WDW Frozen Experiences

Do you like Frozen?  

I absolutely love it!  In fact, it might just be my new favorite Disney movie!  

There were so many fun things we did and saw this trip that involved Frozen.  I wanted to do a separate post about our Frozen experiences while at Walt Disney World.  I have a ton of photos and I didn't want to overload my recap posts with Frozen pictures! But I also didn't want to hold out on you guys either!  So if you like Frozen, you'll love this post!

The first thing that we saw Frozen in was "Celebrate the Magic" at the Magic Kingdom. Celebrate the Magic is a projection show that is shown with Cinderella Castle as the projection "screen".  It is set to music and it's amazing!

Here's the full effect of the show with the entire Cinderella Castle projection:

Frozen segment in Celebrate the Magic Castle Show featuring "Let It Go" (Video Credit: Attractions Magazine)

If you'd like to see a video with a closer view of the projections, check out this video by The Dis.  And here are all of my pictures from the show!

It starts with the castle lit up as if it were Arendelle.

Elsa appears in a spotlight singing "Let it Go". 

Then there are swirls of snowflakes all over the castle.  This was so coo!

Elsa continues to sing and there are flashbacks to her and Anna when they were kids.  

We get a quick glimpse of Olaf with the girls and Anna giggling.

The scene changes back to Elsa singing with a bunch of trees covered in snow swirling around the base of Cinderella Castle.

Elsa begins her transformation into her blue ice dress.

We see more swirling snowflakes before Elsa's magic appears to transform Cinderella into a shimmering purple, pink and blue ice palace.  The colors were incredible.

Elsa comes out fully transformed and snowflakes begin to appear all over the castle.

It was beautiful so I took as many pictures as I could!

The snowflakes swirled away.

Then Elsa walked across the front of the castle.

The Celebrate the Magic Frozen segment ended with "the cold never bothered me anyway" and Elsa shutting the castle door just like in the movie!  Then the snow magically disappeared and the next segment of the show started!

It was so good!  I'm so happy that we got this front row view last minute!  We didn't mean to but it really worked out!  I also didn't think that they'd still have this portion since I'd heard that it was an addition for the holidays!  I hope they keep it!  It's beautiful!!!

The next Frozen adventure we had was at Hollywood Studios when we went to the Animation Building.  I always love seeing the drawings in the Magic of Disney Animation. One of my first Disney memories was watching the animators drawing in a room filled with Disney toys and figures.  I was mesmerized by it.  I think that's the moment when I knew that I wanted to so something creative with my life.

We walked through the section of the Animation Building with paintings and sketches of cities, towns, jungles, and the castles.  Afterwards, we headed to the other side.  I wanted to watch the animators for a few minutes.  When we arrived, we noticed the room next to the animators had a ton of Frozen displays.  

There was an awesome board with Elsa in her coronation dress on the far wall.  We also could see one of Kristoff on the same wall.  On the side tables, there were some Olaf sketches!  There was also a pin board with all sorts of drawings on the side wall.  But it was so hard to see them from the angle we were at.  It was even harder to get pictures due to the reflections from the lights and glass!

At this point, I really started to get my hopes up.  The last time Eliot and I were at Disney, we saw the artwork from Wreck it Ralph in the Production Gallery. The trip prior to that, we got to see artwork from Tangled.  The drawings in the room below us were awesome, but I was really hoping to see more art from Frozen up close!

I was not disappointed when we entered into the Production Gallery and "bam!" there was a picture of Anna, Kristoff and Olaf right in front of me!  Woo-hoo!!!

There were three display cases.  The one closest to the entrance had concept art of the trolls, Kristoff, Sven and Olaf!

The case to the left of the first was filled with artwork of the different backgrounds and the scenery in Frozen.  You could see the mountains, snow, Arendelle, the village, and the ice castle that Elsa creates.

