Let it grow -- the new Frozen-inspired fantasyland at the heart of Disneyland Paris

In early 1992, as Disney prepared to open its first European resort on former sugar-beet fields east of Paris, the revered French theatre director Ariane Mnouchkine shared her views with the park's boss, Bob Fitzpatrick. She told him that Euro Disney, as Disneyland Paris was called when Sleeping Beauty's castle first welcomed visitors, was a "cultural Chernobyl". I can only imagine what the now 87-year-old grande dame of the French stage would make of the show Disney is putting on to celebrate the park's biggest expansion since its launch almost 35 years ago. Perhaps I can help her picture the scene, assuming that she is not mingling on the red carpet with Emma Bunton and Wayne Rooney. The British celebrities are among hundreds of journalists, dignitaries and theme-park pilgrims who have nabbed tickets to the inauguration of World of Frozen, a sprawling new zone inspired by the hit animated musical about sisterly devotion and the perils of prolonged periods of cold weather. On the suitably arctic eve of the public opening last weekend, a French singer called Santa takes to a temporary stage equipped with a piano made of fake ice. She belts out a bilingual rendition of "Let It Go" (Libérée!) while an animatronic Olaf snowman dances between two young performers dressed as sisters Elsa and Anna. Soon fireworks arc into the sky above a fake, 7.5-acre lake. Clutching a souvenir flute of very chilled Disney champagne, I gaze across the water. The setting sun is catching Elsa's ice palace on the glacier-bound North Mountain, a startlingly convincing 36-metre peak of metal rendered with painted concrete. It rises above Arendelle, a jumble of timber-beamed houses where you can get turkey meatballs at the Nordic Crowns Tavern before jumping on Frozen Ever After, a boat ride built inside the mountain. It is all, of course, completely ridiculous -- just as it should be. But the seriousness with which Disney is treating this Nordic folk fever dream is underlined after Santa's set when the company's CEO Josh D'Amaro makes his first major public appearance, 11 days after taking over from outgoing boss Bob Iger. After grandiose platitudes about sharing dreams and "bringing this land to life, for our guests, for the first time in forever", D'Amaro, a clean-cut Disney veteran who had led its parks division, declares World of Frozen officially open. The new attraction comes at a time of major expansion for Mickey Mouse's physical empire after a decade in which the streaming revolution has challenged the economics of the screen. World of Frozen is the centrepiece of a €2bn transformation in Paris, where Walt Disney Studios Park, which opened beside the original Disneyland in 2002, has been renamed Disney Adventure World. The investment was announced in 2018, a year after Disney began taking full ownership of the resort with plans to reverse its fortunes after years of financial struggles, despite attracting more than 10mn visitors a year. Upgrades have also included a new Marvel attraction and the refurbishment of some of the resort's seven hotels, which between them have almost 6,000 rooms. (I'm staying in the Marvel-themed Hotel New York, where my two young children are slightly put off sleep by Iron Man, whose giant portrait looms over their bed.) D'Amaro was already overseeing a wider, 10-year, $60bn budget to aggressively expand Disney's global parks and cruise line businesses. A resort on Abu Dhabi's Yas Island will be its seventh park, and the first since a Shanghai outpost opened in 2016. Last month, the company's Experiences division reported first-quarter revenues of more than $10bn, generating more than 70 per cent of the entertainment giant's operating income. "I don't think anyone owns Disney [stock] for any reason other than the theme parks now," veteran media analyst Rich Greenfield told the FT in February. Disney isn't the only big player to be throwing money at rides and shows. In the UK, Universal is due to open a huge resort on a former brickworks near Bedford in 2031. Rumours are that the park, which could be bigger than its Disney rival across the Channel, may feature attractions themed around Paddington and The Lord of the Rings. Meanwhile, Puy du Fou, the French medieval-themed park, has submitted plans for a site near Bicester in Oxfordshire. Merlin Entertainments, which dominates the UK market, has just opened the world's first Bluey ride at Alton Towers. A Paw Patrol land is due to launch at its Chessington World of Adventures park in the coming months, with a Minecraft zone to follow next year. These companies aren't only banking on the off-screen pulling power of their intellectual property at a time of flux in Hollywood; I'm told good theme parks tend to be robust in the face of economic downturns, as families seek out shorter, fun trips closer to home. Disneyland Paris may yet also benefit from a significant decline in European travel to the US, for political