A “maelstrom” can be defined as:
- a large, powerful, or violent whirlpool
- a restless, disordered, or tumultuous state of affairs
It’s hard to say which is the most appropriate definition in recounting the tale of Epcot’s Maelstrom, the lost high seas adventure ride once at home in the park’s World Showcase. From its opening along with the park’s new Norway pavilion in 1988, Maelstrom was a rare addition to EPCOT Center: a thrill ride. Trolls, oil rigs, waterfalls, villages, polar bears… There’s no denying: Maelstrom was an oddity and a treasured remnant of Epcot’s earliest days.
And of course, it didn’t last.
As time marches on, beloved lost rides like Maelstrom disappear into Valhalla. And so, here we are once more: as new generations of Disney Parks fans appear, there will come a time (and sooner than you think) when Maelstrom is but a hazy memory. Young fans will have barely heard of it, and certainly won’t understand what the “big deal” was. So let’s remind them. That’s why you’ll see links to our fabled, in-depth Lost Legends entries across the site…
But in today’s entry to our Legend Library, we’ll dive headfirst into the swirling waters of EPCOT’s lost Norwegian adventure to recount its history, record the experience, and look ahead to the future. As always, we’re counting on you to add your memories and impressions to preserve Maelstrom for a new generation.
Meet the world
The story begins even before EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening. A vast divergence from anything Disney had done before, Walt Disney World’s unprecedented second gate seemed like a total revolution. But even if Orlando had never seen something quite like EPCOT, its foundation was actually that of a century-old tradition: a World’s Fair.
In fact, the two “realms” designed for EPCOT were intentional complements. The park’s northern half, Future World, was a corporate-funded showplace of innovation, ingenuity, and the power of enterprise, formed by gargantuan, monumental pavilions centered around topics of science and industry – a realm populated at its peak by beloved Lost Legends: Universe of Energy, Body Wars, Horizons, World of Motion, Journey into Imagination, Kitchen Kabaret, and The Living Seas.
Meanwhile, the park’s southern half, World Showcase, was instead a cultural expo, with pavilions dedicated to sharing the cuisine, customs, and exports of world nations. In fact, when EPCOT opened in 1982, World Showcase featured pavilions dedicated to nine nations: Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, the United States, Italy, Germany, China, and Mexico. However, World Showcase had room for nineteen. That meant that, as of the park’s opening, ten pavilion-sized parcels of land were empty.
Why was more half of World Showcase vacant? A large part of that was certainly purposeful, to give the park room for expansion in the future – a necessary element of foundational park planning.
But frankly, securing the pavilions wasn’t as easy as Disney had imagined. In the original plans for Epcot presented in Disney’s 1975 Annual Report, World Showcase would:
“…offer participating countries a permanent installation for such features as themed restaurants and shops, product exhibits, industrial displays, cultural presentations, a trade center, and even special facilities for business meetings.
Image: Disney
“Major sponsorships for each participating nation will be asked to provide the capital to cover the cost of designing, developing and constructing its attraction and/or ride and all exhibits, as well as the Pavilion itself. It will also have the responsibility for funding the housing for its employees in the International Village. Its land lease will cover the cost of maintaining the attraction for a minimum of ten years.
The Disney organization will be responsible for area development, including the construction of transportation systems and utilities. We will also build and operate the internal people moving system, the Courtyard of Nations and central theater facility.”
You might get the impression that Disney had signed itself up for a pretty sweet deal, and you’d be right. In the development of Epcot, Disney planned for a park that supported itself.
The idea was that corporations (in Future World) and the governments of countries (in World Showcase) would be motivated to keep their park offerings up-to-date. After all, no company would want its name broadcast across an out-of-date pavilion purporting to showcase the future, and no country would accept sub-par representation at its cultural “Epcot embassy.”
Surely, countries would pay Disney for their representation, then again to design, develop, and construct the pavilion. Countries would even pay to house their own citizens in Florida to staff the attractions. For Disney, it would be a win-win.
But when EPCOT Center opened in 1982, the model had shifted. Disney couldn’t find a single government willing to pay for a ten-year spot in the park. So instead, the countries that were present in World Showcase in 1982 were funded not by their governments, but by private corporations – the same model that had built the park’s Future World.
Of course, these private companies each had close affiliations to the represented countries and an inherent interest in their portrayal to Americans (for example, the Japan pavilion was sponsored by Japanese retailer Mitsukoshi).
