Disney Parks are amazing places where guests can experience their favorite stories in ways that simply watching movies can’t provide. Theme park attractions make you part of the story, and the chance to meet your favorite Disney characters can be an incredibly special experience. Starting next year, a beloved non-human character is coming to the parks in a truly unique way, and I hope it’s the first of many.
Olaf the Snowman from Frozen is one of Disney’s most popular characters, and while he can be met in the parks today, it’s in the form of a costumed character who is far too large to make him feel like his on-screen counterpart. Today Walt Disney Imagineering announced on YouTube that a new free-walking Olaf audio animatronic will be coming to the two World of Frozen lands: at Disneyland Hong Kong which opened in 2024, and at Disneyland Paris, which will see its land open early next year, and he looks incredible.
two World of Frozen lands, at Disneyland Hong Kong, and opening next year at Disneyland Paris, early next year, and he looks incredible.
This isn’t the first audio-animatronic that we’ve seen with the ability to walk freely, as Walt Disney Imagineering previously teased us with a Groot figure that could also walk around untethered. However, that figure was never made available to interact with guests in the park, and was clearly a proof of concept. Beyond that, we’ve also seen the BDX droids at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
Over the last couple of years, Walt Disney Imagineering has progressed the tech of audio-animatronics in significant ways. The figures at Tiana’s Bayou Adventure look like animated characters brought to life. The new Walt Disney audio-animatronic at Disneyland looks more lifelike than anything we’ve ever seen before.
This audio-animatronic will be walking around World of Frozen in two Disney Parks next year, and it may be worth the price of a plane ticket just to check at least one of them out. From a technological standpoint, Olaf is an absolute wonder. The fact that something like this can exist is just wild…and adorable.
Yet, the idea that I could be standing in World of Frozen and Olaf could just walk up to me and start talking is also a bit disconcerting. When Olaf is talking in the voice of Josh Gad, he looks cute, but when he’s not talking, he just sort of stares at you, and looks like something primed for a game-over jumpscare in Five Nights at Freddy’s.
At this point, it appears that guests at the domestic parks will need to wait to see this technology appear. There’s always the chance that Olaf could appear at the Norway pavilion at Epcot, where the Frozen attraction can be found. This certainly makes me wish that we might see a third World of Frozen as part of the planned Disneyland expansion, as it would mean Olaf would almost certainly come with it.