While Disney announced to the world that they would open their new Frozen Ever After dark ride in Epcot on June 21st, things have not gone so well for the new attraction. Despite the fact that Disney chose to re-purpose the old existing Maelstrom flume ride attraction that was already in the Norway pavilion at Epcot, the ride has been suffering from a huge case of downtime. This alone caused the lines on the opening day to reach lengths of over 5 hours.
By reusing the old ride system I think Disney was looking for the attraction to be more reliable on opening day, but that has just not been the case. In addition to issues of downtime, the attraction also suffers from low-capacity problems, estimated to only be able to handle 800-1000 guests per hour at the best of times. In addition to Disney not trying to break it in slowly with any kind of soft-opening schedule ahead of the grand opening, they also made the mistake of making the attraction available on their FastPass+ reservation program, which has resulted in every FastPass ticket for the ride being already taken from now through to at least August.
This has caused another huge problem for the attraction, as I've had it reported to Screamscape from many guests that even when the ride is reported as being operational on the Walt Disney World app, by the time you get over to it, even if it hasn't broken down again, Disney Cast Members and Management are only allowing those with FastPasses into the queue, making the ride completely unavailable to guests coming to the park and willing to wait several hours in a stand-by queue. Of course they were not telling guests arriving at the park any of this, much to the dismay of anyone passing by the many billboards on the freeway claiming at the attraction was now open, only to pay for tickets and walk out to World Showcase only to be told that they were essentially out of luck from having any chance to ride the new attraction.
About the only good way I've heard of getting onto the ride without a FastPass is to be at the park as soon as it opens and run as fast as you can to get in the stand-by line before they close it off, but even that wont work is Epcot is the park having Magic Morning access for resort guests on the day you visit.
In any case, if you want to see a spoiler filled video of the queue and new attraction you can check out the video below shot by Midway Mayhem where it looks like guests get off the ride in the same basic place as before but loading must be somewhere right after that point, as it looks like a few scenes were added to the experience before you hit the lift hill, extended the ride experience a bit which is good.
