Disney Lorcana Has Disastrous Pre-Order Launch on Ravensburger’s Website

Disney Lorcana suffered another setback as thousands of fans were left disappointed by a botched pre-order release on Ravensburger’s website. Today, Ravensburger NA attempted to sell its allocation of Rise of the Floodborn product ahead of the new Disney Lorcana’s mass retail release on December 1st, but their website was overwhelmed by what Ravensburger NA called an “extremely large DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack” that disrupted their launch. The disruption led to Ravensburger NA delaying the launch of their website’s queue twice before ending website sales, leaving thousands in the lurch and others to wonder if their orders were valid. Pre-orders were briefly made available early Tuesday morning, but sold out in minutes.

Ravensburger provided the following statement to ComicBook.com after the crash. “We at Ravensburger understand the frustration with how yesterday’s website launch went, and we are committed to ensuring that future web launches can be successful. In the short term, we will be reallocating Rise of the Floodborn item quantities to other channels to ensure that those products are purchasable during the holiday season. In the medium and long term, we are taking all steps necessary to define a clear roadmap to ensure our future website launches are successful.”

This marks the second botched launch of a Disney Lorcana set on Ravensburger’s website, following a late August release that saw many temporarily charged for orders placed on the website but never fulfilled. Ravensburger vowed after The First Chapter’s release to bolster its website and introduced a new queue service to assist with managing traffic. However, the third-party queue system was not able to handle the 100,000+ visitors on the website, along with what was likely numerous bots and automated systems trying to snatch Disney Lorcana product. 

The third-party queue system, Queue-Fair, also released a statement following the crash issues. 

While Ravensburger NA’s website wasn’t the only way to get Disney Lorcana: Rise of the Floodborn product, the pre-order provided a rare opportunity to get product at MSRP. Game store retailers have a two-week window to sell product before mass retailers, but many have opted to either sell their product at significantly higher prices or have received severely limited allocations. 

The launch of Rise of the Floodborn has also faced some retailers breaking embargo on their product, leading to the reveal of Enchanted cards (the Secret Rare cards of the set) appearing online before a planned marketing reveal. Unreleased cards from an upcoming set also appeared online, with Ravensburger NA investigating what it called was a theft of their product. 

For those wishing to try to get their hands on Disney Lorcana, Rise of the Floodborn booster packs and other product are on sale now at game stores. Mass retailers will start selling Rise of the Floodborn product on December 1st, though some retailers have started pre-orders early.