Frozen Ever After opened up at Epcot yesterday, replacing the classic Maelstrom in the Norway pavilion. Now, if you don't want to make the trip to WDW and then spend 300 minutes... yes, *5 hours* in line for it, Attractions Magazine thoughtfully posted a ride through video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m72hUu6eObE Initially, I am of two minds. The layout appears identical to Maelstrom, including the climb at the beginning, the backwards section, and then the drop for the big finale, so that suggests that the fun *whooosh* aspects are unchanged. The Audio Animatronics look downright amazing. But ultimately this doesn't hold any emotional value for me as I am not a fan of Frozen, and beyond the AAs there does not appear to be any real technical innovations here. Retrofitting Maelstrom to work for Frozen left the Imagineers limited in what directions they could go. The bitter middle aged fanboy in me is annoyed that California gets an entire land devoted to Cars, but we here on the East Coast get Frozen, at the expense of Maelstrom. Yes I am still annoyed about this, yes I know it changes nothing. But I stand by my opinion. As an example, Radiator Springs Racers does use a lot of Test Track, but does add to it with the race at the end with the randomized results, and Luigi's Rollicking Roadsters is not an E-Ticket by any stretch but does use the new trackless ride system. Frozen Ever After is essentially a big budget re-skin of Maelstrom, which first opened in 1988, a whole 28 years ago... Still! I'm all about tapping the markets and if this means that more people are entertained, then more power to them. Maybe it also means that less people will be on Test Track, Soarin', Mission Space, etc, and help take some of the strain off of those attractions. Odd aside: Now both of the boat rides on the Left Hand side of the World Showcase have been rethemed to be based on Disney Animated Classics. El Rio Del Tiempo became the Gran Fiesta Tour (based on The Three Caballeros) and now Frozen Ever After replacing Maelstrom. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Unique Geek" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/theuniquegeek. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
