According to an Orlando Sentinel interview with Ken Ricci, Disney is almost ready to reopen Frozen Ever After post refurbishment with more than just Audio-Animatronics updates.
Frozen Ever After Updates
According to the Walt Disney World calendar, Frozen Ever After will resume operations on Thursday, February 12, 2026. The ride has been closed since January 26 for the installation of new Audio-Animatronics of Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff that have physical faces instead of projected ones.
In the interview, Ken Ricci, a member of the executive creative development team for Walt Disney Imagineering states that the crew used the ride’s down time to update more than just the new Audio-Animatronics.
The refurbishment period allowed Disney update and refresh the following components:
New animatronic heads with silicone skin
Updated show control system
Refreshed show lighting
Set touch-ups throughout the ride
Anytime an attraction goes down, we take an opportunity to freshen up what we can, Ricci said. So, we touched up a lot and some show lighting so it should look refreshed.
Regarding the replacement of the former projection-based faces, Ricci explains that “this is a more lifelike articulated head that has a silicone skin.” Disney needed to actually modify the neck of the existing figures to coordinate with the new heads:
Then we literally had to modify the figures’ necks to accept the change in the heads. And that took a few days, but we did a lot of pre-planning with technology and software to make sure that we were ready to port over these figures.
Currently Walt Disney Imagineering is testing the new updates in preparation for the attraction to re-open next week.
Frozen Ever After opened at EPCOT in 2016 featuring projected faces on the animatronic figures. In 2023, World of Frozen opened at Hong Kong Disneyland, featuring many technical updates for the Frozen Ever After, including new Audio-Animatronics with articulated, physical faces. Now the EPCOT version is getting the same update.
Check out our POV video of the Hong Kong Disneyland version below.
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