What To Do When You Forget Your Memory Card At Disneyland

Last Tuesday I arrived at Disneyland’s Mickey & Friends Parking Structure with my camera at my side. My main goal that day was to take pictures and talk about my time in the park for our Observations series of posts. As I walked from my car to the tram loading area I started my ritual of going through my last minute mental checklist to make sure I have everything I’d need for my day in the parks. Cell phone? Check. Keys, wallet, annual pass? Got all those. After I went through my list I look down at my camera and I got the feeling that something wasn’t right. I stop in my tracks and reluctantly held my camera in my hand as the feeling of dread starts to take over, almost like when you pour yourself a bowl of cereal in the morning and then realize the milk in the fridge has gone sour. I flipped open the memory card slot on the side of my camera and realized that I forgot to take my memory card to Disneyland. I instantly remembered that I left it in my computer at home after I cleared it off for the day. Obviously this isn’t a huge problem for me because I only live 20 minutes away. But what if I was on vacation and a plane ride separated me from my house? I decided to take advantage of my forgetfulness and use this experience as blog post fodder.

I quickly made a plan in my head of spots on and off resort property to check for memory cards. My first idea was to head to the eastern end of Downtown Disney to check the Best Buy kiosk located near Earl of Sandwich. I make my way to the east side of Downtown Disney and realize the Best Buy kiosk was missing. I don’t know if it was down for refurbishment or removed permanently, but either way it didn’t help me.

Next I walked back to the west side of Downtown Disney, near the World of Disney store. The Best Buy kiosk in this location was still there! My eyes quickly scanned through the available items. I thought, “Why would anyone buy an iPod at Downtown Disney?” as I went through the available  items. Phone cables, headphones, MP3 players, iPads, and other expensive gadgets were in the machine, but no memory cards were to be found.

Since I was right outside one of its entrances, my next stop was World of Disney. There are a lot of items in this store, but unless they’re hidden away somewhere, I didn’t see any memory cards. At this point my time was running short; I had planned to meet with my co-worker David, who was in town with his family. Because we planned to meet in DCA, I walked back through Downtown Disney and entered through Grand Californian Hotel‘s entrance. Before heading in to DCA, I stopped in Grand Californian’s gift shop, Acorns Gifts & Goods. This is a pretty small store, so I was able to quickly find a memory card on a sales rack located behind the cash register. The memory card in stock was a 4GB Lexar SD Card. There was no visible price listed, so the cast member scanned it for me. I hate to say this, but I’m so used to Disney price gouging that I feared the worst. I fully expected the memory card to be $40, but to my surprise it rang up as $13.95 (before tax and any annual pass discounts).

This could have been the end of the story: $13.95 is not a lot in the grand scheme of a vacation that potentially costs thousands of dollars. But I did want to check other stores in the parks and a couple outside of Disney property. After my lunch with David I walked over to Kingswell Camera Shop on Buena Vista Street in DCA. The same memory card that I had found earlier Acorn was also available here for the same price of $13.95. Same goes for the Main Street Photo Supply Co. over in Disneyland.

But let’s say you do have some extra time, or you want to save a couple of bucks. There are other options near the parks that have better memory cards for less money. The Target store located on Harbor Boulevard, located a little over 2 miles away from the parks, has a SanDisk 16GB SD card in stock for $9.99. It also has many other memory card types and sizes, as well as groceries if you want to save money on food. If you want to drive a little further and have an even larger selection of memory cards, there is a Best Buy located about 2.5 miles from Disneyland Resort. There you can find this Sandisk 8GB SD High Quailty Card, as well as many others. The bottom line is if you forget a memory card and your vacation time is precious (whose isn’t?), you can get a new card at multiple locations on or off Disney property for an affordable price.

Oh and if you’re curious, the same memory card sold at multiple stores in the Disneyland Resort for $13.95 can be found on Amazon for $5.95.