Disneyland Paris has opened World of Frozen and reimagined its second park

Disneyland Paris has opened World of Frozen, a full-size recreation of Arendelle, inside a second park that has been rebuilt and renamed Disney Adventure World. The land and the wider park around it opened to the public on 29 March 2026, the morning after a VIP inauguration ceremony. For families the change matters because the second gate, long treated as a half-day add-on, now has enough for a full day with young children.

The second park was long the weaker half of a Disneyland Paris trip

Walt Disney Studios Park opened on 16 March 2002, timed to the resort’s tenth anniversary, and it was themed around film, animation and behind-the-scenes production. It opened in an unfinished state, with only three of nine planned opening-day attractions ready to run.

It picked up a reputation almost straight away as Disneyland Paris’s weaker gate. Guests and critics called it a half-day park, with too few rides and too many stand-and-watch shows. Large stretches of bare open plaza read more like a car park than a themed land. Even Disney’s own chief creative executive has since described his first impression of the place as a set of grey warehouses.

Disney tried to fix it in pieces over the years rather than all at once. Toon Studio and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror arrived in 2007, Toy Story Playland in 2010, the Ratatouille dark ride in 2014 and Avengers Campus, the Marvel land, in July 2022. None of them solved the basic problem that the second park felt thinner than the first. The park closed for good under its old name on 28 March 2026, after 24 years, and reopened the next morning as Disney Adventure World.

The transformation was announced in 2018 and built in stages

The rebuild was announced back on 27 February 2018 by the company’s then chief executive Bob Iger, alongside French President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace. It was a roughly €2 billion investment spread across several years, one of the resort’s most ambitious projects since it opened in 1992.

The original 2018 plan named three new lands: Marvel, Frozen and Star Wars, meant to arrive between 2021 and 2025. Marvel came first, as Avengers Campus in July 2022. Star Wars quietly fell out of Disney’s plans after the pandemic and was never formally announced again. At its D23 event in August 2024 the company confirmed the third land would be based on The Lion King instead, built on the plot originally set aside for Star Wars.

The rest of the programme came in stages. The Disneyland Hotel reopened after a full rework in 2024, and the park’s reimagined entrance, World Premiere, opened in May 2025. World of Frozen, with the new lake and entrance avenue around it, followed on 29 March 2026. Disney describes the whole programme as the largest single expansion in the resort’s history, reworking more than 90% of the second park and roughly doubling its size.

World of Frozen is a full-size Arendelle

The new land is a full-scale version of the kingdom of Arendelle from the films. It’s built around a 36-metre recreation of the North Mountain, topped by Elsa’s Ice Palace, looking out over a village square and a stretch of the park’s new lake. The buildings have Norwegian detail throughout, including rosemaling, a traditional Norwegian style of decorative painting, across their facades.

The Paris version is closely based on a World of Frozen that opened at Hong Kong Disneyland in 2023, and it shares much of that land’s look. One difference is worth knowing if you’ve read about the Hong Kong land. Paris has a single ride here, not two.

Frozen Ever After is a gentle family boat ride

The ride at the centre of the land is Frozen Ever After, a boat trip through scenes from the film. Guests float through a snowy forest and the Valley of the Trolls into Elsa’s Ice Palace, past animatronic figures and projected effects, with a musical finish out on the water. It uses the same ride system as the Frozen boat rides at Epcot in Florida, which opened in 2016, and at Hong Kong.

There’s no minimum height to ride, which makes it one of the more toddler-suitable headline attractions in either Disneyland Paris park. It does include a short drop, so a nervous young child can still be caught off guard even when they’re old enough and tall enough to ride.

The daytime has a lake show and roaming characters

A Celebration in Arendelle runs several times a day on the lake, a show of around 15 minutes with Anna, Elsa, Kristoff and Arendelle villagers aboard boats, set to new music from Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, the songwriters behind the Frozen films. Views around the water are limited in places, so it’s worth getting there early for a clear spot.

A free-roaming Olaf, built with new walking and talking robotics, moves around the land through the day as a separate meeting, and several reviewers have singled him out as a highlight. To meet Anna and Elsa together, the Royal Encounter inside Arendelle Castle takes you through a portrait gallery before a photo with both sisters. It runs on a virtual queue you join through the Disneyland Paris app rather than a standby line, so book it early in the day. Kristoff, Sven, Oaken and a baby troll character also appear around the land.

