Although I love LE dolls I think Disney has overdone it. When you flood the market with a bunch of them collectors lose interest because their LE items are no longer rare or exclusive. I know I am starting to lose interest for them and after realizing that I have spent way too much money on Disney items that aren't so exclusive after all I am going to hold off from buying anything for a while. Just the thought that Alice is selling for less than half of what I paid is enough to turn me off. I probably won't be the only one who will be irritated if this wave of designer dolls go on sale.
I was also reading comments on other Disney collectibles Facebook pages and looks like collectors of other type of Disneyana (mainly Star Wars figures) feel the same way. Whatever draws collectors to collect LE items is the rarity of the item. If you mass produce something you will lose your customers (in this case collectors) which in this case represent a big porpotion of your market.
While everyone has their reasons for why they collect items like this, I think there are a few reasons as to why certain LE items and collections tend to not do as well as Disney would hope:
1.) Too many items are being released at once. Disney is a massive company with some of the most recognizable and beloved films and characters under their belt, and they release many new films each year, so its only natural that they would try to release a lot of LE items for a majority of their properties. However, there is a point where too much is just too much. Is it really necessary to release the Finding Dory, Beauty and the Beast, Moana and designer doll collections so close together? People aren't made out of money. Not everyone is going to want everything from those collections of course, but its like Disney doesn't even give one collection enough time to settle in and get comfortable before they release another collection to take the spotlight.
2.) Disney tends to overestimate the demand for these collectibles. Like you pointed out, some collectors lose interest because there are so many of each collectible. Disney clearly took previous complaints to heart and wanted more people to obtain things like the dolls, but they overestimated the demand. Collectibles like the 17" dolls are popular and that much hasn't changed. However, they still make the LE numbers WAY to high for some of these items. The LA Alice and Red Queen dolls probably would have sold out by now if the LE number wasn't 4000. The demand just wasn't there for a sequel and its box office and merchandise sales prove that. Same can be said for previous dolls like the Mulan/Shang and Pocahontas/John Smith sets. People were crying out for those characters to get more merchandise and representation, but not enough to warrant a 6000 LE number. They would have sold out a lot faster if the LE number was smaller.
3.) The same characters keep getting used over and over again. The princesses are popular and they probably always will be, but there is a limit to how many times you can reuse the same character and a new take on the same outfit before people begin to lose interest and become bored. We had the designer princesses, designer couples, and now the designer heroes and villains, which means that only one line (the villains) hasn't had the princesses as the main focus. Peter Pan and Alice have been a breath of fresh air for a good chunk of us because of this.
4.) The price for these dolls has gone up since their original conception, and they keep using the pricey two dolls sets. I know several people want Disney to go back to using one doll per box instead of the two doll sets they have been using since 2013. Not only are the dolls cheaper that way, but it also gives the doll more room to be displayed better and perhaps be given a more stylized look and pose. A lot of the two doll sets are just fancier versions of their iconic outfits and the characters can look cramped together depending on their size. I mean look at Tinkerbell. She is a popular character that was $60 with an LE of 4000 and she sold out almost instantly! The other fairies haven't been as popular as her, but they at the very least eventually sold out (I can't remember if they wen't on sale or not).
Those are just some of my observations on the state of this line. I love Disney, and I love LE Disney dolls, and I wan't to see them succeed. I don't want this line to end but its not going to improve if Disney doesn't consider better options when it comes to how they handle these dolls. I'm also not saying that they should look at this list of bullet points to fix the problem or anything. These are just some conclusions I have come to on the state of this line and even Disney collectibles in general over the past few weeks.