Frozen — The Blizzard that Will Blanket the Disney Parks

‘Frozen’ — The Blizzard that Will Blanket the Disney Parks

After the cyclone that was 2022’s D23 Expo has settled back to earth, we are left to wonder about what we actually learned about the future of the parks. A lot of “blue sky” ideas, early conceptual art and re-enforcement of things we’d already heard left many of us wondering, what actually is the vision for the Disney Theme Parks’ future?

The answer came to us right at the end of Josh D’Amaro’s speech on the final day. For Disney, the future is Frozen!

Not much about what D’Amaro announced was new, though much of the concept art was breathtaking. Put all together in a cluster it became clear that Frozen was going to dwarf any other property that Disney owned, at least as far as parks, lands and attractions were concerned. By the end of 2024, no other movie franchise in the Disney canon will be represented this heavily and, yes, that includes Star Wars and Marvel.

What is coming?

Hong Kong Disneyland — Announced at D23, as late as 2023 a World of Frozen area will open. Probably the most robust of the three new Frozen-themed lands, it will have two attractions. The first will be a Matterhorn-esque roller coaster, Wandering Oaken’s Sliding Sleighs. (Curiously, this attraction was originally announced as Wandering Oaken’s Dancing Sleighs and was intended to be a trackless dark ride of some sort.) The second will be a clone of Epcot’s Frozen Ever After Attraction.

Disneyland Paris Resort’s Walt Disney Studios Park — Paris will be opening another Frozen area that looks, from the concept art, to be similar to Hong Kong’s World of Frozen called Kingdom of Arendelle. The only attraction we know about at this point is yet another clone of Frozen Ever After.
Disneyland Paris’ Disneyland Hotel is getting into Frozen fever as well and will re-open in 2024 with Frozen-themed suites.

Tokyo DisneySea — As with everything having to do with Tokyo DisneySea, they will do something gloriously different. A new port is being added to the park called Fantasy Springs which will contain Frozen, Tangled and Peter Pan areas. A new attraction is being added to the Frozen area; the unique ride vehicles of which were on display at D23. Also a stunning Elsa animatronic made an appearance during the parks showcase. Whether or not this is simply another Frozen Ever After with updates or something entirely different remains to be seen, but, being DisneySea, expect some twists.

Betting on the movies with the second and third highest box office of all time for animated films is not an unsound move, but it is surprising to see the Walt Disney Company putting this many eggs in any one basket. Then again, I would bet that a song from one of these films is rolling through your head right now; so maybe the bet is a safe one.

Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times