Finally, the last case next to the entrance to the show had concept artwork of Anna and Elsa! (Ok, so there were also a few pictures of Hans... but I'm still mad at him!  Ha!)

I was so excited to see all of the artwork!  I waited until everyone cleared the room for the show and then I dove into taking as many pictures as I possibly could!  And because I love you guys, I'm going to share them with you!

Here are close-ups of the case with Kristoff, Sven and Olaf!

I love the drawing of Olaf with all of the sand snowmen in summer!

Oaken's store was actually full at one point!

Here are sketches of the trolls and their home.

Arendelle and the surrounding mountains are covered in snow.

Here you can see a few drawings of Elsa's ice palace.

Here's the real fun!  I love character development!  Here are the many faces of Elsa. And how awesome are her shoes?!?!  I want a pair!

Anna's character development.  They even did a study of how her traveling cloak moved.

More pictures of Elsa as well as a few of Anna and Elsa when they're just kids.

Concept art of Elsa in her room with her powers taking over the room.

Last, but not least, Hans.  (Wait, last and probably least: least liked.  Anyways...) Here's Hans during his duet with Anna.

Finally, before we left the Production Gallery, Eliot and I took pictures with the poster of Anna, Kristoff and Olaf!  We love Olaf and couldn't pass up the chance!

The artwork was incredible!  I'm so glad that we got to see it while we were there!  But our biggest Frozen experience was still yet to come!

Photo Source: Pinterest (Original Pin here.)

As most of you know, I worked really hard on making myself a custom Elsa ear hat before we left for our trip!  (For those of you who don't know, I will be opening an Etsy shop for them very soon!)  My big goal this trip was to get a picture with Anna and Elsa while wearing my ear hat!

I also teased that I had another project that I was desperately trying to finish before we left. That didn't end up working out.  And although I brought my glue gun and supplies to Florida, I still never finished the last one!  (I'm hoping to finish it later this week!)  In the meantime, here's a behind the scenes look at Anna! 

Eliot and I knew that meeting Elsa and Anna was going to be quite an adventure.  What we didn't realize was how long we were going to wait to meet them!  We were hoping to get there right at 11:00 am when the character spot opened.  When we arrived at the Norway Pavilion Friday morning, it was apparent that everyone else had the exact same idea we did.  By the time we got over to Anna and Elsa, the line was already backed up to a 1:00 pm greeting time.  We finally decided to stay after realized that we'd probably be waiting that long no matter when we got there.

While we waited in line, we realized that Anna was the only one greeting guests.  I started to question staying in line.  We were told that Elsa would be there by 1:00 or maybe even 2:00. The cast members didn't seem to have an exact time.  We were in the 1:00 window, and I was debating letting people cut us if Elsa wasn't going to be there.  I really wanted a picture with her and my Elsa ear hat!  

Thankfully, as we got closer to the doors, someone spotted Elsa!  The sign outside the door was changed to both "Elsa and Anna" and I was thrilled that we were going to see both of them!  It was so going to be worth the 2+ hours standing in line!

Eliot and I got to enter the room while the family in front of us met Anna and Elsa. The little boy and girl had the cutest Olaf t-shirts on and the girls loved them.  The kids were so cute!  Anna and Elsa really took the time to interact with them too.

Before I knew it, it was our turn!  I started to walk over to them and Anna spotted my ear hat and proclaimed, "aww... wow!"  I then told her that I didn't have the time to finish the design for her hat and that I was really sorry!

She said, "no, it's ok.  It's just that I'm really impressed."  She then showed my hat to Elsa.  "Elsa look!"

Elsa loved it.  She asked me how long it took me to make it.  I told her it took a few hours. She showed me her snowflake cape and said that she made it herself, except for this one snowflake towards the front.  Anna made that one for her.

Anna replied "Yeah, it took me about 2 hours to make it too."  Then she looked back at my hat, "If I made your hat, it'd probably take me 2 months!"  I had to laugh.