as much as financial reasons. "We've created an environment here where we do escapism," says Michel den Dulk, creative director in Paris for Walt Disney Imagineering, the company's research and development arm. We meet in Arendelle while exploring the new Frozen land before the ceremony. An icy wind whips off the lake as an hour-long orchestral arrangement of Frozen tunes blasts from hidden speakers on an infinite loop. "People can leave their everyday worries behind when they step through the gates . . . That's attractive in good and bad times." Den Dulk, who started his career at the Efteling theme park in the Netherlands before joining Disney in 2010, says he knew Frozen had resort potential as soon as he watched the unfinished film before its release in 2013. Elements of the franchise quickly began appearing in Disney parks, including an earlier boat ride that replaced Norway's pavilion at the Epcot park in Florida in 2016. The bigger World of Frozen in Paris, which den Dulk started working on in 2018, inevitably suffered from Covid delays. How confident is he that it has legs when the hit live musical, for example, has already swept in and out of Broadway and London's West End? "We still believe it's an evergreen franchise," he says, reminding me that Frozen III is due to be released late next year (a fourth film is also in the works). "There's also a real European connection to the story so that, even if you don't know about Frozen, it just makes this a really comfortable, warm environment to be in." Deciding that, actually, the cold does bother us anyway (another lyrical reference, for any non-Frozen households out there), the children and I seek shelter at The Regal View, an upscale new restaurant where Disney princesses with varying smalltalk skills will come for chats and photos while you enjoy a €100 set menu (€50 for kids). Then it's time for the Frozen Ever After ride, the big new attraction that anchors the zone. Disney has played it fairly safe with a traditional indoor boat-based affair. It links rooms containing animated tableaux via gothic arches and a couple of surprise drops. But I'm genuinely stunned by the animatronic figures that bring the soundtracked scenes to life. In a definitely not weird way, I'm transfixed in particular by Elsa and Anna's slender arms. I still can't work out how they could have been animated so fluidly in three dimensions. My rapt children and I exit through the gift shop, where I calculate the cost of a full official Elsa costume, including the boots, tiara, wig and dress beloved of seven-year-old girls the world over, to be €168. We settle instead for a brace of €25 stuffed Snowgies, the mischievous snowballs that manifest when Elsa sneezes, and re-emerge into Arendelle, blinking in the spring sunshine. We return later to meet the princesses at Rencontre Royale, an experience inside Arendelle Castle's grand hall. "That was a lot less awkward than I thought it was going to be," my eight-year-old son says as we leave after a very brief chat and photo opportunity. ("Oh, that kingdom does sound wonderful," the actor playing Elsa had said with a giggle after hearing we were from London.) For all its supposed recessionary appeal, Disneyland doesn't exactly make for a budget break, even if you manage to swerve the gift shops. If I wanted to book the same experience for the first weekend of next year's Easter school holidays -- three days in the parks and two nights at the Marvel-themed New York hotel -- it would cost a young family of four sharing a room just under £2,000 including breakfast (without travel). Throw in "premier access" to jump queues at the big rides and you're looking at almost £4,500 -- or more than £7,000 if you also go full-board at Disneyland Hotel, the grandest lodgings, above the gates to the original park. But Disney is banking big on sustained demand for expensive escapism. I decide that it works on me; you'd have to have a pretty hard heart (or be an eminent Parisian theatre director, perhaps) not to be swept away by Walt's bonkers vision and its masterful realisation by generations of Imagineers. Its enduring appeal is evident the day after the inauguration, when people trip over themselves to get into World of Frozen once the gates open to the public. By lunchtime, the park app shows wait times of four hours for the big ride (things calm down in the following days). Outside, the only other structures visible between the sky and the fantasyland below are three towering cranes. Construction started last year on the first Lion King-themed area in any Disney park, more than 30 years after the film's release. At some point in the coming years, Pride Rock will rise up from a reimagined cartoon savannah built on former French fields, just to the south of Arendelle and the ice-bound North Mountain. It will be a crazed juxtaposition that Walt himself would presumably have appreciated. Find out about our latest stories first -- follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning