from Instagram.
If you watch Disney’s Frozen closely you can see a Stave church right in the middle of Arendelle. It’s no coincidence that it looks very similar to the one in EPCOT’s Norway pavilion. Disney has changed out the exhibits in the EPCOT version to represent some of the cultural artifacts that animators used to help design the world of Frozen.
Just a few feet away is the theme park’s current hot ticket – a meet and greet with Anna & Elsa, the sisters from the film. As you might imagine this is a popular stop for any family with young children. Alas, there is very little way to speed up a queue for a meet and greet. Every one of those people in front of you wants and deserves the same sort of interaction and attention you want and deserve for your family. Plus Anna & Elsa need break times to go make sure the Kingdom of Arendelle is running efficiently and all that.
So the line grows long very fast and the waits stay long throughout the day.
I asked around and the best strategy seems to be to make this a rope-drop attraction. Although the meet and greet doesn’t officially start until 11AM, you can get in queue starting at 9AM. So you’re only looking at a two, two and a half hour wait. The people in queue when I walked by around 1pm were staring down a 4 to 5 hour wait. The other strategy is to try and show up closer to the end of the day, but be careful the queue does get closed off when the final meet and greet capacity fills up.
Most of the queue is out in the sun, so you might want to bring an umbrella for some shade, and a portable fan, and some water, and good reading material. You get the picture.
When the Festival of Fantasy parade starts at the Magic Kingdom, the first float will have Anna & Elsa on the back, so the kids will at least get a chance to see them, but no autographs or photos, obviously.
How long would you wait for a photo with Anna & Elsa if that was high on your child’s priority list?
Knowing my luck, that wait is still going to be just as long when I go this summer. I’m not a huge fan of Frozen though so it’s kinda gonna be a pain to wade through the crowd just to get around that area. :/
Only character I really like a whole lot from Frozen is Elsa, sadly.
But I can’t stand the queues for meet and greets at Disney. They drive me insane. It drives me crazy knowing I don’t have time when I get up there to say the things I want to the characters and see how they’ll react, because I’m holding the line up. And my feet can’t stand waiting in those long lines because they have a really bad physical condition that makes them cramp up under stress.
I really want Disney to go back to the more magical meet-and-greet style. Where you don’t know who you’re going to see, when or where.
I’ve only had this experience twice in my life, and I can definitely say that I will forever miss it. When I was nine years old, my parents took me to Disney World for the first time for my birthday. We were walking down Main Street USA when suddenly, I see Philoctetes from Hercules walking down the way. I jumped, almost screamed, and made a beeline for him. I love Hercules. So my dad and I took a photo with him and then left with my mom. After that, we ran into Minnie, Pluto, Chip and Dale all at the same time later that day in the same area. I freaked out just the same and we got photos.
No, none of them were heading out for a planned photo op. They were all just planning to walk around the park.
I once met Alice when she was all alone in England at Epcot, but that was different- she was waiting where she was for a photo-op line to accumulate and I just happened to be the first person to find her that day.
Comments are closed.