simple list of links. Click on the ones you are interested in, skip right by the ones you are not. If there is a free shipping code or a 20% coupon code, you can be it will be listed there alongside the deal. No need to go find a great price and then hunt all over the Internet to find a free-shipping code or watch your entire savings go up in smoke to shipping and handling costs.
The best part about Slickdeals and their online bargain listing is that every listed deal has a link that says "Discuss". Click that link and you will find a huge user base going back and forth over whether or not any particular deal is a hot deal or not. Even better, you will also find people going back and forth of the quality, specifications, features, and brands of every television, video game, watch, jacket, dress, and toy listed. This is incredibly helpful if you are buying gifts that for that special someone that you aren’t very familiar with.
You will get a much more realistic impression of what makes the best cordless phone, or the top LCD television set by reading the ongoing discussions in the slick deals forum than you will by trying in vain to sort through which reviews are real, which reviews are fake, which comments were left by employees, or which commenters were paid to rate the product high.
Don’t even bother searching for something like best computer monitor. You’ll be on a shifty website before you can say widescreen. Instead, head over to slickdeals and read a few of the discussions about some of the computer monitors on there. By the time you are done, you’ll know what some of those numbers mean, and more importantly, why it matters whether or not it has HDMI inputs or built-in speakers. (Yes, if they are big on photos and videos. And then, no, if they have other computer speakers that they will probably be using anyway.)
Here is another money saving tip. Torn between whether or not to get the extended warranty? Don’t buy it from the store or website! Instead, check out the extended warranties from a company called SquareTrade. Good luck and Merry Christmas!
By the way, a couple of other deal sites that I have had good experiences with are GottaDeal.com (which also has a coupon code section) and DealNews.com.
Rechargeable Batteries and Baby’s Mobile and other Toddler Toys and Kid Electronics
When it comes to being a great dad, one of the important tasks is keeping all of the children’s toys, electronics, mobiles, music makers, and games stocked with working batteries. Nothing makes this job easier than rechargeable batteries.
With rechargeable batteries, the worst case scenario is that your toddler just has to wait a little while for the batteries to charge. With regular batteries, you might have to explain to your kid that you don’t have the right batteries but you’ll try and remember to buy more next time you have the chance.
Of course, if you forget, then you’ll have to see your child’s look of disappointment that Dad forgot to buy new batteries, and deep down inside, you’ll worry that it seems like you don’t care about things that are important to him.
Trust me, every time you see rechargeable batteries on sale, buy some. Try to shoot for around $2 per AA rechargeable battery and you’ll always be getting a good deal.
Weak Rechargeable D Batteries and C Batteries
There is one thing to watch out for when it comes to rechargeable batteries. Major battery companies have decided to be deceptive rather than make quality rechargeable D size batteries and C size batteries. Whether this near-fraud is due to not wanting to make good rechargeable C batteries because the prices would be too high (maybe $8 or $10 each) or whether it is part of some conspiracy to keep their profits up by making people think that rechargeable batteries aren’t as good a regular batteries, I don’t know.
Look on a AA-sized battery and you will find that most of them have 2400 or 2500 mAh. That means that there is 2500 mili-Amp hours in the battery. It sounds complicated, but basically what mAh means is that if you had something that used up one mili-Amp of power each hour, a 2500 mAh battery would theoretically run it for 2500 hours before running out.
Look at a regular alkaline battery and it will be labeled 2500 mAh or maybe 2400 mAh. Look at the rechargeable AA-size battery and you’ll see a similar number. There is an exception. Some battery companies make different power AA rechargeables which means that a cheapo retailer that doesn’t care about their customers can buy the lower power rechargeables for cheap and then advertise their “great price” without pointing out that you are buying the lower power ones.
Stay away from rechargeable AA batteries that aren’t rated near 2400 or 2500 mAh.
Where it really gets sketchy is with C and D sized batteries.
The regular alkaline D batteries are typically in the neighborhood of 12,000 mAh. But, the rechargeable D batteries are only 2,500 mAh, or the same power as a AA battery!
The worst part is they charge you a lot more even though it is the same battery! Search online and you’ll find that people have cut open rechargeable D batteries to find that what is inside is a AA battery with an outer case to make it look like a D battery.
Technically the battery companies aren’t doing anything wrong, but they sure aren’t going out of their way to point out that you are getting 20% of the full D-size battery power when you buy a rechargeable D battery.
Save your money and instead buy adapters that fit over rechargeable AA batteries and use them for your C and D battery needs instead. Or, go over to All-Battery.com and find rechargeable D batteries that have 10,000 mAh or better in them instead of being ripped off by the brand name battery companies.
I’ve had really good luck with the guys at All-Battery.com for my stuff, including the brand of rechargeables they carry “Tenergy” I think it is. Use the link to try them out. (Yes, I get a teeny-tiny commission of you buy something, but I could get more money recommending someone else. I’ve actually used them and never had anything bad happen 
Free New Baby Toys In Just 6 Weeks
Does your baby or toddler seem to love new toys much more than other toys? Congratulations, an attraction to novelty is a sign of intelligence. However, buying new toys all of the time is a recipe for losing money, lower savings, and too many toys for too little space.
The answer might lie in a quirk of child memory.
The brain’s memory power isn’t fully present at birth. And, baby’s memory power doesn’t develop all at once either. Instead, like most other higher level brain functions, your child’s memory comes online after birth, and it does so in phases.
Early memory is based upon recognition. In other words, when your child sees a balloon, that triggers the memory of balloons. However, a baby or young toddler does not have the ability to pull up memories on demand. In other words, your child won’t remember balloons until something triggers that memory, whether balloons themselves, or something that reminds them of balloons like a birthday hat, or a certain tablecloth, or t-shirt.
You can use this memory quirk to create “new” toys out of old toys. Hide some of your child’s toys somewhere where they won’t come across them. A box in your closet, or a cabinet that they don’t open or play with are good locations to stash some toys. Keep them there for 6 weeks or so.
After 6 weeks, pull the toys out and place them somewhere where your little one will discover them, like in their toybox. Watch your child’s face light up when they find their “new” toy. It isn’t that they don’t recall having played with the toy before, they do. But, the experience that they remember won’t seem as fresh, or novel, and so, playing with the rediscovered toy will be a big treat.
Be smart about how you go about this. Don’t hide the current favorites. Instead, dig down to the bottom of the toybox or to the back of the closet. These are the toys to hide. As an added bonus, you’ll get more room to store the current toys. Also, make sure that any “linked” toys are either out or put away together.
For example, if you baby girl always plays with a certain doll and a certain car together, don’t put just one of them away, because inevitably, she’ll find one of them and then want the other.
Another useful tip is to have a pre-storage location that is easily accessible. That way, if a certain toy gets requested, you can find it right away without having to dig into a storage bin. Once the toy has been out of sight and mind for a few days, you can safely move it to the longer term storage location.
This way, you can keep that spark of newness alive for both fun and your baby’s brain development, without having to break the bank buying new toys all of the time.
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