And of course, that makes sense… the financial investment Disney required to start up a World Showcase pavilion was substantial, and the resulting product would admittedly be more diversion than diplomacy. It’s probably also the reason that – despite Disney’s hopes – only one of the nine opening day World Showcase pavilions featured a ride: Mexico’s Rio Del Tiempo, a tranquil and simple cruise through the history of Mexico.
(Germany and Japan were both intended to house rides, but they were cancelled, leaving empty showbuildings attached to each. Two other pavilions – Canada and China – offered Circlevision travelogue films of their respective countries, while France presented a halved 180-degree film.)
Expanding the world
So at the time of the park’s opening, World Showcase offered nine pavilions – with just one ride between them. Still, Disney didn’t plan to let their cultural showplace stagnate with nothing but travelogue films and restaurants. At the very least, plans were in the works to begin filling those ten vacant slots around the World Showcase lagoon.
Image: Disney, via Yesterland.com
At the time of the park’s opening, pavilions dedicated to Israel, Equatorial Africa, and Spain were officially announced… but no earth ever moved on the projects. As Epcot followers know all-too-well, pavilions dedicated to Puerto Rico, Russia, Switzerland, Costa Rica, the United Arab Emirates, and Brazil have ranged from rumor to full-on concept art in the decades since…
However, a tenth pavilion did arrive in 1984. Situated between France and Japan, the Morocco pavilion was the first addition to World Showcase, and just two years after EPCOT’s opening. It was also the only pavilion directly funded by a government: the Kingdom of Morocco.
Only two years after that, earth would begin moving once more. Of the nine remaining vacant slots, one would be filled when Epcot’s eleventh (and to date, most recent) World Showcase plot became a construction zone in 1986.
Located between Mexico and China, this eleventh plot was originally intended to represent the cultural region of Scandinavia (encompassing the countries of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, above). However, 11 companies representing Norway alone were able to raise the over $30 million required to create an exclusive single-nation pavilion.
Disney chipped in one-third of the construction costs, and the quest to open a Norway pavilion was underway… Read on…
A storm brewing
Image: Disney
The ultimate goal of World Showcase – from the position of its funders – was to increase tourism and recognition of their represented countries. By offering authentic merchandise and real, local cuisine prepared by actual citizens, World Showcase would be a marketing wonder; like a food truck festival that leaves you hungry for more, the opportunity to sample the culture of each participating country would be a coup for sponsors in the long run.
El Rio Del Tiempo in the Mexico pavilion had certainly illustrated the draw of a ride, sending guests drifting through the history of the country via “small world” style vignettes. But the charming attraction was more or less a hidden gem, tucked away into a dark corner of the imposing Mexico pavilion…
For Norway, Imagineers had something more planned. The ornate Scandinavian village would have its authentic craftsmen, its ornate shops, its Stave Church exhibit, and its royal banquet halls. But at the back of the cobbled streets would be something the likes of which Epcot had never seen before.
Beyond the pavilion’s main courtyard was an inconspicuous entry to a hidden gem of Epcot’s attraction line-up. With Norway on board to finance the creation of a pavilion including a dark ride, Disney Imagineers were able to get to work on the preliminary plans.
Image: Disney
Norway would house a dark ride on par with the original, sweeping dark rides of Epcot’s Future World: full animatronics, decadent storytelling, and immersive sets – a headlining attraction that put Norway on the proverbial map.
The task fell to Bob Kurzweil (designer of Disneyland’s Alice in Wonderland dark ride), fan-favorite Marty Sklar, and producer Randy Carter, who met with the heads of some large Norwegian corporations (like Selmer-Sande and Kloster) who would – if they found the plans adequate – give big money to Disney for the design, development, and construction of the pavilion and its central attraction.
Paul Torrigino with a model of the unload area. Image: Disney
The group settled on the idea of a flume-style boat ride and the novel idea that it would travel both forwards and backwards (which had never been done before).
Joe Rohde (best known for his later design work on Disney’s Animal Kingdom and his later role as the park’s spokesman and emissary) did early conceptual illustrations and models based around Bob’s first idea: that the ride should be a fantasy ride through the mythical stories of Norway focused primarily around the legends of trolls and the myths and folktales of such creatures that permeate the country. (Ever heard of The Three Billy Goats Gruff? Thank Norway.)
