Please welcome MiceMom, Amy Bashor, as she shares her family’s experience with Disney’s new Ice Palace Boutique. It’s a cool summer makeover for her daughter.
Like so many other young girls, my daughter is a Frozen fan. We have visited with Elsa and Anna a dozen times in Walt Disney World, enjoyed all the summer fun in Hollywood Studios and keep coming back for more. At this point, I think I could recite not only the songs but all the dialogue of the movie in my sleep. When I saw the new Ice Palace Boutique announcement, I knew I had to take my daughter. However, first I had to talk myself into the $75 price tag for the least expensive offering. That took a little time. Then, I called DVC Member Services and booked a makeover for our July weekend at Beach Club. We had an absolute blast with the Ice Palace Boutique.
The first challenge with a new experience at Disney World can be tracking down the location. The Ice Palace is currently located in the back of the old America Idol theater in Hollywood Studios, next to the DVC kiosk and across the street from the ABC Commissionary. There is a podium with a Cast Member standing by the Frozen decorations who checks names and escorts guests in to the waiting area. There is a second check in here, as another Cast Member review the details of the package you have chosen.
This waiting area also happens to double as the post makeover photo studio. It is fun to watch the other children get their photo taken while waiting. My husband was running late, so I asked if another family could go in ahead of us. That was fine and gave him just enough time to make it when our daughter’s name was called. We walked through the double doors decorated to resemble the stairs of Elsa’s Ice Palace and met the Fairy Frostmother.
Our Fairy Frostmother and her 50 sisters were recently created by Elsa to help turn honorary citizens of Arendelle into princesses for the day. We were there for the second weekend of the new boutique and the new Fairy Frostmothers were very excited to meet their young guests. We walked into the styling room and our daughter was invited to climb up on the giant marshmallow for her makeover.
The children sit in a white chair facing away from the small mirror in the room. The Fairy Frostmother confirms the choice of Anna or Elsa for the makeover and begins by asking the child to choose a color for her comb. That leads to a quick comb of the hair to get rid of any tangles and pull it to the back for a loose ponytail. Then the hairpiece comes out. It is a piece of long light blond hair for Elsa with a ponytail band on it. That is looped over the natural hair ponytail and the Fairy Frostmother first braids and then decorates the hair piece with sparkling snowflake gems. The natural hair is wrapped around the bands to hide them and finished with hair netting to keep the whole thing in place.
Next, the Fairy Frostmother moves on to fingernails. My daughter choose the blue for Elsa and held still for the application. Then it is time for a light application of face make up and a face gem. The face make up was very light and quite natural looking, which was a nice touch. After this, the frost shield comes out to protect the face and the Fairy Frostmother sprinkles some magic snowflurries on the child’s head. In a final grand reveal, the child’s chair is then spun around and she gets to see the finished look in the mirror.
The Fairy Frostmother then walks the family to the register for check out. It was simple and convenient to use my magicband to charge this back to our room. Afterward, we stepped back out to the waiting area for the photo opportunity. If we had purchased the upgrade, we could have gone into the Ice Palace Café for snacks, but I just could not justify that cost. The final step of the experience was the photo opportunity. The photopass photographer did a nice job with the pictures and we left the Ice Palace Boutique to continue our Disney Day.
While I want to emphasize just how much fun we had, there were some areas that could be improved. First, the decorations had the look and feel of just being thrown up. It very much reminded me of the quality of the decorations for the original location of the Frozen Sing Along. It worked, but it looked tossed together. Second, having the waiting area double as the photo area created a noisy and somewhat congested space. Separating these areas and moving them inside to an air conditioned location would make guests much more comfortable. And lastly, having paid $75 for this make over, it was disconcerting to realize that no photographs were included. Allowing a digital download of at least one of the photographs would have been a very considerate touch.
Considering the value for the cost, this was a great experience for us. The overall price was about $15 more than the equivalent package in the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique and included a much more private experience that felt more like a VIP treat. I would strongly recommend it to any family with a Frozen fan aged 3-12.
If you would like to see more of our experience, please check out the video below:
Have you visited the Ice Palace? What did your little Frozen fan think of the experience?
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