From the bottom of the seas; to the moon and back; through wicked woods and haunted hotels; ancient temples to inside the imagination; from the microscopic world to the origins of the universe… For more than sixty years, Disney Parks have brought unthinkable adventures to life.
And for even longer than that, the minds behind Disney have been trying to bring one particular fairy tale to life. Over decades, Disney animators, designers, storytellers, and Imagineers had been cracking away at the icy case of The Snow Queen, trying to incorporate this ethereal character into their movies, cartoons, and theme park attractions. The evolution of this chilling wintertime tale is a plotline in and of itself, and today, we’ll trace the snowy story of Disney’s frosty relationship with The Snow Queen and how it gradually evolved into one of the most spectacular rides at Walt Disney World today – a verifiable Modern Marvel joining our In-Depth Collections Library of must-read features.
Image: Disney
From “Once Upon a Time” to Frozen Ever After, you may be surprised by the many threads that came together to create the ride that just may change Epcot forever… Settle in.
Hans Christian Andersen
In the pantheon of great storytellers, there are certain names that will be celebrated forever as legends. A look across Disney’s animated films reads like a master list of writers… Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan, P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins, A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, and dozens more have all been brought to life through Disney’s one-of-a-kind animation style.
Indeed, while Disney’s adaptations have become the definitive versions of centuries-old classics by many, it’s important to remember that before Walt was even born, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm – German academics and authors – had collected and at last recorded popular tales that had previously only circulated between generations via oral tradition… The Grimm Brothers’ versions of Cinderella, The Frog Prince, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White became household classics a half century before any Disney animator had put pen to paper.
Image: source
Altogether, though, there may be no original storyteller whose works have shaped Disney animation (and by extension, the entire Walt Disney Company) than Hans Christian Andersen. Born almost exactly one hundred years before Walt, Andersen was a prolific Dutch writer active throughout the 19th century. Of the (literally) thousands of works he published, each was renowned for being readily accessible to children while also presenting tales of virtue, resilience, and diversity that appealed to adult readers as well.
Image: Vilhelm Pedersen
Perhaps that malleable, universal appeal is what led to his stories – including The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Ugly Duckling, Thumbelina, The Little Match Girl, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Princess and the Pea, and The Little Mermaid becoming well and truly timeless… and each earning a definitive animated adaptation in the century-and-a-half following their respective publications.
But of great importance today is another one of Andersen’s other widely recognized tales.
The Snow Queen
Image: Vilhelm Pedersen
First published in 1845, The Snow Queen was one of Andersen’s longest and most highly acclaimed fairy tales. Like many of his best works, it’s a story of a young girl’s journey.
In this case, it follows Gerda in a quest to find the icy palace of the mysterious Snow Queen in the northern permafrost where her best friend Kai has been taken. Kai, for his part, has been infected with shards of a magic mirror crafted by the devil whose shattered pieces – no larger than a grain of sand – enter through human eyes and distort the world, making it dark and cold, eventually freezing their hearts solid.
Image: Vilhelm Pedersen
Meanwhile, the Snow Queen – an admittedly hands-off, passive, not-quite-villain – simply kisses Kai to remove all memory of Gerda from his mind and leaves him in her frozen castle to play with shards of ice as she takes off for destinations unknown. She’s beautiful, hypnotic, and largely, gone.
Spoiler alert, but Gerda does reach the ice palace. The Snow Queen is no where to be seen, and a few warm tears from Gerda melt Kai’s icy heart. The duo return to their town in celebration, happy to see that winter is over at last. The icy Snow Queen is simply never heard from again… largely absent from the story named after her.
Image: Vilhelm Pedersen
As early as 1940, Walt was in talks with Sam Goldwyn (whose Goldwyn Productions would eventually provide the “G” in MGM) to collaborate on a Hans Christian Andersen biopic. To Walt’s thinking, Goldwyn’s studio would shoot live-action sequences of Andersen’s life interspersed with Disney-animated sequences of The Little Mermaid, The Red Shoes, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, and Thumbelina along the way, culminating in an animated retelling of The Snow Queen.
