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Ryan Miller has been a pirate and a spaceship captain. At least that’s how he felt visiting Disneyland growing up.
“When you walk under the brick archway and you’re in Main Street, U.S.A., and then you take that left into Adventureland or Frontierland, like I wasn’t a kid from Bakersfield anymore,” he told USA TODAY, recalling a similar feeling of wonder and immersion when he started playing tabletop games. “Games have just a way of transporting us into different scenarios and different worlds.”
Now, he helps transport others as co-creator of the Disney Lorcana trading card game and brand manager at its publisher Ravensberger North America.
And it’s not just in spirit. Disney Lorcana is bringing players together in the real world, too.
What is Disney Lorcana?
Ravensburger works closely with Disney to ensure the art for each character is spot on, like Pegasus from “Hercules.”
Disney Lorcana is a trading card game like Magic: The Gathering or the Pokémon Trading Card Game.
Players buy and trade cards to collect or play. Competitive players build decks around playing power, while social players may curate them around themes like Disney Princesses or dogs. Others just collect cards like pins or art. They start at $5.99 for booster sets and $16.99 for ready-to-play starter decks.
“I tried to put off buying the product for the longest time because I knew that the moment I did, I would be fully hooked. And lo and behold, here we are, fully hooked,” joked Alan McCormack, co-founder of popular theme park content company, Mammoth Club.
Why is Disney Lorcana so popular?
Mammoth Club co-founder and Disney Lorcana player Alan McCormack connected with other Lorcana players at Gen Con, a massive annual event centered on tabletop games.
Like many other players, McCormack previously played trading card games, but what drew him to Lorcana was the intellectual property, which he called “near and dear to my heart.”
Each card depicts a beloved Disney character, from crowd favorites like Elsa and Stitch to what Miller calls deep cuts like John Silver from “Treasure Planet” and Demona from the 1990s cartoon “Gargoyles.”
“We do new art for every single card. We’re doing about 1000 pieces of art a year,” Miller said, noting how closely they work with Disney to ensure character continuity. “Disney fans are going to notice, right? And even if they can’t say, ‘Well, the ears look weird,’ they feel it anyway.”
Disney Lorcana co-creator Ryan Miller said “Treasure Planet” fans flipped out when they learned that there would be a John Silver card because there isn’t much merchandise available for the 2002 film.
Naomi Kim, international product manager for Disney Lorcana and an avid player herself, noted not all players are Disney fans, but for the bulk who are, “It’s just fun to play against each other because it just shows what we love.”
McCormack also enjoys the game itself and hopes to play competitively.
“The mechanics of gameplay, while nuanced, are not so complex that the barrier to entry is insurmountable,” he said. “It feels a lot more reasonable to learn the game and get into it at its most basic level, and then it scales really well for you to sort of learn and grow.”
Even at the highest level, Kim said the community welcomes everybody. “It’s never like, ‘Oh yeah, you can’t sit with us.’”
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Connecting and competing
Rebekah and Caleb Pearson attended 2024’s D23 The Ultimate Disney Fan Event in Anaheim, California, specifically because Disney Lorcana was taking part in it. Rebekah cosplayed as Belle – Hidden Archer, a Lorcana-specific version of the “Beauty and the Beast” character.
As a teen, Rebekah Pearson and her parents played Magic: The Gathering. They also visited Disneyland each year as a family. When Disney Lorcana launched in 2023, she said, “It was like two things that I really loved coming together.” And it became something she could share with her own teenage son.
“We play together at home all the time. We go to weekly league, and so it’s really cool ‘cause, especially like a mom and a son, sometimes it’s hard to find things that you can do together,” said Pearson, who posts about Lorcana across social media as @RebekahQuests.
Her son Caleb has competed on the official Disney Lorcana Challenge competition circuit, which takes place across North America and Europe and is expanding to Asia.
“This is where the best of the best come to become the best of the best of the best,” Kim said.
While Pearson has competed at the local level around Sacramento, she prefers to support her son at the challenge level. She has, however, been a commentator at the top-tier competitions, which have been held in cities like Atlanta, Milwaukee and Seattle.
Players compete in the Disney Lorcana Challenge in Seatte in 2024.
Lots of other Lorcana players travel to challenges as well. Even if they’re not competing, they watch the action, take part in side events, and connect with fellow players, with whom they already share interests. Some even cosplay or Disneybound, which is a more subtle way to dress up as their favorite Disney characters.
“The word that people, I would say, use the most about these events is that it’s magical,” Pearson said. “I think people just love being together. Everyone has their small little communities across the world, really now, but coming together and having thousands of people in the same room, there’s nothing like it.”
Lorcana at Disney
Rebekah Pearson and her friends organized an unofficial meetup at Disneyland during the Disney Lorcana North American Continental Championship in Jan. 2025. She said, “We played Disney Lorcana in the park, and just enjoyed going to Disneyland together as a community.”
There is, however, a special kind of magic when Lorcana experiences meet Disney experiences.
Earlier this year, Disney Lorcana held special limited-time Collection Quests on the Disney Treasure cruise ship and at Disney California Adventure. At each one, guests were given a free booster set of special cards and invited to trade with others. The latter was particularly special because it was held in Beast’s Library, which was closed to the public in 2023.
“For the Disneyland activation with a special Belle card, I went with Molly, and I was like, we’re going to do this until we get a play set of this beautiful card artwork,’” said McCormack, who’s based in Orlando but travels to parks regularly with his wife and Mammoth Club co-founder, Molly. They timed this particular trip around the quest. “It was this really cool collective experience that encouraged folks to get together and talk.”
Disney Lorcana players are referred to as Illumineers, in the game. During the Disney Lorcana Challenge Quest at Disney California Adventure, an Illumineer character in full costume explained some of the lore to guests in Beast’s Library.
Pearson drove down to Disneyland and back just to take part.
“It was such a special experience to be there in the parks, to see Disney Lorcana come to life in this new way,” she said. “To be there together with so many of the friends that I’ve made in this community, it was worth the drive.”
Thinking back on his childhood Disneyland trips, Miller said, “If I could go back in time and tell that kid, ‘Hey, you’re going to have a game here one day,’ … it’s mind-boggling.”
Next year, there will be Lorcana activities at EPCOT International Festival of the Arts, which runs from Jan. 16 through Feb. 23. Miller said there’s more to come; he just can’t share details yet.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Disney card game bringing thousands of players together