After years of waiting, it’s time to finally open up the gates and explore the World of Frozen at Disney Adventure World in Disneyland Paris. The land immerses you into the world of Arendelle at the time of the Snowflower festival, and features the Frozen Ever After attraction, a Royal Encounter, the Nordic Crowns Tavern restaurant, a new show A Celebration in Arendelle, as well as two new boutiques and character meet opportunities.
The Town of Arendelle
When adapting Frozen to a Disney theme park, there are obvious challenges, the main one being that Arendelle is a vast and expansive land that covers multiple different types of environment – such as the Fjord where Arendelle is located, and the snowy mountains. The World of Frozen seeks to get around this by immersing you in the town of Arendelle, this area is inspired by the old town of Bergen and its wooden store fronts whereas in the distance of snowy peaks of the North Mountain and Elsa’s castle loom large. It works, you feel immersed in the town of Arendelle and the way the land draws you in allows much of the Adventure Way lake area to disappear behind other buildings within the World of Frozen. A star of the land is going to be the fountain at the entrance to the land, with its snowflake motif, and framed by the North Mountain, Arendelle Castle and the famous clocktower, this is going to be the spot to take photos. The marina area is especially captivating and adds a real sense of character to the area with a travellers boutique located alongside it. Overall, this area really does work from a design perspective.
The tight focus that creates immersion also creates a problem, as the wide avenues of Adventure Way narrow and funnel people into the World of Frozen, crowding is going to be an issue. The area is not large, and the immersion works when the land is very quiet, as it gets more and more busy it will stop feeling that the nordic town and more like a pretty crammed corner of a theme park.
Frozen Ever After
The sole attraction in the land is Frozen Ever After. This attraction is the same that some guests may have enjoyed in EPCOT or Hong Kong Disneyland. The attraction is a delight, and improves on the EPCOT version in a few key areas. Firstly, vibrancy, the lighting package in the Disneyland Paris version of the attraction is quite simply, stunning. From the moment you turn the corner at the very beginning of the attraction and meet Olaf and Sven, the lighting hits you and it continues throughout the entire attraction, I genuinely cannot remember the attraction looking this vibrant.
The attractions across the world have recently been getting brand new animatronics, replacing the prior projected face animatronics. This is notable, and they all look rather fantastic. Disney Animation has had a certain face style in recent years and they have really struggled to get that looking correct in the figures in the attractions – until now. These look great.
In Paris, there is always the question of language in attractions. The option taken by the imagineering teams for Frozen Ever After is having songs entirely in English, with dialogue being predominantly in French (but not completely). I think this works, generally speaking all audiences know the story of Frozen and do not necessarily need to have it retold back, but the singing voices in English are so strong that it would not feel quite right to have it any other way.
This is an attraction that the Paris second gate does not have, and is sorely needed. It will make a great addition to the park.
However, only having one attraction compounds that crowd issue that we have already discussed. With Adventure Bay being so large, and World of Frozen being the only land currently in this area – and a fair walk from any other land – the land is going to struggle of being incredibly popular, with very few places to put people. An extra attraction or two would have really have worked wonders here.
Nordic Crowns Tavern
The land features a dining location named the Nordic Crowns Tavern. This is a large quick-service location serving nordic-inspired dishes – meatballs and salmon. The menus are sold as a main + side + dessert + drink type formula with prices between €22 and €24 depending on main selected.
The restaurant is designed to be a favourite of Arendelle visitors and residents alike with design details and photos all telling the story of those who have passed through before – you might even spot photos of Anna & Elsa throughout the years.
Ordering is a breeze with a large number of touch screen order kiosks. Here you order, pay and receive an order number. You then wait in a reception type area for your number to come up on screen and collect your food. From here you go into one of two dining rooms. This will be a very popular dining location, and the amount of seating is probably not quite proportionate to demand, I think you’ll see a lot of people wandering the rooms with their food searching for seats – something that is an issue in a number of Disneyland Paris restaurants.
The food itself is not the best story I’m afraid. I tried the Turkey meatballs with a side of crushed (mashed) potatoes and carrots. Sadly, the meatballs and sauce were quite bland – and quite a small portion, the carrots tasted primarily of water. The saving grace of the meat was the potatoes, but even these were substandard compared to what you’d get in many locations in Britain or the USA. Disneyland Paris has always had an issue with food, whilst there was hope that this would not be the case here, sadly, we will just have to wait for better days to come.
Royal Encounters
Anna and Elsa meet their guests in the Royal Encounter over in the Arendelle Castle. This is a ticketed (through the app) meet and greet location. When your return time arrives, head over to the castle and into a large reception room. This room is great, it features seating and standing room and is decorated top to toe with paintings you will recognise from the film. This is one of those locations that you wish you had more time to linger, the details reward it. Once your turn comes up, you’ll be guided to see Anna and Elsa in their regal outfits. This is a great location with stunning backdrop. As always with Paris characters you’ll get a good amount of time to chat before taking your photo with the Photopass photographer. The photopass photos in Disneyland Paris always come out quite well, and are in a high resolution format.
In the land you might meet Oaken, and Mossi the troll, these are roaming characters and it is unclear yet as to whether Disneyland Paris will put their times on the application. This adds a layer of fun onto the land which works nicely.
A Celebration in Arendelle
As part of the Snowflower Festival, a show takes place in the Arendelle Marina. A Celebration in Arendelle has many different viewing locations around the bay and lasts for around 15 minutes. Olaf and Kristoff appear on a barge and begin the preparations for the festivities and are eventually joined by Anna and Elsa for a thrilling finale.
The show features unique songs written by the same songwriting duo as the film (Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez) and has brand new dialogue performed by Josh Gad (Olaf). This is a highlight of the land, despite the fact that many of the viewing positions can feel quite far away from the action. Fortunately, each boat moves around a fair amount during the show and so you will be able to see each character for a good amount of time.
The star though has to be the new Olaf figure. He looks pretty great, and moves around really well. You do have that moment where you forget that he is a robot and you buy into him being Olaf completely. I think this is very well done.
The Verdict
The World of Frozen is a solid addition to Disney Adventure World and one that does help to make the park move ever closer to that full day experience that Disney hope for. The immersion factor is strong and it is a very pleasant place to be. This success is also its pain point with the land not having enough to do for its inevitable popularity meaning it will often feel crowded and potentially could have access control for a not insignificant amount of time. Over time and as the park opens its next new expansions, this will iron out although the need for more Frozen will always be there, whether Disney provides it is the bigger question.
