Observations From Epcot On June 21st

Today was the grand opening day of Frozen Ever After! Here are my observations from the day:

1. I got to Epcot at 7:00 AM. I was the 20th person in the park. They sent everyone this early through the medal detectors. Then we picked our own turnstile and lined up.
2. No one lined up behind us until a security guard told them to form 2 lines about 10 minutes before they let us in. People do not pay attention at Disney World!
3. There were a ton of people that booked ADRs for Akershus and Garden Grill and didn’t go to them. I’ve heard it can be as bad as 90% of no shows on an attractions opening day. They just ‘eat’ the $10 per person fee that they are charged for not showing up.
4. Even though we were the first ones into the park from our turnstile, we were still about 200 people deep in the Frozen line because of all the breakfast people that skipped their breakfast, the people that scurried over from the International Gateway and my inability to run like Forest Gump through the parks.
5. We waited almost 50 minutes to get on Frozen Ever After. At least we made it inside the building though before the queue slowed to a snail crawl. It is a very slow loading ride. If the queue is stacked up to the exit door, I’d say you have a 50 minute wait from that point forward.
6. Frozen Ever After was really neat. I enjoyed how they timed the ride to the scenes in the movie. And Olaf showed up twice. He’s my favorite.
7. When we got out of Frozen Ever After it was a 300 minute wait! See the video I filmed of the queue here.
8. The wait to meet Anna and Elsa at 10:00 AM was 50 minutes.
9. We walked to Test Track but it’s wait was 80 minutes! Epcot was just flat out packed.
10. We came and rode Frozen Ever After and sat in Electric Umbrella and I blogged about it and the kids enjoyed a popcorn (Emily) and a Mickey Ice Cream Bar (Jacob).

And then we left. I heard Frozen Ever After broke down for a few hours. I also heard they were passing out free Mickey Ice Cream bars to those waiting in line. Hope they felt their wait was worth it!

Here are a few pictures from our day: