The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Frozen II**. Go check out the new film, then come back and see what's up.**
One of the best things about Disney from a fan perspective is the synergy that exists between the movie studio and the theme parks. You can go to the movies and see amazing stories, and then you can head off to a place like Walt Disney World and live those stories and interact with those characters.
However, that synergy may have gotten slightly out of hand at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. The Anna and Elsa characters available for photos at the parks have gone through a wardrobe change so that they better match the characters from the new film. This would be fine, except the costumes in question debuted on the same day Frozen II arrived in theaters, and the outfits are the ones that Anna and Elsa wear at the end of the film, which reveal some of the major changes the characters go through over the course of the film.
Elsa's new threads aren't too bad. It's an all white dress, and her hair is down. The previous version of the character had the long braid that we see Elsa with in the first Frozen. That's also the way we see the character in the trailers for Frozen II.
The fact that her outfit has changed and her hair is different is interesting, but there's certainly no details regarding how it happened, so seeing it before seeing the movie isn't too much of a problem.
However, when it comes to Anna, things are a lot different, and here's where those big spoilers come in.
If you've seen Frozen II then you know that Anna goes through some pretty significant life changes. At the end of the film, she has taken over the role of Queen of Arrendele from her sister, and she's accepted the proposal of boyfriend Kristoff. Both of these changes are seen in the new meet-and-greet character. Anna is wearing a crown, and she's got a large jeweled ring on the ring finger of her left hand.
The ring isn't obvious in the picture below, but it's there, and the crown is just sitting right there for all to see.
There was no announcement that Anna and Elsa would be undergoing changes at Disneyland or Walt Disney World, the characters are also at Hong King Disneyland and Disneyland Paris in their new duds. Anna and Elsa have been or more or less permanent display for the better part of the last six years since the first Frozen came out and became a massive hit.
Guests could have easily gotten in line expecting to see the old versions of the characters, and while being some of the first to see the new costumes was probably cool, it may have given away more than those guests wanted to know.
Certainly, the fans who care the most about Frozen have mostly seen the new movie as soon as they could. But sometimes hitting a movie opening weekend just doesn't work out no matter how much you might want to. If you're on vacation at a Disney theme park, you probably want to spend that time in the park, not in a movie theater that you can just as easily visit at home.
Of course the parks want to capitalize on the new film, and after seeing the movie guests are going to love to be able to meet the "new" Anna and Elsa, but it feels like the old versions could have hung around, or maybe without some of the accessories, for a couple weeks while everybody had a chance to see Frozen II.