I told Elsa that she's been visiting us a lot this winter in Maine.  She replied "I don't think I did that.  Although, I also don't remember freezing my entire kingdom either!"

We posed for a few photos together.  Then Eliot joined us and Elsa asked me, "shall we show our ice powers?"  So she and I posed using our magical ice powers.  (Yup, I totally tried to copy what she was doing.)

The girls were very nice and made everyone feel special.  Everyone had a good amount of time with them, especially after waiting so long in line to meet them.  The girls fit their personalities well and their outfits were amazing too.  Elsa draped her cape around a few times and the snowflakes sparkling on her cape were beautiful.

It was definitely worth the 2 hour wait!  My only regret is not having my Anna hat done so I could get pictures with both hats.  (Maybe next time!)  I was also pretty pumped at how many people asking me where they could buy my Elsa ear hat!  They thought Disney made it!  Yippee!!  I was so proud to tell them that I made it myself.  I also had a ton of cast members compliment it, which I consider the ultimate compliment!

Frozen is definitely the hot ticket at the parks right now.  There are rumors swirling around about Disney turning Maelstrom into a Frozen ride.  Disney has recently confirmed that they're going to eventually bring Frozen to Broadway.  There's even rumors of a movie sequel!  One thing is for sure, you can't find Frozen items anywhere in the parks!  I found one pin that I bought, and the only other Frozen merchandise I saw were a few books and a light up snowflake wand in the Emporium at the Magic Kingdom. It appears that they had a Frozen inspired display, but everything sells out as soon as it's put out according to cast members and guests alike.  

Photo Source: Disney

Hopefully with the movie's popularity, there will be many more Frozen experiences to come to the parks for guests to enjoy!  In the meantime, I hope that you enjoyed our Frozen experience at Walt Disney World!  °o°

January 2014 Trip Recap- 1/9/14

Thursday morning we decided to go back to the Health and Fitness Expo to get Mom's race packet.  It seemed like the best idea to get that over with.  Eliot still wanted to get his sneakers, and we knew that the line was only going to get longer.  The volunteers who checked us in the day before said that we could get Mom's packet as long as we had her waiver signed and her ID, so it was the perfect plan.  (Or so we thought!)  

Upon arrival, we had to park in the overflow parking area again.  At least this time we were parked pretty close to the front.  It wasn't that busy yet!  On the walk to the Expo, we stopped to take photos with the displays of the medals.

Afterwards, we split up: Dad and Jeremy went off to take care of Mom's race packet and Eliot and I went to the baseball field to get in line for his shoes.  He actually had to stand in line to sign up to get a number.  Once New Balance was ready for him, they would email him and call his number so he could try on his shoes.  (So that was how they were controlling the flow of people buying the New Balance shoes!)  They wouldn't even let you try on a pair of shoes unless you had a number.  You could buy a few pairs of shoes once it was your turn. I thought that I might try some on, but I still wasn't sold on buying a pair.  There were still about 200-250 people in front of him anyways.

Eliot and I headed over to the Official Race Weekend Merchandise area so we could get the shirts that we picked out the day before.  Eliot ended up getting the orange one and I got the women's blue shirt.  I won't lie; I had major marathon shirt envy!  Check out those awesome blue and pink shirts!  (This is why I really need to do the Princess Weekend. The chances of me finding some pinks and purples greatly increases, right?)

After buying our race gear, we looked around a few of the other booths before deciding to get out of there.  Dad and Jeremy were unsuccessful in their mission to get Mom's packet.  (Apparently, she did have to be there to get it.)  Therefore, they had already left to go to Hollywood Studios.  Eliot and I were stuck at the Wide World of Sports, so we took another bus to Pop Century and went to Hollywood Studios that way.  Thankfully, we didn't have to wait too long for the buses!

