It'd be easier to meet the President and LeBron James

With anecdotal and empirical evidence all supporting the conclusion that people loved everything Frozen, Disney did what they could to adapt on the fly. They’d always planned to have Anna and Elsa host a Meet and Greet at the Norway Pavilion. It was to last for two months. Seriously. By its scheduled end date of January 4th, 2014, there was no chance that the parks would let Anna and Elsa…well, you know.

Theme park tourists hoping to meet the sibling princesses faced huge obstacles. Line queues were as long as four hours. At rope drop, people weren’t sprinting to their favorite attractions. They were picking up their daughters and carrying them to the Norway Pavilion to beat the crowd. In March, Disney announced that they’d move Anna and Elsa to Magic Kingdom. On April 20, 2014, they added the Meet and Greet to the FastPass+ options for the park. It quickly became a must-choose selection for anyone hoping to meet the princesses. The lines remained impossibly long.

Finally accepting that too much Frozen wasn’t enough, Disney Debuted For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration at Disney's Hollywood Studios in 2014.  Intended to be a seasonal singalong show, this stage production still runs ten times a day. It exemplifies Disney’s growing awareness of the ubiquity of Frozen. No matter how much they added to the parks in terms of events and merchandise, it wasn’t enough. People bought EVERYTHING. The Walt Disney Company claimed record revenue during Frozen Summer Fun.  

What started as the summer of Frozen became an entire year. Disney introduced several other events celebrating Frozen, even making the movie the centerpiece of their 2014 Christmas parade, which they named Disney Parks Frozen Christmas Celebration. They also kicked Cinderella out of her own castle over the holidays, exhibiting A Frozen Holiday Wish instead. During 2014, every American Disney theme park experienced visitor growth from 2013. Clearly, people couldn’t get enough Frozen.

I mean, sure, it was a good movie but...

Image: Disney

Well, visitors couldn’t. Many longtime Disney observers who live close to Disneyland and Walt Disney World definitely felt differently. Frozen fatigue became a very real issue to those who stopped feeling the magic after about their 30th day at the park that year. There is such a thing as too much Anna and Elsa. It was something many people realized on Halloween that year when most of the under-13 female population chose the same two outfits for trick-or-treating.  Anaheim, California, and Orlando, Florida, residents were ahead of the curve on this. Even some of the people who originally loved Frozen began to turn on it.

Disney didn’t worry about these folks, though. The diehard fans will still visit the parks no matter what. It’s the casual theme park tourists Frozen was enticing into a visit. And those people were emptying their wallets on Norwegian princess merchandise. While the year of Frozen eventually ended, Disney still provided new Frozen content in early 2015. Frozen Fever, an animated short about the ramifications of Elsa’s sniffles, debuted in front of the live action remake of Cinderella. It too proved instantly popular.

And you think the line for Soarin' is long...

Though this all might seem like Frozen overload, 2016 will bring a the culmination of Frozen mania to Walt Disney World in the form of  build Frozen Ever After. With no offense toward Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros, this new Frozen attraction will instantly become the most popular ride in the history of the World Showcase.

Since its inception in 1982, Epcot traffic has divided into two parts. People seeking entertainment and technological innovation hang out in the front of the park. Those who desire an education in world culture plus some fine dining and an adult beverage head back to the World Showcase. In 2016, Disney will cross the streams by introducing the most desired attraction since the Test Track reboot, and they will position it an area that historically had light traffic during daylight hours.

Frozen Ever After should have lines that rival if not surpass the Anna and Elsa Meet and Greet, the one Disney had to move to Magic Kingdom to handle the traffic flow better (and will move again back to Epcot later this year). They wouldn’t do this unless they had confidence that the new attraction will enhance the World Showcase, but it’s understandable why some people believe Disney has saturated the Frozen market. Is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? If so, didn’t Disney theme parks already reach that point with Frozen by the end of 2014? We’ll find out for sure when Frozen Ever After has been at the Norway Pavilion long enough for the initial thrill to dissipate.