Walt Disney World has announced that the Frozen Ever After attraction will reopen at Epcot on February 12th, unveiling familiar (but updated) faces in the main animatronic characters: Elsa, Anna, and Kristoff.
The attraction has been closed since January 26th, and the effects area is currently being tested in preparation for its first appearance.
“I was in awe and appalled when I saw Elsa, because it’s like she literally stepped out of the screen and was standing right in front of you. You notice that it’s improved,” said Ken Rich, executive creative development. He oversees the quality of Imagineering’s shows at Walt Disney World.
He said the changes to the heads of three of the attraction’s figures are due to advances in technology.
“This is a more realistic articulated head with a silicone skin,” Rich said. At one time, their faces were made of protuberances.
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“As technology advances, there is an opportunity to improve the quality of the show and the guest experience,” he said. “As we saw these numbers progressing at Disney Parks in Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong, we saw this as an opportunity to leverage that technology at Walt Disney World.”
He said the new figure will look similar to the Tiana figure from Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, a Magic Kingdom ride that opens in 2024 to replace Splash Mountain.
There has been some animatronic development going on at Disney World lately. The Clawhauser figure is the star of the new show Zootopia: Better Zoogather at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and a new figure has been unveiled for the renovation of the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin ride at Magic Kingdom. An animatronic version of the scooter has been unveiled for the Muppet Makeover of Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Frozen Ever After opened in Epcot’s Norway Pavilion in 2016. This is a modified version of the Maelstrom Boat Ride, which opened in 1988 and closed in October 2014.
Updates to the show control system were done while Epcot was closed, Rich said.
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“Then we literally had to modify the figures’ necks to accommodate the head changes. It took several days, but we did a lot of planning ahead of time with technology and software to make sure these figures were ready to be ported,” he said.
The reopened ride maintains the same experience and story as before, and reflects some of the themes and scenes from the 2013 animated film.
“Every time an attraction shuts down, we take the opportunity to reinvent everything we can,” Rich said. “So we made some major modifications and added some lighting, so it should look refreshed.”
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