When we arrived at Hollywood Studios, the first thing I noticed was that the Christmas decorations were still up!  The large tree outside of the gates was still there. As Eliot and I walked into the main entrance we saw that Hollywood Boulevard was still decorated for Christmas too!  Dad and Jeremy were already in line for Star Tours so we made our way over to the Animation Courtyard.  

I really wanted to go into the Magic of Disney Animation to see the drawings.  It's one of my favorite parts of Hollywood Studios.  I remember going in there when I was just a kid and I was amazed at all of the drawings and the paint colors.  I think it's one of the main reasons that I love design so much!

We went into the section with the drawings Disney animators had made. I love seeing the different backgrounds like the streets, jungles, forests and towns.  My favorite part of this section is the castles!  I love all of the sketches and paintings of the Disney castles!

Afterwards, we headed to the other side.  I wanted to watch the animators while they worked on cell art for the store!   The room next door had a ton of Frozen displays.  At this point, I started to get my hopes up.  The last time Eliot and I were at Disney, we got to see artwork from Wreck it Ralph in the Production Gallery. The trip prior to that, I got to see artwork from Tangled.  I was really hoping to see art from Frozen!

We walked through the doors and there it was!  I saw a large poster of Anna, Kristoff and Olaf across the room!  We saw three cases of Frozen artwork and sketches.  It was incredible. I wanted to take pictures of everything.  Dad and Jeremy met us there and we decided to watch the Animation show with Mushu.  (It's really cute and informative if you haven't seen it before.)  It was fun watching Disney characters come to life.  Afterwards, I went back to the Production Gallery to take pictures of the Frozen artwork.

I really wanted to go to the Animation Academy to learn how to draw a Disney character. (Not surprisingly, it wasn't on the top of anyone else's to do list.)  I've never been and I've always thought that it would be fun.  I decided to hold off since it was supposed to rain in the afternoon and I didn't want to ruin my artwork, so we passed on it.  We didn't get time to go back this trip, but I'm super determined to go there next time!

Instead, we walked over to the see when the Voyage of the Little Mermaid was playing again.  We had plenty of time, so we walked over towards One Man's Dream. Dad and Jeremy hadn't been in there before, so Eliot and I took them there.  I absolutely love all of the models in there.  It brings me back to the hours I spent in my interior design studio classes designing and building models.

After we left One Man's Dream, we went back to the Little Mermaid.  (Even the Little Mermaid show still had it's Christmas decorations up!)  We watched the show, which I'm sure Dad and Jeremy hadn't seen in a really long time.  I also remember going to see it when I was really little.  Then Dad left to pick Mom, Nana and Papa up.  

A little while after Dad left, it started to rain.  And it didn't just rain; the sky opened up and it poured.  We ran for Beauty and the Beast, but the theater was already closed off. Eliot, Jeremy and I ended up hopping from shop to shop on Sunset Boulevard along with a bunch of other guests trying to stay dry as possible.

Finally, it let up enough for us to brave the weather to go across the park to Muppet Vision 3D.  Jeremy has always loved the Muppets so I wanted to make sure that we made time to go over there.  We were hoping to make the 4:15 Beauty and the Beast show after the Muppets, but we missed it by about 10 minutes.  

With the wait times backed up and nothing else we wanted to do at that point, we decided it was time to make our way over to Epcot.  After all, we were planning on going to watch IllumiNations that night anyways!  We made our way to the Epcot bus stop and watched a few ducks play in the puddles while we waited.

We beat everyone else to the park and ended up looking around the Art of Disney store while we waited.  I love looking at all of the different art styles from all of the artists. Eliot and I showed Jeremy the Thomas Kincade paintings and how you could often find Disney characters from other movies in his paintings.  Eliot and I love looking for them. I even found Bambi and Jiminy Cricket in the Lion King painting!

