The first hurricane of the season was officially named Elsa. It's likely such a name would have received a few jokes at the expense of Disney's Frozen, even if the storm didn't end up aiming itself directly for the state of Florida aka the home of Walt Disney World. When it looked like the theme park might end up right in the middle of the hurricane's path, the Frozen comments came from all sides, and even now that the storm has passed through Florida, even Universal Orlando Resort decided to get one last shot in.
Hurricane Elsa hit Florida and while the state certainly saw a lot of wind and rain from it, for the most part, it looks like people rode out the storm fairly well. When it was all said and done, Universal's Twitter brushed off Hurricane Elsa as only it could, by saying it was all no big deal, and also quoting their competitor's big movie.
For what it's worth the tweet appears to be mostly accurate. Hurricane Elsa ended up making landfall on the west coast of Florida, before crossing over land far to the north, largely bypassing the Orlando area entirely. While parts of the state certainly had wind and rain to deal with, anybody that was in the area of theme parks would have been fine.
The Universal Orlando Twitter account is one of those that fills its feed with just as much snark as it does actual information about the resort. It quite frequently calls out its competitor Disney World, though never by name of course. Whenever Disney announces anything new, and especially if that announcement is unpopular, Universal will frequently chime in on Twitter with a snide comment. They'll even do it to themselves on occasion.
Certainly here the use of the line from "Let it Go" is an intentional reference to both Hurricane Elsa and Disney. And other than co-opting the line for its own use, it doesn't feel like the Universal is trying to make a dig at Disney this time around. It's just a bit of fun. But it's the sort of thing that we're used to seeing from Universal's Twitter that we'd never see from Walt Disney World. Those official feeds are always used to relay useful information, there's little attempt to "engage" the audience in the same way.
While this certainly isn't the most brutal shot across the bow of Disney that we've seen from Universal, it's still pretty funny. And we can be sure that in the future, when the opportunity presents itself, Universal Orlando will have no problem using Twitter to beat up on Disney World. Unless somebody decides to name a future hurricane Gru, it seems unlikely that Universal will be getting a taste of their own medicine anytime soon.