Already, you can imagine the beautiful way Disney animators could’ve brought the tale of The Snow Queen to life… a visual spectacle of dancing snow, color, and ice. The problem is, Disney couldn’t quite crack the story… No matter how they analyzed the story, the cold, quiet, brooding Snow Queen – entirely absent from the story’s finale – seemed too passive a villain in a story a touch too dark when set alongside Snow White’s happily-ever-after.
Enchanted Snow Palace
Though The Snow Queen might’ve been an enduring tale whose characters and ideas had become embedded in “best of” fairy tale collections, Disney’s storytellers had seemingly decided that the story simply didn’t fit in the confines of filmmaking. But that didn’t mean the story was useless.
Image: Disney
This, of course, is when we turn to Disney’s first would-be ride through the frozen Nordic world and its enigmatic designer, Marc Davis. A legendary animator, Marc is a key figure in Disney animation history thanks to his role bringing Snow White, Bambi, Cinderella, Alice, Maleficent, and Cruella da Ville to the screen. In the 1960s, he made the leap to WED Enterprises (the forerunner to Imagineering) and became one of Disney’s top designers. His signature, whimsical, comical vignettes can be seen in The Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the latter half of the Haunted Mansion, and his sing-along comic creations include The Enchanted Tiki Room, America Sings, and Country Bear Jamboree.
In the 1970s, Marc dreamed up two ideas that – to his thinking – would be the two greatest rides he would ever become involved with.
Image: Disney
For the still-new Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, he created an original attraction that he believed would eclipse his own magnum opus – Pirates of the Caribbean. Trading the Caribbean seas for the American west, this unimaginable ride through the sunset-hued landscapes of cowboys and Indians would truly have been a one-of-a-kind E-Ticket adventure. We chronicled the entire story of the ride and its surprising axing in its own feature, Possibilityland: The Western River Expedition – an absolute must-read for Disney World fans.
Image: Disney
Meanwhile, back at the original Disneyland, Davis had created another new ride… but forget the fiery red Southwest… The Enchanted Snow Palace was designed as an escape from Southern Californian sunshine. Disguised as a massive, icy, glacier melting in Fantasyland (approximately where the Fantasyland Theater is today), guests would set sail down a melting river through a polar wonderland.
Musical, magnificent, and gorgeous, the ride would, of course, have included innumerable scenes in true Davis style. Sure, we’d sail past timber wolves on snow-covered hills, howling at the aurora borealis; pass playful walruses spraying us with water…
But, true to Marc Davis’ comical form of perfectly-orchestrated character vignettes, we’d ride through a winter wonderland of skating polar bears and penguins… arctic animals sledding and sliding down hillsides… an orchestra of penguins directed by a seal in a tuxedo…
But eventually, the boats would sail into a fanciful ice cavern of massive snow giants with their icicle clubs, swatting lazily at Fantasia’s frost fairies…
Image: Disney
Then into an icy palace for a face-to-face encounter with the beautiful, hypnotic Snow Queen herself, who would conjure real snow to fall from the sky around us in a truly glorious finale.
Melted
Of course, like Disney’s The Snow Queen, the Enchanted Snow Palace never did find its way to Fantasyland. In fact, though Davis’ ride only used the Snow Queen (here, friendly, beautiful, and welcoming) as a finale in his Enchanted Snow Palace, the ride never took shape for the same reason the Snow Queen’s movie hadn’t: it didn’t have a compelling story… no narrative… not even a subtle one like Pirates or Haunted Mansion. Put another way, the Enchanted Snow Palace Marc Davis designed was a little too passive; a friendly but admittedly dull ride through cute encounters and charming sets without a compelling reason for being.
Image: Disney
Though it would be beautiful, artistic, and (indeed) enchanting, the Enchanted Snow Palace probably wouldn’t have entered the Disney Parks canon like Pirates or Haunted Mansion could, eliciting decades of re-rides for their timelessness.
