There may be few attractions at Walt Disney World that generate quite the conflicting emotions as Epcot’s Frozen Ever After. While the enduring popularity of Frozen as a franchise makes the dark boat ride one of the most popular attractions in the park, there are many still disappointed that the old attraction, Maelstrom, is gone. There is one thing that basically all Disney World fans agree on: the audio-animatronics are not great.
When Frozen Ever After opened less than 10 years ago, it debuted with a fairly new audio-animatronic design, one that utilized a projected character face rather than a sculpted one. In theory, this meant the face could be much more expressive, but in reality, the animatronics have always looked a little weird. Despite the facial capabilities, they’ve never looked as good as traditional animatronics, especially the newest audio-animatronics, but that’s all about to change.
Frozen Ever After Will Get New Audio-Animatronics
When World of Frozen was announced at Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland, it was revealed that each park would get a version of Frozen Ever After, and that they would use a brand new audio-animatronic design that used a traditional sculpted face. At the time, I thought the new Elsa animatronic looked incredible. Calls of “Be Fair to Florida” rang out almost immediately as fans wanted the Epcot version of the ride to get the same characters. Today, Disney Experiences announced exactly what will happen in early 2026.
This is fantastic news. You can see how much better the image directly above looks compared to the one at the top of the story. The projection-based faces on animatronics were an interesting idea. I see what Walt Disney Imagineering was thinking, but the design simply didn’t work that well in practice. It’s also been reported that maintenance on the projection faces was actually a lot more difficult than anticipated, so Imagineering may honestly be as happy as anybody that this change is happening.
Even More New Audio Animatronics Are Coming To Disney Parks
The announcement of the change to Frozen Ever After comes alongside even more great audio-animatronic news. We got the first look at the new Caluhauser figure that will be part of the brand new Walt Disney World attraction, Zootopia: Better Together, which is set to open at Disney’s Animal Kingdom next month.
We also got great news about the upcoming Rock ‘N’ Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets. We already knew an audio-animatronic of Scooter would feature during the pre-show, but Disney revealed that he won’t be the only new animatronic figure in the new ride. Exactly who or what we’ll get wasn’t revealed, but I’m holding out hope that Stadler and Waldorf will insult riders prior to launch.
We also recently got a realistic audio-animatronic of Walt Disney himself at Disneyland, and a second Walt figure has been announced as part of a new pre-show to the Carousel of Progress at Magic Kingdom.