A Frozen Tale

Before we went to Disneyland, we were not sure if we would see Anna and Elsa while there. People were waiting in line for hours just for the chance to spend a few minutes with them. While we love Frozen and wouldn't mind seeing them, we figured we might just wave to them in the parade and call it good. However, Disneyland then implemented a Fast Pass type system where you'd get a return time to come visit the queen and princess and not have much of a wait. You could only get one/day and the passes ran out quickly but since we get to the park when it opens, we figured we'd see if we could visit with them.

Thursday, our first day, we were at the park and headed straight back to the Meet and Greet location. We ended up being the second people in line and so got to go see them right away. However, "them" turned out to just be Elsa as Anna was sleeping in. We had a nice visit but were a bit disappointed that Anna wasn't there. (Sarah had even braided her hair like Anna in hopes of meeting her.)

The only way to see Anna in our first visit photos is with her added in a border. Elsa was nice, though.

Since we hadn't had to get a return pass to see Elsa, we decided that we would go ahead and get a return pass now in the hopes that we could see Anna as well. We were thrilled when we went for our visit that both Anna and Elsa were there. It was fun to hear them talk to each other and to our kids.

Saturday morning, Anna and Elsa moved to their new Meet and Greet area in California Adventure. Since the return time was 20 minutes later when we were there around 8 am, we decided to check our their new home. On this visit, we just saw Anna. That was fine with us as we'd already seen Anna and Elsa together and the real purpose of this visit was to see the new area. The new area was really nice--much bigger and with double capacity. And Anna was so much fun, joking with the kids and being super friendly, so I'm glad we stopped by.

Anna was so nice to us!

On Sunday, we "claimed" our Photopass Photos and looked through them to see if they were all there. While most everything was as expected, there was a notable exception--we had no pictures of Anna and Elsa from our visit with them on Thursday.  While we did have pictures of them separately, we really wanted some with them together. (We hadn't taken any with our camera since we figured one of the perks of having the Photopass is having them take the photos with their nice SLRs and not needing to pull out our own camera.) So after some discussion, we decided to try to see them yet again on Monday. (We needed the pictures as proof that we'd seen them together, right???)

Lesson learned: Always take pictures with your own camera if you want to make sure you have some. At least our problem was easily remedied. While we were there, a couple got engaged with a Photopass Photographer taking lots of pictures which disappeared into cyberspace!

In the middle of the morning on Monday, U trekked from Disneyland to California Adventure to get a return time to see them yet another time and get pictures with both of them (we hoped, anyhow, since they won't guarantee you'll see them both; of course, we figured we could try again Tuesday if we didn't see both on Monday).

When we went to the Meet and Greet Monday afternoon, we were ecstatic to be able to see Anna and Elsa together! We were so excited! And we got both Photopass Photos and our own personal photos.

Photopass Photos with Elsa's signature.

Our photo of the girls hugging Elsa and Anna.

(See how beautiful the scenery is!)

So that's how our trip changed from not knowing if we'd see Anna and Elsa at all to visiting the Meet and Greet FOUR times and seeing Anna and Else three times each (plus in the parade two times, including one where both Anna and Elsa waved at Megan--she was so excited!).