Not to mention, the 1970s had also brought about a big change at the Walt Disney Company. Without Walt, the theme parks were becoming stale. New management had determined that quick, “cheap and cheerful” thrills were the name of the game. (Which is part of the reason why Davis’ animatronic-heavy, elaborate, big budget Western River Expedition was easily beat by the more barren, thrilling Big Thunder Mountain.)
To put it another way, from its initial concept as a Disney animated film in the 1940s to its consideration as a Disneyland ride three decades later, it seemed certain that any hopes for The Snow Queen were melted… Until…
World Showcase
Image: Disney
For just a moment, we have to leave the worlds of Disney animation aside, and for good reason. When EPCOT Center opened in 1982, it was designed specifically to omit Disney’s beloved animated characters.
And think of how revolutionary that really was. Up until the park’s opening, a trip to “Disney” was synonymous with princesses, castles, pirates, cartoons, and Fantasyland favorites. EPCOT Center changed the model. It left the explicit fantasy and fairy tales behind and instead was made of two realms dedicated to reality: Future World (a World’s Fair style exploration of industry and technology, with mega corporations sponsoring pavilions with educational dark rides)…
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…and World Showcase (a World’s Fair style collection of cultural pavilions dedicated to country’s stories, architecture, culture, history, and cuisine).
As the years passed, EPCOT Center gained a nasty reputation and became a pop culture punch line – it was the theme park kids dreaded spending a day at. What child, they imagined, would trade a day of Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise, or Cinderella’s Castle for educational dark rides? In the 1990s, then-CEO Michael Eisner decided to punch up the park’s attractiveness by ending the moratorium on Disney characters.
As much as many Disney Parks fans detest the decision, you have to admit: Eisner’s regime had overseen the wild and wonderful expansion of Disney’s animated catalogue to contain characters that were defining the 1990s… except one.
Renaissance
Eisner had reinvigorated almost all aspects of the newly re-branded Walt Disney Company. Before Eisner, Disney’s animated films had all but left the world of fairy tales behind.
Then, 1989’s The Little Mermaid (itself an Andersen tale) singlehandedly revived Walt Disney Animation. The release of The Little Mermaid is universally agreed upon as the start of the “Disney Renaissance,” when Disney had hit after hit after hit at the box office, each a Broadway-style musical based on fairy tales, legends, and myths.
That’s why Disney suspected that – fifty years after their first attempt – they should look into The Snow Queen again, as a bookend to the studio’s fairy tale era. The project was reportedly given to Glen Keane, the character animator who’d given life to The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, and Tarzan. As a creative lead to Disney’s Renaissance, Keane would be just the person to make The Snow Queen story fresh, relevant, and – most of all – filmable. Until he couldn’t. Keane officially quit the project in 2002, instead shifting to Disney’s upcoming take on Rapunzel.
Image: Disney
That left the “Disney Renaissance” style renderings drawn up for The Snow Queen that would’ve made her fit alongside Pocahontas, Ariel, and Jasmine on ice, and the idea of bringing The Snow Queen to the big screen was dead on arrival… again.
Norway
As it happens, Glen Keane’s abandonment of The Snow Queen isn’t the only Disney departure in 2002. It was also that year that the government of Norway elected to stop sponsoring the pavilion dedicated to the country in Epcot’s World Showcase. Opening in 1988 (set between Mexico and China), the Norway pavilion had been a cultural showcase of the country’s industry and history.
Image: Disney
It also had the distinction of being one of the only World Showcase pavilions to have a ride. In fact, the ride that had opened alongside the Norway pavilion back in 1988 was also billed as Epcot’s first-ever thrill ride. Norway’s representatives had requested a “travelogue” style dark ride through Norway requesting that Disney’s designers emphasize a few specific elements: “Vikings, a fishing village, polar bears, a fjord, an oil rig, and maybe a troll or two.”
