Since the first film debuted, Frozen has been absolutely massive with Disney fans. So it’s no shock it didn’t take long for the characters to arrive in Disney Parks, both with meet-and-greets and attractions. Frozen at Walt Disney World has a massive footprint, but it’s about to get dwarfed by the upcoming World of Frozen at Hong Kong Disneyland.
The first of two planned lands dedicated entirely to Frozen is set to open next month. Disney Parks dropped an absolute ton of new details about the land today. And as I’ve said before, everything about World of Frozen looks incredible, but a new detail about one of the land’s lesser-known attractions has me scratching my head and hoping that Frozen 3 might provide some clarity.
World of Frozen’s two big attractions we know more than a little about. Frozen Ever After is a Frozen dark ride, and while it looks to put the incredibly popular Epcot ride of the same name to shame, thanks to its incredible Elsa animatronic, we at least know what to expect. Wandering Oaken Sliding Sleighs is a family roller coaster built on the same frame as Magic Kingdom’s Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. But the Playhouse in the Woods is a brand new attraction, a live stage show using live actors, animatronics, and projection mapping, to create something that looks incredible. Check it out in the B-roll that was released today.
It looks like a great show. But among all the new info was a description of where the playhouse came from. According to the story, this place was Anna and Elsa's "secret childhood hideaway" and the "playhouse was created by Anna and Elsa's parents as a place for Elsa to freely practice her Ice Magic in the middle of the forest."
This is interesting because the only way this makes sense is if this was a playhouse that was built when Anna and Elsa were very young, prior to the events of the very first scene in Frozen when Elsa accidentally hurts Anna and spends years hiding away and trying to control her powers by ignoring them.
But if Elsa had a safe space to practice her magic, why was she basically locked away in her bedroom in the castle and forced to try and never use her magic? Surely even her overly protective parents would see the playhouse as a safe space for her to learn to control her magic if that’s literally what it was built for, right?
This information would also imply Anna has no memory of the playhouse. Her memories were altered in the first film to remove her knowledge of Elsa’s magic and there’s no indication that she ever got those memories back. If the house’s purpose was to let Elsa use her magic then letting Anna continue to visit it as a child could have meant her discovering the truth.
I would love to see the Playhouse in the Woods factor into the recently announced Frozen 3 in some way. While I wouldn’t expect it to play a major role, the development of the attraction and the film were likely not handled in such a way for this to work, I would love to get some answers to these questions. Was the playhouse abandoned for years before Anna and Elsa found it again? Did Elsa have to tell Anna stories about what they did there?
However these details all shake out, I’m certainly adding World of Frozen and the Playhouse in the Woods to my Disney Parks bucket list. World of Frozen at Hong Kong Disneyland is set to open on November 20.
