Honestly, both areas have their issues.
I live in the US, but I get that DS shipping is a problem in Europe and customs costs are a pain in the backside. I have thought about ordering other items I collect online from UK stores, and it costs $20 just to ship a small package here, not to mention the exchange rates. And I went to the Harrods store in London one time while I was visiting, and it is about half the size of the average American Disney Store. The cashiers told me it is absolutely crazy in there for LE releases and especially if they are selling store exclusives. I have heard from European collectors here and elsewhere about the lack of stores in their respective countries and the ridiculous shipping fees if they want to buy from another store's website. So yes, that aspect of how these LE dolls are sold should be acknowledged by Disney and hopefully addressed in the near future.
HOWEVER, ordering from the US is not all sunshine and roses. I live in a part of the country where the closest Disney Store is roughly four hours away, so for these kinds of releases ordering online is my only option. And as anyone who orders off the US site knows, the website is completely unpredictable at 12 AM PST. Sometimes items hit the web instantly and it's a smooth ordering process. Other times items get kicked out of bags, get marked "sold out" before they ever even appear, or even worse the whole site shuts down for a half hour before anyone is able to get an order through. And then if we do manage to order what we want, shipments can arrive damaged, go to the wrong address, not ship at all, et cetera et cetera.
I believe that the US gets far more of the edition sizes of LE products because most other countries can order off our website (whereas we cannot order off the UK site or any others I know of), and of course because Disney is still an American-based company and their primary fanbase still seems to be the United States. I personally think they way they (usually) divide up the numbers of LE dolls is fair, especially since usually I hear European collectors are still able to get a lot of the LE merchandise off their own countries' websites and stores before they sell out. And if not, at least Europe has the option of trying the US website or other countries-shipping will be more expensive that way, but at least you aren't limited to ordering off eBay and hope the person will actually send you the product. Or worse, buy from a FaceBook page.
And there are countries that have it much, much harder than both Europe and the US. Countries full of Disney fans like Canada and Australia don't even have their own websites (Australia doesn't even have one Disney Store) and they either have to pay even more expensive shipping fees or rely on someone from another country to ship items to them. And I can only imagine what it's like in South America, Africa, or Asia (unless you live in Japan).
Bottom Line: We ALL have to get up early and either go to the stores or wait for links. We ALL have to worry that the doll will sell out before we can buy it. Let's stop raising a pointless issue just for argument's sake and focus on helping one another with links and having friendly discussion about the dolls, please. As I understand it, that's what this thread is supposed to be about.