Seated in Viking longboats, guests would ascend into the history of Norway and – most memorably – through its mythology. In a four-minute, forwards / backwards boat ride, guests would sail through a historical Viking village, troll-infested swamps, the frigid snow-covered valleys of the country, and eventually splash down in the Baltic sea beneath a towering oil rig, exiting to a theater film about Norway’s real, modern industry. Check, check, check, and check.
Image: Disney
Naturally, we chronicled the entire making-of and experience of this one-of-a-kind ride in its own in-depth feature – one of the most read features on Theme Park Tourist! – Lost Legends: Maelstrom. It’s important to read up on that history if you haven’t already, because it largely sets the stage for where we’re heading next…
Because, in 2002, Norway dropped its sponsorship of its Epcot pavilion, likely feeling confident that the pavilion and Maelstrom would continue sailing onward for the foreseeable future. After all, what could Disney possibly fit thematically into a pavilion dedicated to legends of Norway?
Frozen
Image: Disney
It wasn’t until 2008 that the Chief Creative Officer of Disney Animation, John Lasseter, got hold of Chris Buck’s pitch for a new take on the story of The Snow Queen. Lasseter was apparently “blown away” by some of the art created in Disney’s Renaissance-era attempt at the story and saw the merit in reviving the concept with Chris Buck at the helm. In 2010, Anna and the Snow Queen was put into production, but writers still couldn’t figure out how to work the titular villain into the story.
Image: Disney
She was too one-dimensional; too distant; barely-a-villain who just didn’t connect in an otherwise light-hearted story. (Consider, if you dare, the “villain” in The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning, a too-strict babysitter who fails to offer a compelling threat, a multi-faceted story, or a driving plot.)
Ultimately, Lasseter and his team began with play with the idea that the Snow Queen, by then named Elsa, might be struggling to accept herself and a fate she didn’t ask for and considered unfair.
Image: Disney
One step at a time, she lost her imposing, inhuman stature and her blue skin, gradually becoming a simple yin to the protagonist Anna’s yang.
When songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez created the character’s ‘I want’ song, “Let It Go,” Elsa’s personality began to take shape. The turning point, though, was when a member of the story team reportedly asked, “What if Anna and Elsa were sisters?”
Image: Disney
With an entirely new dynamic to shape the relationship between the characters, Elsa’s call to villainy fell away, and Anna’s trek toward the icy castle was now in search of her sister. Elsa was re-animated to lose her icy crown and high-neck dress. Instead, she gained long, braided blonde hair and kind eyes. She wasn’t a villain at all… she was lost, hopeless, and misunderstood. And if you think Elsa’s final visual development design has something in common with the Snow Queen imagined by Marc Davis for his Enchanted Snow Palace at Disneyland, you’d likely be right…
Anna and the Snow Queen was back on the docket with one last major change. Since Disney’s marketing team suspected that the title of The Princess and the Frog had led to its underperformance by excluding little boys, the Glen Keane Rapunzel feature in post-production was renamed Tangled, and Anna and the Snow Queen became Frozen. (Interestingly, Tangled and Frozen both retained their fairy tale names – Rapunzel and The Snow Queen – in many international markets, with beautiful, romantic, atmospheric trailers and movie posters to boot, compared to the comical, buddy-comedy, Olaf-centered U.S. marketing.)
Image: Disney
2013’s Frozen gave a new twist to Andersen’s story of the Snow Queen. (And indeed, Disney fans say it’s no coincidence that the film’s leads are Hans, Kristoff, Anna, and Sven… say it three times fast.)
Disney’s distinctly-21st century take 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 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.
$1.287 billion later, the rest is history… Read on…
It goes without saying that Frozen became a cultural phenomenon. It easily dethroned The Lion King as the highest grossing animated film of all time, becoming the de-facto fairy tale of the 2010s generation and instantly cemented itself as a new classic that will forever be on par with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, or Aladdin. A stunning score, a riveting story, and gorgeous animation make Frozen a timeless film, even if oversaturation and a near-endless string of commercial products might’ve left people groaning about it in the short term.