Telling the real story
Norwegian representatives flew back to Imagineering to hear Disney’s proposal.
To the chagrin of the design team, the Norwegian representatives had no interest in having their country represented by trolls. They wanted an attraction to spur tourism and give Norway a memorable identity; they wanted a travelogue of sorts, showcasing the natural wonders of the country, its place in a modern industrial world, and the rich, real history of the nation.
(And to be fair, they were probably right to hold their ground. Imagine if a Norwegian theme park offered to build a United States pavilion, with its single ride themed around the legend of Big Foot. We’d probably feel that they were missing the big picture a little bit, right?)
By the in-depth account of Paul Torrigino, one of the ride’s model makers turned Production Designer, the Norwegians made it clear that if they were to finance a ride for Epcot’s Norway pavilion, it needed to hit a few specific topics: ‘Vikings, a fishing village, polar bears, a fjord, an oil rig, and maybe a troll or two.”
That was quite a lot to fit into one stew.
Image: Disney
Rightfully, four principle designers (Bob, Randy, Joe, and Paul) put their heads together to try to figure out any logical way that it could work. Disney Imagineering – known the world over for its inventive storytelling – was left grasping at straws to connect the time periods, themes, and styles that Norway wanted in exchange for funding.
Then came the winning idea: that the ride could use the plot device of time travel to explain the mismatched sights and stories. The ride could begin in a historic fishing village in the era of Vikings before traveling into a marsh populated by folktale creatures, who would send the boat through time to the present. While it wasn’t the most refined concept Imagineering had ever devised, it would serve its purpose and show just the elements of Norway that investors wanted. With a loose plot to connect the scenes, work intensified and Disney announced its newest attraction would open in 1986: SeaVenture.
Opening the gates
Image: Disney
You read that right. The ride inside of the Norway pavilion was called SeaVenture until at least March 1988 (as that’s when the above photo was taken). By May, the streets of “Norway” were opened as the pavilion soft-opened, and guests who visited saw a shiny new marquee sporting the ride’s final name: Maelstrom. However, the ride remained closed.
As expected of any new and technologically advanced attraction, Maelstrom took a while to work out its kinks. The attraction missed the soft opening of the Norway pavilion in May 1988. On June 3, the crown prince Harald V of Norway visited Epcot to dedicate the pavilion in a ceremony broadcast live to his home country. Still, the doors to Maelstrom remained sealed. It would be another full month before Maelstrom would make its debut: June 5, 1988. Shortly thereafter, Disney took out newspaper ads promising something grand:
“When was the last time you went over a waterfall… backwards? Had your life threatened by a nasty, old three-headed river troll? Came within a whisker of a 12-foot polar bear? Challenged white-water rapids? And braved a thunderous, storm-tossed North Sea?
The last time may be the first time you ride “The Maelstrom,” the new thriller at EPCOT Center. It’s a sea adventure of legendary proportions, now open in the fabulous, new Norway Showcase. So come on. Conquer “The Maelstrom.” All you need is the guts of a Viking.
Image: Mark & Paul Luukkonen, Flickr (license)
Your journey through the wild waters of Maelstrom begins in the Norway pavilion under the unassuming marquee. The wooden doors that it rises above lead to an even more unassuming queue line. The ride’s queue is contained in a hallway painted teal, lined very simply with small Norwegian flags and flanked with a large, antique-style map showcasing Milestones in Norwegian Exploration and tracing the routes of the Great Age of Vikings in 800 A.D.
One of the more memorable elements of the queue was the massive, wrapping mural painted above the loading area. The mural became a fan favorite, depicting industrial workers, Viking ships, trolls, cruise ships, and fishing villages all meant to represent the past, present, and future of Norway – just like Maelstrom itself.
Beneath this memorable and hearty backdrop, a conveyer belt carries a sixteen-foot Viking longboat from about the 10th century, complete with a carved dragon head bow. Once guests are comfortably seated, the conveyer belt re-engages and advances the boat into the churning waters of the flume’s river. Into a dark, rocky tunnel and around the bend, the atmosphere becomes tense as the journey begins…
On the next page, we’ll step into our own Viking longboat and take to the high seas aboard Maelstrom…
Sailing into history
“You are not the first to pass this way,” – far ahead, a sliver of silver light glows. The sliver widens to reveal itself as an eye casting watery blue and white light throughout the darkness. As it undulates, it reveals ahead of you a dark waterfall – “nor shall you be the last.”
