Frozen: Live at the Hyperion opened on May 27th, 2016 to a massive crowd of Anna and Elsa fans. Some were also there to mourn the loss of fan favorite Disney’s Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular, and they were in for a bit of a surprise. Many fans expected Frozen to carry on Aladdin’s traditions and structure, but what waited inside the Hyperion was unlike any stage play ever hosted in the Disneyland resort. Read on to discover how Frozen: Live at the Hyperion defies the standard of Disneyland stage shows.
True to the Movie
Disney’s Frozen
Image: Mike Mozart, Flickr (license)
Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular, Mickey and the Magical Map, and Beauty and the Beast Live all work carefully with their source movie. However, in their essence they are stage shows. Live Broadway style productions meant to enthrall viewers by bringing their favorite characters from the silver screen to the wooden stage. Frozen: Live at the Hyperion breaks this mold, favoring an almost complete reproduction of the Frozen movie. Adding and extra 15 minutes to the Hyperion theatre’s normal runtime, Frozen: Live at the Hyperion recreates nearly every scene from the movie. This creates some odd moments, like the wolf chase scene. Instead of cutting a scene that does not seem fit for a stage play, Frozen: Live at the Hyperion pushes the technology to recreate an animated scene on a static stage. As such, Frozen demonstrates a shift of retelling a Disney movie on the stage to recreating a Disney movie on a static stage. This creates a reliance on….
Technological Wonder
Anna stars in Disney’s Frozen: Live at the Hyperion
Image: Ben Delmundo, Flickr (license)
Technological wonder drives forward shows like World of Color. Mass nighttime spectaculars are built on dazzling audiences with fireworks and giant waterjets. However, it seems that Frozen: Live at the Hyperion borrowed a little too heavily from this precedent. Many of Frozen: Live at the Hyperion’s stunning moments are simply that: stunning moments that do not forward any of the plot or further develop any of the characters. The success of shows like Fantasmic! rely on the foundations of character complexity laid in the source movies. Fantasmic! does not have to develop Rapunzel because she is already engrained in the culture of the viewers.
Frozen: Live at the Hyperion, however, does not use the well-established characters from Disney’s animated hit Frozen, in fact its entire job is to redevelop those characters as live Broadway personas. Frozen: Live at the Hyperion fails to do so. This sets a dangerous precedent of visual spectacular instead of detailed storytelling. Frozen: Live at the Hyperion strays from the traditional formula and panders to “wow factor” instead of true emotional appeal.
Audience Appeal
Image: Loren Javier, Flickr (license)
This also plays in to Frozen: Live at the Hyperion’s strange audience appeal. Frozen throws away the formula of unique performances in favor of a standardized exactly 55 minute runtime show. Its predecessor Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular, infused modern references and side splitting humor to make each show unique and keep passholders coming back each visit. Frozen: Live at the Hyperion does not have this appeal to repeat visitors (AKA annual passholders) and suffers for it. While Aladdin had a decent royal viewership throughout its 14 year run, Frozen’s audiences have waned after just 2 years. Frozen may fit well in a Disney World show line, where viewers are mostly “one-shot” tourists, but in Disneyland, it fails to draw viewership as a decent chunk of visitors are annual passholders who have “already seen it.”
Walt famously overheard visitors discussing the Jungle Cruise one day about a year after Disneyland’s opening. “Want to ride the Jungle Cruise?” One asked. “Nah, we’ve already seen that” the other replied. Walt immediately jumped into action, changing the Jungle Cruise from its original more educational version to the comedic romp we know today. Frozen: Live at the Hyperion is currently in its “original Jungle Cruise” phase. It is stable in and of itself, but fails to truly appeal to the masses of Disneyland crowds. Frozen: Live at the Hyperion is phenomenally crafted, but currently fails to address its greatest enemy: time. Frozen challenged a functioning format, only time will tell whether this new attempt will press forward into the future of Disneyland stage shows or fall flat as passholders say “Nah, we’ve already seen that.”