Pretty quickly, Frozen spawned Frozen Fever (a short that debuted before Disney’s live-action Cinderella) and Olaf’s Frozen Adventure (a much less-short short that debuted before Pixar’s Coco) with Frozen 2 officially on the way… Which is to say nothing of the hundreds of millions of dollars in merchandise, the award-winning soundtrack, the multi-hour queues for meet-and-greets, and more.
Image: Disney
And, in a relatively nonchalant post on the Disney Parks Blog dated June 9, 2015, Disney quietly announced that Epcot would soon play host to a new attraction based on Frozen.
Naturally, people went wild at the thought of yet another EPCOT Center classic closing (and indeed, Maelstrom joined other entries in our series, Lost Legends: Body Wars, Captain EO, Journey into Imagination, Kitchen Kabaret, World of Motion and its follow-up Test Track, Soarin’, Universe of Energy, and the king of all Lost Legends, Horizons. Yikes.)
The situation only grew more dire when Disney admitted what so many had feared: that, for all its pomp and circumstance, the new Frozen Ever After would re-use Maelstrom’s three-decade old ride system and – worst – its four minute ride time… an awfully small payoff for what would undoubtedly be multi-hour waits.
What far fewer expected is that Frozen Ever After would be good… great even. And that’s the ride we’re about to step into.
Frozen Ever After
Image: Undercover Tourist
As with Maelstrom, the journey begins in the back corner of the Norway pavilion. Perhaps it’s fair to imagine that there’s somehow a more mystical, otherworldly sense to Norway now that so much of it is either purposefully overlaid with Frozen or at least viewed through the fantasy film’s lens.
Only a few changes would signal to longtime visitors that anything’s different here: the old fishing village exterior has been reshaped into a more regal stone church; the waterfall outside the pavilion still falls, though the “hole” in the exterior that gave passing glimpses of passenger Viking boats has been closed off; and massive, enormous throngs of people now queue beneath the Frozen Ever After marquee – crowds Maelstrom hadn’t seen in decades.
Image: Theme Park Tourist
Inside, the queue has been brilliantly rerouted from the old ride, too. The theater that once played a Norwegian travelogue on repeat has been repurposed into additional queue space, and it’s beautiful. Guests now weave around and through a central plaza of Arendelle at night as lanterns flicker in the frosted town’s windows.
That’s also where we get our first indication of the story we’re about to be a part of…
Image: Theme Park Tourist
“Hear ye! Hear ye! The Kingdom is invited to a Summer Snow Day Celebration in honor of the day that PRINCESS ANNA saved her sister QUEEN ELSA with an unselfish act of true love. All shall be welcome to a Royal Reception inside the Ice Palace.”
A-ha! Already we’ve avoided that dreaded fate most disdained by Disney Parks fans: the “book report” ride. Frozen Ever After is not simply a 4-minute condensed retelling of the story we already know. While we will sail through familiar sights and hear reprises of some of our favorite songs, Frozen Ever After is a new story… one that we’re a part of with a definite place in the narrative. (Compare that to, say, Magic Kingdom’s Journey of the Little Mermaid or California Adventure’s Monsters Inc.: Mike & Sulley to the Rescue, where we’re mere observers gliding through the “book report” synopsis of a familiar story.)
And just like that, we’re primed. Exposition out of the way, even those who’ve never seen Frozen before (few and far between as they may be) are set for adventure.
Our vehicle will look familiar to fans of Maelstrom – the Viking long boats have returned in what Disney calls a nod to nostalgia but, admittedly, may be more of a nod to the ride’s budget.
Setting sail from the seaside port of Arendelle, the boat drift away from the town’s flickering lanterns and their warm glow on the shimmering snow mounds. A rocky cavern ahead is no worry – it turns to the left where an otherworldly warm blue glow shines. As the ship presses forward through the calm channel, the opening notes of “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” tinkle through the cavern like ice, and emerging, the boat is surrounded in the ice-encased weeping branches of a tree.
