Anna and Elsa's Frozen Journey
| Anna and Elsa's Frozen Journey | |
|---|---|
| Park | Tokyo DisneySea |
| Land / area | Fantasy Springs (Frozen Kingdom) |
| Type | Boat dark ride |
| Opened | June 6, 2024 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Duration | About 6.5 minutes |
| Status | Operating |
Anna and Elsa's Frozen Journey is a boat dark ride in Frozen Kingdom, part of Fantasy Springs at Tokyo DisneySea. Based on Frozen (2013), it retells the story of the first film, following Anna and Elsa through the best-known scenes and songs of the movie. It opened with Fantasy Springs on June 6, 2024, and quickly became the port's headline attraction, regularly posting the longest waits in the park.[1][2]
The setting around the ride needs a small distinction. Frozen Kingdom itself is presented as Arendelle after the events of Frozen, restored and at peace. The ride, by contrast, goes back and tells the film's story from the beginning, as a journey through the sisters' childhood, Elsa's coronation and flight to the North Mountain, and Anna's search for her.
History
A Frozen attraction for Tokyo DisneySea had been planned in an earlier, smaller form in the 2010s before the idea was absorbed into the Fantasy Springs project, announced on June 14, 2018. Frozen Journey was developed as the new port's flagship ride: a full-scale boat attraction built only for Tokyo, rather than a copy of Frozen Ever After, the boat ride that had opened at EPCOT in 2016 and later in Hong Kong.
The attraction opened on June 6, 2024, alongside the rest of Fantasy Springs. From opening it was offered with Disney Premier Access, Tokyo Disney Resort's paid time-slot service, priced at the top tier for the park, and demand for both Premier Access and the standby queue has remained exceptionally high since.
Experience
The queue is part of the show. Guests pass through Arendelle Castle, through a series of richly decorated rooms described in contemporary reporting as including a greenhouse, a music room and a playroom with a dollhouse of the castle, past Norwegian-inspired detailing and the banners of Arendelle, before reaching a large, high-ceilinged loading station.[3]
Guests board boats holding 16 people for a ride of about six and a half minutes.[2] The story is told in sequence, in abbreviated versions of the film's songs, including "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?", "For the First Time in Forever", "Love Is an Open Door" and "Let It Go", staged with Audio-Animatronics figures, sets and effects. Contemporary reporting from Disney and the Oriental Land Company highlighted the ride's A-1000 Audio-Animatronics figures, the newest generation of the technology, for the natural movement of Anna, Elsa and the other characters.[3]
On the ride system, reporting is specific and should not be overstated. The boats travel both forwards and backwards through the show, as the earlier Frozen boat rides in Florida and Hong Kong do, and the Tokyo system is described as precisely calibrated: it can slow a boat to a gentle glide, pause and linger on a scene, or move it faster, according to what the storytelling at that moment requires.[3] The ride includes a backward segment and a short drop. It should not be described as using the same ride system as Pirates of the Caribbean; the published reporting supports the variable-speed, forward-and-backward boat behaviour above, and no more than that.
There is no height requirement, but guests ride through darkness, and the backward movement and drop make it more eventful than its gentle opening suggests. Disney Premier Access is available for the attraction.