Eventually, we met the rest of my family at Spaceship Earth.  We had to split up so Mom went on the ride with Papa, Dad and Jeremy.  Eliot and I went with Nana.  I sat in the back with Nana and we had tons of fun creating our future on the ride.  (Apparently, we're also from the ocean off the coast of Maine because I have no accuracy or aim on a screen.)  Afterwards, we got a good laugh at Eliot's picture postcard with Eeyore and Duffy! He had held his backpack up when they took his photo!  It was too funny.

We slowly made our way over to the Living Seas and the Seas with Nemo and Friends ride.  We love going to the Living Seas every trip!  It holds a special place in our hearts since Eliot and I had our wedding reception there!  After, we went upstairs to watch the fish in the aquarium.  There was actually another reception or event going on in the Living Seas Salon because we could see the lights on!  (It's kind of weird to be on the other side of that glass looking over from afar!)  We also got to see a few scuba divers in the tank!

We walked over to the World Showcase to watch IllumiNations.  We always seem to start at Canada and walk around the lagoon counterclockwise.  We stopped at the France Pavilion to visit the Terrace des Fleurs where we had our VIP IllumiNations viewing and Dessert Party after our reception.  It was blocked off and set up because there was also an event going on there!  We talked to one of the ladies there, and she said that the bride and groom were probably cutting their cake!  (So there really was another wedding reception going on that the Living Seas!)  We told her that we got married there and talked to her for a few minutes.

The rest of my family started to move along but I was still talking to the Cast Member for a few minutes.  The next thing I know, she offered me and my family VIP passes to watch IllumiNations on the lower level of the Terrace since it wasn't rented out that night! I thanked her and gave them back since there was no wheelchair access, but was incredibly thankful.  I didn't even know that was possible!  I wish I'd gotten the cast members name. She was so nice and a such a pleasure to talk to!

We made our way around the showcase with Italy as our destination.  I knew that we would have a great view from the Italy West Isola.  (It's actually the original location that Eliot and I wanted our Dessert Party.)  You have a great view of the center of the lagoon, as well as prime viewing of the globe when it floats out to the center.

On our journey over to Italy, we stopped at the American Adventure section to get some fried dough.  I knew that there was a funnel cake stand.  We found a few dry benches under the main building and Eliot and Jeremy went off to get the food.  Eliot and I attempted to split one since he didn't think he'd like it.  He ended up eating more than anyone else. We should have gotten one extra one.  Next time, we each get our own!

We poked around the store for a few minutes.  It featured items from small businesses all over the United States.  I was drawn to some bags because I thought they looked familiar.  Sure enough, when we were close enough to read the tags, they were made in Maine! I had just seen some of these at our mall before Christmas.  They're bags made of recycled sails from sail boats!

Eventually, we made it to Italy and staked our our viewing space about an hour before the show.  Eliot decided to skip the show and go over to Test Track since the line wasn't that long.  I love IllumiNations, and I wanted to be able to watch it from the best view possible so I bade him farewell and stayed.

The IllumiNations show was amazing, as always.  It was fun to watch the show without any trees in our way.  (At Terrace des Fleurs, the islands are slightly in the way.)  In addition, there were no cameras, video cameras or photographers instructing us to pose. This is the first time I've seen IllumiNations since our wedding where we could fully see the show and enjoy it!  I loved it!  After the show, they played Eliot's and my wedding song, "Promise." It was a little weird to have it playing without him being there.  Oh well. 

We made our way back towards Future World continuing our counterclockwise journey through the World Showcase.  I proceeded to sing the Tapestry of Nations music while slightly dancing to the music.  People looked at me like I was crazy.  It's a good soundtrack ok?  Maybe I do know all of the lyrics and music and I have heard it one too many times. But that's no reason to stare!  Right?

Anyways, we met up with Eliot near Showcase Plaza.  Eliot, Jeremy and I headed for the Monorail over to the Transportation and Ticket Center since Dad knew exactly where to pick us up from the night before.  It also killed some time while they were going back to the hotel.  We got there about the same time as him.  Then we went home to bed!  °o°