It will be different this year.
First of all, new releases almost always have larger quantities (such as yesterday's PRINCE OF PERSIA). BEAUTY AND THE BEAST will also be a new release on Blu-ray.
Secondly, last year there was a major rush to buy the Disney promotion BDs because it was widely assumed that these Future Shop Canadian exclusives were actually worldwide exclusives. Many Canadians were buying them to fill a worldwide market demand on various SteelBook forums. Many collectors outside of Canada were also using Canadian addresses of friends and family to buy multiple copies online on www.futureshop.ca.
That is why the site crashed a few times, and the SteelBooks sold out online in a matter of seconds.
Around the time of the release of PIRATES OF THE CARRIBBEAN on SteelBook last year (near the end of the 12-week run), a major US competitor released *all* of the same SteelBooks available from Future Shop in one day nationwide.
There was a widespread panic as the Internet lit up with reports of these 'exclusive SteelBooks' suddenly available in huge quantities in the US. The Canadian demand plummeted and suddenly SteelBooks were plentiful at Future Shops nationwide for the last three PIRATES films.
The market was flooded since the US is such a large market and there were tons of these SteelBooks suddenly available. In fact, some are still available to this day in the US (although numbers are dwindling).
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST's IronPack exclusive has already been released in the US as a pre-order bonus. That is, you pay $7 or so and you get the empty IronPack. When the movie is released, you get a $7 deduction towards the price of the Blu-ray. So, many of the US and international collectors have already bought the US copies of the empty IronPack. (Some will even forfeit the pre-order and request a refund of their $7 so they can keep the IronPack for free, but I digress...)
Yesterday's PRINCE OF PERSIA release was so far released at Future Shop, but there are some people speculating that the same retailer in the US will do what they did last year and suddenly release all of Future Shop's exclusive IronPacks in one day in November/December -- unannounced like last year.
There is no 'Brana-equivalent' for this US retailer, so everyone is left asking questions on their forum that go unanswered. That is why you will see so many US members on this forum asking US-availability questions from Brana. There is no one from corporate office communicating on the US forum, so they are getting information through this channel.
All in all, there were many people who got burned last year for buying too fast too quickly. A lot of those people were stuck with excess stock of Canadian SteelBooks. There will be a lot more caution this year.
For BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, the demand should be more moderate on release day, as it is largely Canadians who are waiting for this now -- and international collectors who want their discs packaged in the IronPack with the original shrink wrap on.
Having said that, if you really want a copy, you should arrange your schedule so that you, or someone you know, can go to Future Shop on release day. That is really the only way you can guarantee a copy.
Don't worry about buying multiple copies. The market is really not there, and shipping costs to International locations are often prohibitive for most buyers. You might end up making $2-5 per copy and risk dealing with shipping damages that will trigger refund requests.
Besides, your fellow Canadian collectors will thank you.