This supernatural, frozen grotto seems magical in its own right, nevermind the snowman set up on a snowback along the water’s edge up ahead. Of course, it’s Olaf. He turns toward the approaching ship and gasps excitedly when he sees us.
Image: Disney
One look at Olaf should quickly quiet any worries that fans might’ve had about Frozen Ever After. Among the new generation of Disney’s astonishing Audio-Animatronics figures, Olaf still stands out. The clumsy snowman blinks, gestures, walks, jumps, and – as he begins wobbling toward us along the snowbank – sings: “Do you wanna build a snowman? Come on, let’s go and play! Elsa wants to give us all some fun, she’s making everyone a snowy summer day!”
Behind him, Sven stirs, smiling lazily and nodding. “You’re going up to Elsa’s Ice Palace! Sven’s going, I’m going! It’ll be so beautiful! See you there!”
The boat sails around the duo and beneath a mossy fallen log. On the other side, Grandpappy and his troll grandchildren sit and recount tales of Anna and Elsa, projected magically in thin air.
Rounding the corner, an incline appears with an ascent toward the Ice Palace, towering above. As the film’s rousing “Vuelie” opening track echoes, the boat is pulled magically up the hill toward the summit of the North Mountain with snowfakes following along, dancing up the hill toward the castle.
As the boat crests the summit, a massive, ornamental snowflake shimmers and shines as the boat rolls down a small ramp and into the waterway. Elsa’s famous balcony is ahead with Olaf singing as he skates and slides across the surface gleefully. But it’s in the next room that Disney’s Imagineers once again hit a grand slam: our first view of Frozen’s human heroes.
Anna and Kristoff are represented so phenomenally – so fluidly – that we dare say it’s the first time in forever that a character brought to life inside of a Disney dark ride sincerely looks like the character from the film has stepped off the screen. Their every move, blink, and breath is picture perfect thanks to the cutting edge technology (first used in Magic Kingdom’s Seven Dwarfs Mine Train) that internally projects each character’s face. Even beyond that, the motion of these figures is so lifelike, it’s may make even the most grounded viewer suppose they’re being puppeted by live actors.
The duo are singing a never-before-heard reprise to the film’s “For The First Time in Forever:”
“For the first time in forever, we get to share this frozen fun. For the first time in forever, Elsa’s invited everyone!”
“Would you say that we’re elated or gassy?”
“Let’s just call it delight!”
“‘Cause for the first time in forever, you’re here for my sister’s magic night!”
Passing by Sven (perhaps the most adorable animatronic ever devised by Disney Imagineers), the boat approaches a glowing, icy doorway.
“Are you ready to see Elsa?” Kristoff asks.
“They were born ready!”
As the door parts and opens, we get our first view of Elsa herself, lofted high in her icicle balcony. In what’s certianly the ride’s highlight, Elsa serenades from above, gesturing to create sheets of ice around us as the palace takes form. A glittering chandelier appears as the boat pulls up beneath her while she sings, “It’s time to see what I can do; to test the limits and break though. No right, no wrong, no rules for me… I’m free!”
Image: Disney
As her powerful chorus of “Let It Go” begins, the boat is pushed backwards, sliding down a ramp and down an endless corridor. “Let it go, let it go! I am one with the wind and sky! Let it go, let it go! You’ll never see me cry!” The boat glides backwards as Elsa’s refection in ice follows, columns and ramparts taking shape in magical dust around us.
“Here I stand in the light of day! Let the storm rage on! The cold never bothered me anyway.” With that, the boat drifts into darkness, overcome by fog and mist.
Image: Disney
When light returns, guests are continuing backwards through snow-covered hills with the Ice Palace growing further and further away. However, it’s dutiful guardian – “Marshmallow,” the abominable snowman – is relaxed into a valley surrounded in Snowgies (which you won’t recognize unless you’ve seen the Frozen Fever short). As the boat’s backwards trajectory dead ends before him, it shifts right on a turntable and sails ahead toward a steep waterfall. Marshmallow opens his mouth, spewing fog: “LET. IT. GO!”