Your longboat engages with the waterfall – a conveyer belt in disguise – and begins to be hoisted up the ride’s thirty-foot tall lift hill, directly into the shimmering beam of the eye of Odin.
Image: Mark & Paul Luukkonen, Flickr (license)
“Those who seek the spirit of Norway face peril and adventure, but more often find beauty and charm.” Odin’s eye closes as the boat levels out, drifting softly into a peaceful river.
Ahead, torches signal the arrival of civilization as Odin’s voice continues. “We have always lived with the sea, so look first to the spirit of the seafarer.” Around the corner, the boat would pass through a seaside Viking village with Audio Animatronics Vikings preparing their ornate ships for exploration. Continuing on, the scene widens to reveal the ships distant at sea, setting sail for the unknown.
Troll Country
Image: Disney
“There are those who seek Norway’s spirit in the land of forests and mystery, where trolls still prowl the water’s edge.” Around another dark turn, the boat re-emerges in a dense, dark swamp. Those with watchful eyes will notice that they’re not the only ones making careful observations. The Nokken, a disguised river troll, blends effortlessly into the roots and stumps of the swamp, his glowing yellow eyes watching the boat as it passes.
Thick fog clings to the surface of the water, giving the impression that something unusual is about to happen in this mystical place.
Then comes the ride’s signature moment. The boat drifts ahead until its ornate dragon bow is face-to-face with a large forest boulder. From behind the rock rises an imposing Audio Animatronic figure: a three-headed troll, and not even one of the heads seemed pleased to see us.
“How dare you come here?”
“Invaders!”
“This is Troll Country!”
“Go away! Be gone!
“I’ll cast a spell… You’ll disappear!”
“Disappear! Disappear!”
Image: Disney
Above the boat, twinkling, sparkling lights shimmer as magic descends on the ship. “Back… back! Over the falls!”
The boat floats backwards under the twinkling stars as the trolls cackle, slipping down a churning slope backwards in a startling and laughter-inducing moment.
The Wonders of Norway
The boat continues its backwards journey past a final forest troll and the setting sun. Guests watch as sunset disappears behind them and the cool relief of dusk covers the snowy scenery and the icy walls.
Image: Disney
“Before the Odin time, Norway’s spirit roamed the seas of the far north and beyond!” Guests sail past numerous Animatronics figures of polar bears (and their adorable cubs) nestled into icy caverns and exploring against the yellow sunset. One unforgettable polar bear Animatronic stands on its hind-legs, ten feet tall, his paws swiping softly at the passing boats.
Leaving behind the frozen north, the boat retreats into a mountainous forested grotto where the sound of falling water echoes.
This elaborate room is lit by the very real light of day. In one of the ride’s more astounding moments, the longboat physically floats backwards until its rear end is positioned out of the showbuilding, exposed to the ride’s exterior.
The view from outside the ride. Image: Sam Howzit, Flickr (license)
Any guest walking around the Norway pavilion can look up and see the end of a longboat precariously perched atop a pounding waterfall… a most unsual sight!
Just when it seems that the boat may fall backwards out of the showbuilding, a large tree-stump troll ahead of guests awakens, its head lifting out of inconspicuous rockwork. It eyes guests and offers a gesture of good will: another act of magic. The boat slides to the right, aligning with a new, forward trajectory, and advances.
Image: Mark & Paul Luukkonen, Flickr (license)
Narrowly passing under a rocky outcropping and a thundering waterfall, the ship flies down the ride’s 28-foot drop, crashing with a splash in the dark North Sea where a bolt of lightning rips through the skies. The lightning strikes illuminate a massive, towering oilrig overhead.
In the distance, other rigs can be seen burning fuels into plumes of fire, the night sky filled with clouds. This striking finale room is of significant scale and impressive size, even if its atmosphere and message is unlikely to jive with modern audiences…
Exiting the North Sea, the long boats make one final turn, revealing a life-sized Norwegian fishing village easily on the scale and detail of Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean. The charming nighttime village might feel like the beginning of the meat of the ride, but the voice of Odin signals otherwise: “Norway’s spirit has always been – always will be – adventure.”
To the sound of seagulls and clanging buoy bells, the boat drifts forward to dock.