Reviewers praise the tavern’s setting more than its food

Nordic Crowns Tavern is the land’s main quick-service restaurant. The menu is Nordic in style, built around a mashed potato or quinoa base with a choice of protein and vegetable sides, a cranberry or creamy dill sauce and Nordic desserts. Reviewers have generally rated the setting more highly than the food.

There are two shops. Arendelle Boutique sells Frozen merchandise with a Scandinavian craft feel, including wooden sculptures and embroidered clothing, and has a village mailbox for sending a postcard. Fjord View Shop offers festival hair and make-up styling, and has an interactive toy troll called Rúna that blinks, lights up and reacts to touch.

The wider park has a new lake, a Tangled ride and a drone show

World of Frozen sits inside a much bigger redesign. A new entrance avenue, Adventure Way, leads in from the park gates past Adventure Bay, the large lake at the centre of the park. Along Adventure Way there’s a new Tangled ride, Raiponce Tangled Spin, a gentle spinner with no minimum height. At night, a drone show called Disney Cascade of Lights plays out over the water, using hundreds of drones and tall water jets.

The park now has three themed worlds, World of Frozen alongside the existing Worlds of Pixar and Avengers Campus, with a fourth based on The Lion King still to come.

The second park is now worth a full day with young children

For most of its 24 years the second gate was a half-day filler: fewer rides, more sit-and-watch shows and long open plazas that left young children with little to do between attractions. Families on a short trip were usually advised to spend most of their time in the main Disneyland Park and fit the second park in around it. That advice changes now. Between World of Frozen, the new evening show and the entertainment along Adventure Way, reviewers who’ve visited since the opening say the park is a full day in its own right.

Two of the headline attractions suit young children well. Frozen Ever After has no minimum height and moves gently, with only that short drop to watch for with a nervous child. The new Tangled spinner also has no minimum height, though it’s a small ride, so expect a queue. The daytime Arendelle show and the meeting with Anna and Elsa have no height limit either, and the meeting is the one to sort early on the app, since it runs on a virtual queue rather than a standby line.

Pushchairs are fine throughout the park, which has wide, well-surfaced paths, though you’ll need to leave them in the parking area at the entrance to each ride queue, including Frozen Ever After. Pushchair hire and baby care facilities are available across the resort as before.

On tickets, a two-park option lets you move between Disneyland Park and Disney Adventure World on the same day. Disneyland Paris prices its tickets by date band rather than at one fixed rate, and a two-park ticket costs noticeably more than a single-park one, so check the official site for your own dates. With the second park now a full day rather than a half-day squeeze, a trip built around one day per park works properly, and on a longer stay you can reasonably give Disney Adventure World a day to itself.

Visitors are broadly positive, with a few repeated complaints

The early reaction has been warm, though not one-sided. The theming and detail, including the North Mountain and the painted village facades, has been called some of Imagineering’s best work. Frozen Ever After is widely seen as an improvement on the older Epcot version, with bigger show rooms and fresher effects. The roaming Olaf and the lake show come up again and again as favourites, and family reviewers have reported their young children delighted, pointing in particular to the gentle, no-height-limit ride and Elsa’s Ice Palace.

The complaints are consistent too. Adventure Way’s wide new paths feel empty in stretches, and the gardens around the character meeting spots are seen as too small for the crowds they draw. The outdoor dining areas lack cover, which counts on a cold or wet day. The drone show is admired for its ambition but criticised by some for lacking a clear story. More than one reviewer has noted the wait itself, around eight years from the 2018 announcement to this opening, delivered in stages that felt slow.

Opening day was rougher than a normal visit since. Within the first hour on 29 March the standby queue for Frozen Ever After reportedly reached about three hours, other rides backed up with the overflow, and World of Frozen was closed to further entry for a while that day because of the crowds. That was an opening-day crush rather than a picture of a typical visit.

A Lion King world is still to come

The fourth land, based on The Lion King, has been under construction since autumn 2025, on the plot once earmarked for the abandoned Star Wars land. Disney has said it will include a water ride that takes guests through Simba’s story beneath a Pride Rock structure, though the company hasn’t given an opening date.

Two more additions are on the way sooner. An Up-themed flying attraction is planned for Adventure Way in 2027, and a new Disney Princess parade is due to launch in summer 2026.

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