Slipping through his icy breath, the ship plummets down the waterfall and splashes down back in the Arendelle harbor as fireworks explode overhead! It’s a thrilling finale to a short but sweet journey, and as the orchestral arrangement of “For the First Time in Forever” plays, it’s hard to imagine that this attraction were ever anything but Frozen Ever After.
Image: Disney
The ship passes back into the village where lanterns still illuminate, but now Anna and Elsa are on hand in their spring attire (another Frozen Fever takeaway) celebrating by singing “In Summer” with Olaf. Once more, the staggering figures are likely to leave adults speechless and children certain they’re seeing the real Anna and Elsa bidding them farewell.
As always, we end our in-depth feature ride-throughs with the best point-of-view video we can find to show off all the phenomenal features of this frigid ride. Check out the video below, but the story’s not over yet…
But wait…
Though Frozen Ever After might indeed be a true Modern Marvel – a shining, magnificent example of Disney’s Imagineering (and perhaps a model of how Disney can re-use the infrastructure of other dated rides phenomenally), it also set a new course for Epcot, already in the midst of upheaval.
On the last page, we’ll diagnose what Frozen Ever After really meant for Epcot’s World Showcase and look critically at the ride as it exists today. Read on…
We’d be remiss if we didn’t fully look at the major questions that Frozen Ever After raises in the minds and hearts of Disney Parks fans…
1. Do characters belong in World Showcase? Or in Epcot at all?
Image: Disney
Remember, EPCOT Center was originally founded with a very different mission statement and a purposeful exclusion of Disney characters. It was a brave and remarkable shift in a world where “Disney Parks” were fantasy realms of characters and cartoons. Michael Eisner’s decision to incorporate Disney’s characters in the 1990s was not a malicious one, and replacing the dated “Symbiosis” in the park’s Land pavilion with “Circle of Life: An Environmental Fable” would’ve been inarguable… a better way to connect with and communicate with young people. Before long, Disney characters were meeting-and-greeting in World Showcase in the country closest to their (sometimes imaginary) home – for example, Aladdin and Jasmine in Morocco, Belle in France, and Anna and Elsa in Norway.
Perhaps the train jumped the rails when Finding Nemo and friends took over The Seas pavilion, making it an odd-man-out among the park’s Future World. If Nemo belongs there, why not Inside Out in Imagination; wall-e in Mission: SPACE; indeed, Guardians of the Galaxy in Energy?
Image: Disney
But with Frozen Ever After, the floodgates spilled open. Now, even the once-untouchable World Showcase could become a showcase of Disney features. Does the already-announced inclusion of Ratatouille: Kitchen Calamity doom France? Of course not. But does it change it? Absolutely. Perhaps for the better! Expect Coco to follow in Mexico, with numerous intellectual properties reportedly battling it out for the UK pavilion.
Ultimately, Disney fans will probably always question if characters belong in World Showcase, or in Epcot at all for that matter. We expect the debate to rage on, and we recognize there’s not necessarily a right answer…
Image: Disney
In any case, it makes us wonder… why did fans not respond with such hatred when Ratatouille was announced for France as when Frozen was earmarked for Norway? Maybe that brings us to our next big question…
2. Does Frozen deserve a ride?
This is an odd question being faced by Disney Parks fans in the light of many announcements today. It’s pretty well evidenced that, seeing the success of Universal’s Wizarding World, Disney is ready to commit to plussing its parks, particularly by building worlds dedicated to high-earning franchises. The trouble comes when fans begin to question if Disney’s lost its long-game point of view. It’s a fair question…
Image: Disney / Pixar
After all, they’ve watched as Disney announced a land no one asked for – Pandora: The World of AVATAR – that succeeded in spite of the intellectual property and not because of it; they’ve seen Disney’s leadership make the brow-furrowing decision to trash the $1.2 billion spent making Disney California Adventure about California in favor of grounding the Lost Legend: Soarin’ Over California; turning the lost Hollywood Tower Hotel and its iconic Twilight Zone Tower of Terror into a Marvel superhero “space warehouse fortress power plant” lording over the park’s Hollywoodland; and transforming the recently-romanticized Paradise Pier into the jumbled, awkward, cheap-o Pixar Pier instead.
Image: Universal
Where once Disney could do no wrong, even ardent fans now have to wonder if Disney’s making fly-by-night decisions to capitalize on flavor-of-the-week intellectual properties rather than thinking long-term… it’s about stuffing big intellectual properties into the parks even if it means rides lifetimes will be measured in seasons, not decades. (See Universal once again… no one at Universal expects Fast & Furious: Supercharged or Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon to still be around in fifteen years. They’re not meant to be. They’re for here, now.)
Image: Frozen
And given the explosion of products around Frozen, it’s fair to wonder aloud if they’ve acted too quickly before seeing if the film is a real classic.
But if you’re looking for our opinion? Yes, Frozen deserves a ride. In the (can you believe it?) almost five years since its release, Frozen can be looked at with new eyes, and it is exceptional. Beyond the record-shattering box office, beyond the earworm soundtrack, beyond the toy lines and costumes and CDs, Frozen is a wonderful film, even if there are inevitable, oppositional folks who detest it simply because so many others like it.
Frozen deserved a ride. Period. This is no fly-by-night, flavor-of-the-week property. It’s a beloved, timeless film that has earned the right to be present in Disney Parks. Which brings us to our last question…
3. Does Frozen deserve a better ride than Frozen Ever After?
Image: Disney
Let’s be clear: Frozen is set in a fictional kingdom that is modeled very intentionally after Scandinavia in style and substance. And yes, setting aside the debate on whether or not characters belong in World Showcase, you can squint and say that it fits acceptably into the Norway pavilion – it is, after all, a film based on a Norse legend written by a Scandinavian. The ride includes trolls, princesses, castles, fjords, fishing villages which means that – for those keeping track – it includes all the elements Norwegian investors asked for from Maelstrom except Vikings and an oil rig.
And understand: Frozen Ever After is astounding. The ride is a wonder, and is sure to delight. 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. The infrastructure of the low-capacity, four minute dark ride was entirely reused (right down to the same Viking boats, played off as a nod to nostalgia but really a transparent budget-saver), and that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Image: Disney
Even though the animatronics, sets, songs, and story are phenomenal (and they are), they couldn’t have been better than if the ride was given its own 10-minute epic dark ride from scratch in Fantasyland. That’s the ride that Frozen really calls for. And logistically, any ride – however exceptional – draped on the skeleton of Maelstrom’s layout wouldn’t offer enough to justify the low capacity and long waits for what may well be the most in-demand ride to come to Walt Disney World in decades.
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. 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.
Image: Disney
Perhaps we’ll come closer to that ideal when Hong Kong Disneyland opens an entire Frozen sub-section to its Fantasyland in the coming years… although, for all we know, Disney could simply be cloning Frozen Ever After as the headlining attraction there… Which wouldn’t be the worst thing ever either.
…Ever After
It can be hard to separate a Disney Parks attraction from its history and what came before. Sometimes, it takes a while for fans to see with objectivity. In this case, it’s easy to see that – with the odds stacked against them – Disney managed to turn a low-capacity, jumbled EPCOT Center original into a sincere headliner. That is pretty cool.
Like it or not, characters are on the way to World Showcase (and Future World, too). Life is about to change forever for Epcot fans. The good news is that, if Frozen Ever After is any indication, there’s plenty of good to come out of this massive shift in vision.
Though the story of this Modern Marvel is just beginning, we’ve got an entire library of Theme Park Tourists’ In-Depth Collections for you to explore. Make the jump there to choose your next tale and set course for another Modern Marvel.
Then, share your thoughts in the comments below. Does Frozen Ever After belong in our Modern Marvels series alongside other storied, beloved fan favorites? Or was this ride built at the wrong time and place, cursed forever to bring a frown to the face of Disney World fans? Tell us what you and your family and friends think of the ride that changed World Showcase forever.
