I've been visiting Disneyland since I was a child, but discovered a hidden gem on TikTok. I left with a keepsake I'll treasure for years.
Melissa Wells
- I'm a lifelong Disney fan, but there's always something new to discover at the parks.
- TikTok showed me a hidden gem called Silhouette Studio on Main Street, USA, in Disneyland.
I'm a lifelong Disney fan who's visited Disneyland and California Adventure almost annually since I was a toddler.
So when I saw a TikTok video earlier this year of a place I didn't recognize in Disneyland, I had to see it for myself.
Here's what the experience was like.
After visiting nearly every place Disneyland has to offer, I've gotten my annual trips down to a near science. But recently, TikTok showed me a Disney gem I'd never seen before.
In one of the videos I saw, TikTok user @emmwee visits Silhouette Studio on Main Street, USA, where she and her partner sit in front of an artist, who quickly cuts their silhouettes from black paper. An assistant then pastes the black outlines — which look just like the couple's profiles — on Disney-decorated paper.
"This was only $12 at Disneyland," the TikToker wrote on the screen.
Their video was shared on July 1 and has been viewed 18.7 million views as of September 2023.
After seeing multiple TikToks about the sweet activity and subsequent keepsake, I knew I needed to find and visit Silhouette Studio on my next visit to Disneyland.
Silhouette Studio is located on the right side of Main Street, USA. But before seeing the videos, I didn't realize it was a real storefront.
Silhouette Studio is a small shop located past Market House, which houses Disneyland's Starbucks, and next to the Crystal Arts store, which sells crystal mementos and personalized glassware.
I'd never noticed it before. Many storefronts on Main Street are not actually real stores, and for some reason, I thought this was one of them.
The shop is open from when the park opens at 8 a.m. to when it closes at 12 a.m., but there are only a couple of artists trained to create silhouettes, so they often take breaks throughout the day.
Disney Parks Blog reported that this quaint shop opened just one day after the grand opening of Disneyland on July 18, 1955. For 68 years, guests have been able to see the Disney silhouette artists through the shop's glass window, creating beautiful profiles, sometimes even cutting multiple at once.
When we went inside, we sat in front of a skilled Disney artist who cut an outline of my sister and me out of black paper. It took a little over 90 seconds.
Upon going inside the small shop, which is barely big enough to fit more than a few people at once, patrons sit in a chair facing the window to Main Street.
After the Disney artist cuts the silhouette, an assistant pastes it to paper decorated with the Disneyland logo.
The hand-cut silhouettes cost $11.99, but for an adorned black-and-gold frame, you pay an additional $19.99, for a total of $34.46.
We found that waiting in line takes a lot longer than the actual process of creating the souvenir.
Like any other place at Disney, the studio has a line, but it seems that TikTok has helped it become even more popular.
During my visit, nearly everyone I spoke to in the winding line said they'd seen one video or another mentioning this shop, and that's what inspired them to take time out of their Disney day to wait for this souvenir.
For us, the cutting of the silhouette, pasting it onto the decorated paper, and placing it into the frame only took 10 minutes, whereas we waited in line for nearly 40 minutes.
This charming shop created a keepsake of my sister and me that I will cherish for years to come.
I highly recommend this to any fellow Disney fan looking for a precious and unique souvenir from the happiest place on Earth.
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