As always, we’ll leave you with an on-board point-of-view video that makes a great companion to the recollections above. We invite you to watch through the video if you’d like a visual reminder of the ride:
The post-show
After exiting the boat, guests could linger for a moment in the warmly-lit seaside village, perhaps admiring clever nods to the Norwegian companies who’d sponsored the rides so many years ago. At most, you might be trapped at the seaside dock for five minutes. It’s likely to feel a lot longer given that there’s not much to do. Finally, after a few minutes, the town’s doors would open, revealing a large theater beyond.
Image: Mark & Paul Luukkonen, Flickr (license)
This is Maelstrom’s true finale: a chance to see the wonders of Norway via a 70mm film from the ride’s opening year. Inside the theater, guests would sit in ornately carved wooden seats and watch The Spirit of Norway, a six-minute film that shares some of the industry, entertainment, and natural wonders of Norway that the brief, three-and-a-half minute ride was unable to convey.
For most of Maelstrom’s life, guests exiting the ride accumulated in the fishing village until the theater doors swung open automatically. By 2008, the doors into – and out of – the theater remained open permanently, allowing guests to enter the continuous showing at any time, or opt to step through the theater and skip it altogether. By 2008, the twenty-year-old film had been seen by more than enough people to please the pavilion’s sponsors, and its information was far from current anyway.
The end
Despite the ride’s brief runtime and its disjointed story, Maelstrom was a key addition to Epcot. Even if it didn’t require “the guts of a Viking,” it was Epcot’s first certifiable thrill and a turning point for World Showcase. While it spent most of its life slightly outdated, it was a brave effort: to create a classic-style dark ride using cutting edge technology given very strict story elements. And based on the reaction to the announcement of its removal, Maelstrom succeeded in making fans the world over.
But as we know, nothing good can stay (especially, evidence suggests, at Epcot). Maelstrom closed forever on October 5, 2014 despite protest from die-hard fans. Read on as we finish off the legend of Maelstrom by exploring the fate that befell Epcot’s Norway… or should we say, Arendelle?
The company responsible for funding the Norway pavilion would end up selling its stake to Disney directly in 1992. Since Epcot’s annual attendance is roughly twice the population of Norway, the government of the country saw it fit to step in, funding the pavilion with $200,000 annually – enough to keep it from shuttering as some of Epcot’s sponsorless Future World pavilions did.
Image: Disney
The 1992 move by the government was renewable in five years increments, and in 1997, they did renew. But in 2002 – along with many other Epcot sponsors – Norway decided to discontinue its agreement against the (predictably pro-renewal) advice of Disney.
Even without outside funds to cover updates and enhancements, Maelstrom seemed like a certainty when it came to Epcot. After all, the high seas adventure sailed into the misty past, present, and folktales of Scandinavia; nothing else could reliably replace it in its Norwegian setting, right? Surely, even IP-obsessed modern Disney couldn’t ever find a matching character license to overlay on a ride through Norway!
You know what’s coming next…
In 2013, Disney storytellers finally cracked their century-long battle with adapting the icy fable of The Snow Queen, originally published in 1844 by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (who also wrote The Little Mermaid).
Frozen centers around the frosty relationship between two sister princesses – Anna and Elsa. Elsa maintains a chilly distance from her younger sister to protect Anna from her secret (and increasingly uncontrollable) ice powers. On the night of her coronation, Elsa’s emotions get the best of her and she ignites an eternal winter that blankets the Scandanavian kingdom of Arendelle in snow. Naturally, it’s up to Anna to chase her fleeing, frightened sister into the snowy mountains to convince her that she’s not better off alone.
It probably goes without saying that, $1.2 billion later, Frozen became the highest grossing animated film of all time. It also spawned 2019’s darker and more mythological Frozen II, recapturing the magic by earning the biggest box office debut for an animated film ever, then bypassing its own predecessor to claim the highest grossing animated film record for its own.
It was inevitable…
Frozen Ever After
In a nonchalant post on the Disney Parks Blog dated June 9, 2015, Disney Parks’ Social Media Director quietly announced that Epcot would soon play host to a brand new attraction in 2016 based on Disney’s 2013 mega-hit, Frozen. The ride to replace Maelstrom would be called Frozen Ever After.
Shortly into construction on the brand new ride, Disney came clean with just what fans had feared: that Frozen Ever After wouldn’t just re-use Maelstrom’s ride building; it would re-use the ride itself. That meant that Maelstrom’s barely-four-minute ride time and relatively middling capacity would remain, too, now just earning spectacular waits from families dying to see the blockbuster princesses up close.
