Beloved Disney World food establishment abruptly shuts forever | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

While Disney World is associated above all with its four main parks, the Disney Springs shopping and dining complex also has a long history in the resort.

First opened in 1975 as the Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village, the area has, over the decades, held names including Walt Disney World Village, Disney Village Marketplace, and Downtown Disney, before being rebranded as the current Disney Springs in 2015.

The outdoor area spans 120 acres and is home to 95 stores and nearly 70 eating establishments ranging from fast food to fine dining. One beloved staple has for the last 10 years been the Sprinkles Cupcakes bakery chain selling colorful cupcakes and cookies.

Disney Springs loses Sprinkles after cupcake chain abruptly closes all locations

Several Disney fans first noticed the store was closed around the time it would have received a rush of year-end customers, Inside the Magic shared. In a Dec. 31 Instagram post, founder Candace Nelson revealed that the chain was closing all locations.

“It’s surreal to see this chapter come to a close and it’s not how I imagined the story would unfold,” Nelson, who founded the company in 2005 and sold it to private equity firm KarpReilly in 2013, wrote in her post.

Nelson had not been involved with the company since the sale; Sprinkles itself has not offered public comment.

Along with the larger stores, Sprinkles also operated “cupcake ATMs” at a number of airports and movie theaters, from which one could get the treats without human staff. The Disney Springs location had both an ATM and a storefront passersby could enter.

Along with its batch of regular favorites, this location made Disney-themed cupcakes with Mickey and Minnie ears. The abrupt closure, with virtually no notice, also left hundreds of employees across six states without jobs going into the new year.

“We did amazing during the holidays, our bakery has always done good it seemed like everything was normal,” Kimberly Salgado, who worked at a Sprinkles location in California’s Irvine for the last three years, told The New York Post.

“[…Management] let us be in the dark and spend our Christmas Eve there and work hard during the holidays to get them that holiday profit and then they just dumped us on New Year’s Eve.”

Sprinkles Cupcakes operated both storefront locations and cupcake ATMs.

Sprinkles Cupcakes

Disney Springs Sprinkles Cupcakes location opened in 2016 to much excitement

Visitors to the Disney Springs location reported seeing store signs announcing opening hours into 2026 and felt equally blindsided by the news.

The Sprinkles Instagram account has already been deleted, while the Disney Springs website has been updated to show that there are no opening times.

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This location was opened in 2016 at a time when Sprinkles underwent a period of rapid expansion. Despite shoutouts from celebrities such as Drew Barrymore and Oprah Winfrey, Sprinkles later struggled to stand out and retain customers in a market with an increasing number of options.

While still standing, baked-goods chain competitor Crumbl also announced its latest string of store closures at the end of 2025. Neither Disney nor Sprinkles offered separate comment on the closure of the Disney Springs store.