For many, just hearing the words “Disney Vault,” makes it seems like some kind of “smoke and mirrors” marketing ploy or this intangible thing that Disney uses to veil away historical archives. Well my friends, what if I told you the vault is real? And yes, I mean a vault much like something you’d see Indiana Jones tracking down, but really much more like a secured museum by today’s standards.

Where is the Disney Vault?

Sorry, we don’t have an address, but there are plenty of accounts that the vault is housed in a simple building in Glendale, CA with no signage or branding in which to draw attention to it. The building must remain elusive and hard to gain entry into because the items inside are not only valuable but also precious to the Disney legacy. This place is pretty much the Disney equivalent to Area 51.

The vault, actually 12 different vaults, are organized by projects and house everything from the puppets from The Nightmare Before Christmas to the original sketches for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Everything is cataloged and stored in a climate-controlled space protected by state-of-the-art security. While no actual number was available online or in interviews, it is estimated that the vault contains more than 65 million pieces of art, making it the largest animation art collection in the world.

What is the Purpose of the Disney Vault?

Apart from safely storing the most valuable pieces of Disney history, this is also a place where art is assembled and distributed across the world for exhibitions from D23 to special events. It’s also a place of curation, where there are dedicated technicians working on digitizing the entire library.

How Can Someone Get Inside?

Yeah, good luck with that one. You are more likely to get inside Club 33 for dinner than actually venture into the vault without some type of highly VIP tour. It’s not something you can just “request,” so I would go around asking about it to Cast Members at the park.

What About the Movies in the Disney Vault?

The concept of putting films into the vault and re-releasing them is a brilliant marketing plan. This is done to control the market and allow films to become “fresh” for new generations of youth. This also means digital copies are not available on Disney Movies Anywhere when those movies are currently in the Disney Vault. The practice began in the 1980s when home video was popular and Disney realized that films could be released every 10 years remastered and sometimes on newer mediums – VHS, DVD, Bluray.

However, with the release of Disney+, the entire catalog of animated films are now available via streaming service thus ending Disney’s long-standing “vault” release program.