Image: Theme Park Tourist
Frozen Ever After opened June 21, 2016. Fortunately, the resulting attraction is, to put it mildly, a total reinvention. A wonderful ride in its own right, Frozen Ever After is a sensational showcase of modern Imagineering and its triumphs.
First and foremost, it is not a “book report” ride – a term used by Imagineers and fans to describe dark rides that simply whisk guests through a three minute summary of a story they already know. Instead, this ride is set after the film, with guests visiting Arendelle and boarding old Scandanavian Viking boats (eh hem…) to celebrate Winter Summer Day – an annual celebration when Elsa plans to (purposefully) coat the kingdom in ice and snow to commemorate the day Anna saved her from her lonely world.
Image: Disney
On board, riders hear pieces and parts of some favorite songs from the award-winning soundtrack, and while the track layout is an instant giveaway and a few allusions are scattered throughout, sights and sounds alone make it impossible to know that Maelstrom ever existed here. It’s unfair to call this ride an “overlay.” While it may re-use Maelstrom’s track and vehicles, they’re merely the backbone of an entirely new ride that’s every bit as permanent.
The home-run, by far, is the introduction of brand-new and impossibly astounding Audio-Animatronics figures. So lifelike and so compelling are these “living” figures, we count it as the first time it’s ever really looked like a cartoon character is sincerely alive, standing before us – easily Disney’s best work with human figures. In fact, the citizens of Arendelle ranked high on our must-read Countdown of the Best Animatronics on Earth. And that’s saying something.
Ultimately, Frozen Ever After isn’t just a “replacement” for Maelstrom; it’s a staggering triumph in its own right. That’s why it earned its own in-depth making-of feature in our companion series, Modern Marvels: Frozen Ever After. Make the jump there to dive into Disney’s search for the Snow Queen and the inner workings of the new Epcot ride. That’s also where you’ll find a ride-through video chronicling the attraction – perfect for comparing to Maelstrom’s point-of-view video.
You can decide for yourself what you think of Frozen independently of Maelstrom or compared to it. Either way, you can imagine that from long before its opening through today, Disney fans have come out of the woodwork on all sides of the Frozen Ever After issue, engaging in heated discussions about the many precedents this ride obliterates, the new ones that it sets, and the many questions that this move raises. Here are just a few:
1. Do characters belong in World Showcase? Or in Epcot at all?
The story of the intersection between Disney Parks and Disney characters is a long one, dating all the way back to Disneyland’s opening in 1955. But today, the balance seems to have shifted as never before. As Disney’s catalogue of fresh stories and newly-acquired characters expands, so too does the assurance that any addition to the parks will have a blockbuster series attached.
EPCOT was once envisioned as a respite from Disney’s cartoon origins. In fact, Disney characters were intentionally absent at the time of the park’s opening. Slowly but surely, for better or worse, they moved in. Mickey and friends became Epcot regulars as The Lion King, Finding Nemo, and Guardians of the Galaxy invaded Future World and character meet-and-greets became unavoidable in World Showcase – Aladdin and Jasmine in Morocco, Mary Poppins in the U.K., Belle and the Beast in France…
It doesn’t escape the notice of longtime Epcot fans, for example, that Frozen is surely based on the Scandanavian folktale of a Danish author, and that its setting is surely inspired by the architecture and customs of Norway, Denmark, and Finland… but no matter how you slice it, Arendelle is… well… fictional. And sure, Disney’s expansion of the pavilion (above, taking over one of World Showcase’s vacant plots) dutifully keeps the look and feel of Norway, but only to house facilities for Anna and Elsa.
Doesn’t it betray the realities of Norway and the Norwegian cultural representatives who staff the pavilion to sell Olaf plush and welcome families to Arendelle? Might Disney add a ride through Agrabah to Morocco? A journey through Narnia to the U.K.? A voyage to Rapunzel’s Corona to Germany? Most visitors probably wouldn’t care or notice, after all…
But the “character invasion” will continue, even if it’s not by way of fantasy kingdoms. As part of the grand reimagining of Epcot underway now, World Showcase is hosting the Modern Marvel: Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure in France (taking up another of the vacant pavilion plots), with Mary Poppins en route to the U.K. and inevitable rumors of Pixar’s Coco overtaking the ride in Mexico. While each of those is certainly a “character invasion,” at least their respective films are set in the nations whose pavilions they’ll inhabit, making it a bit easier for fans to accept.
Still, if you listen to Epcot fans, there is something to be fundamentally said about the importance of keeping some theme parks “real-life” and aspiring to more than just selling Disney IP. If every Disney Park becomes an immersive, Magic-Kingdom-style fantasy park of movie-themed lands and cartoon characters, why have different parks at all? If Anna and Elsa can be reasonably at home at Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios, then the parks are surely missing clear and concise individual identities, right?
2. Does Frozen deserve a ride?
Sure, there are plenty of oppositional folks who outright detest Frozen (and probably just because so many others like it so much; c’est la vie) but the truth is unavoidable: Frozen was literally a new peak for Disney. Commercially, it shattered every record for animated films.
But we know this much, too: no one was more surprised by the film’s phenomenal performance and unstoppable success than Disney. It’s likely that Disney expected Frozen to perform similarly to Tangled and The Princess and the Frog – modest family hits with some princess merchandising potential.
A billion dollars later, fans watched through 2014, 2015, and 2016 as Disney scrambled to react, moving the Anna and Elsa meet-and-greets from venue-to-venue and park-to-park as lines topped five hours for a chance to briefly interact with the sisters. What’s worse, it wasn’t until the next year that the resorts could pool their resources to put on temporary Frozen themed parties, overlays, and events – events that brought staggering crowds to Hollywood Studios, California Adventure, and Disneyland Paris even 18 months after the film’s debut.
To that end, some criticized Frozen not for getting a ride, but for getting one “too late,” missing out on the initial rise of the film. Of course, that’s short-term thinking… Frozen isn’t just destined to be a continuously-revived franchise; it’s a landmark film in its own right that – like The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, or The Lion King – will be a Disney classic forever. So there’s no question, Frozen deserves a ride. But…
3. Does Frozen deserve a better ride?
Frozen Ever After is astounding. Princesses, trolls, Scandinavian castles, fjords, fishing villages… (For those keeping track, it technically includes all the elements those Norwegian investors required back in 1986, except for Vikings and an oil rig.) It’s a wonderful family ride that’ll delight for decades.
But if we’re being very honest, we predicted from the start that even an exceedingly well-done overlay of Maelstrom (which Frozen Ever After is) is simply not be the ride that Frozen has earned. As beautifully redressed and wonderfully reimagined as the attraction is, its very foundation – Maelstrom’s four-minute, low capacity ride and existing scene dimensions – simply hemmed in the potential for a ride based on the highest grossing animated film ever.
Any ride – however exceptional! – draped over the remains of Maelstrom would be handicapped from the start. Frozen Ever After somehow manages to be an E-Ticket nonetheless. But to think of what could have been… In a fictional fifth Walt Disney World park, we can easily imagine Arendelle being its own entire land anchored by one or more awe-inspiring E-tickets with cutting edge technology and the brilliant showmanship Disney’s known for (which makes it all that more frustrating that Arendelle lands are being built in Hong Kong and Paris, and both are all-but-confirmed to be building clones of Epcot’s Frozen Ever After, complete with Maelstrom ride layouts!)
Don’t get us wrong: Frozen Ever After is benevolent, fun, and beautiful at worst, and a seriously impressive dark ride at best! But is it what Frozen deserves? Hmm.
Maelstrom subsides
Regardless of your opinions on Maelstrom or on the Frozen Ever After attraction that took its place, Maelstrom signals yet another notch on the shrinking belt of the original EPCOT Center. A park once filled with outstanding, classic, historic dark rides has lost yet another to the ever-turning wheels of progress.
When we look objectively, it may be true that Maelstrom was an oddity; a ride unlike any other Disney had ever created. Mismatched tones, odd transitions, an uneven story, and a strange ride experience altogether. But that doesn’t make it any less important in the memories of those who were thrilled by its waterfalls, terrified by its trolls, and touched by its heart.
Even if you skipped the final film every single time, you’re likely to remember Maelstrom forever. And that’s precisely what Norway wanted. Of course, this isn’t the only story of a closed classic… Make the jump to our In-Depth Collections Library and set sail for another Lost Legend.
As in all of the entries in our Lost Legacy series, we depend now on you. In the comments section below, preserve your memories of Maelstrom and your thoughts on its life. We want Disney fans of all ages to record their stories so that the experience of Maelstrom is never forgotten. We look forward to reading your comments!
