Olaf’s Royal Picnic is a unique Disney Cruise Line show that gives kids and their adults the chance to encounter Olaf and his Frozen friends in dessert-party style picnic, complete with favorite Frozen songs and a swag bag of gifts for the little ones. We attended the event as part of a cruise on the Disney Wish—read on to see what we thought of Olaf’s Royal Picnic!
Basics of Olaf’s Royal Picnic
Olaf’s Royal Picnic is a paid extra aboard select Disney Cruise Line ships / itineraries. Olaf’s Royal Picnic is sort of a counterpart to the Royal Court Royal Tea Party, with one of the two being offered on each ship. As of this post, Olaf’s is only available on the Disney Wish, but that is subject to change. (If you’re new to Disney cruising and want to learn more, we have a Guide to Picking the Best Disney Cruise.)
The picnic is an hourlong experience comprising three components (that we go into more detail about below):
finger foods / desserts
a show featuring Frozen characters and songs (with a greeting and photo at the end)
a swag bag of free keepsake items for kids
Olaf’s Royal Picnic Pricing
Olaf’s Royal Picnic is intended for kids 3-12 and their parents. Pricing reflects this:
Children (3-12): $220
Adults (13+): $69
Disney puts other important details clearly (emphasis added):
“Please note that this special experience is designed for children ages 3 to 12 and their parents. Each child must be accompanied by a parent or guardian, 18 years of age or older. Children ages 13 to 17 will be charged the adult price. Adult Guests without a child accompanying them are not eligible for this event.”
So you can see immediately that adults without kids are not allowed. It’s not clear whether adults with only children 13 to 18 would be allowed. If so, they presumably wouldn’t get the keepsakes since they’re paying the lower rate.
Since the experience is targeted at kids (3 to 12), they’re the higher price, and each gets the swag bag to further “justify” the price. Adults are a lower price and don’t get the gear. I’ll dive into some of the…challenges…of this pricing scheme in the conclusion to this post. For two adults and one child, we paid $358+tax, or $120 per person.
This isn’t cheap, but we’d already spent a pretty penny on this Disney Wish cruise. You maybe have to figure out where to draw the line for each trip rather than pretending to look at a single experience in a vacuum. It’s also worth noting that most (all?) Disney Wish itineraries also have the free Royal Gathering, if it’s the character aspect of things you’re most interested in. (We also have a Complete Guide to Meeting Characters on Disney Cruise Line.)
Booking Olaf’s Royal Picnic
Olaf’s Royal Picnic is booked as part of your activities booking. It opens for booking according to the same schedule as adult-exclusive dining, Port Adventures, and other onboard activities. The precise date depends on your Castaway Club level. As a Silver member at the time of this booking, I could book 90 days before embarkation, as opposed to 75 days for first-time Disney cruisers.
Booking opened at midnight Eastern Time. So, for our March 29, 2024 embarkation, I could book beginning at 12AM Eastern Time on December 30, 2023 (use Google). On this itinerary, Olaf’s Royal Picnic was available only one time—2:30PM on our Nassau day.
Our Olaf’s Royal Picnic Experience
We arrived early at 2:15PM and seating began around 2:25PM. You can see how the restaurant tables are usually set:
and then how the tables for the picnic are set (this is a table set for two kids):
Despite our section being set three rows deep, we were the only people in this area and had front row seats. There were a few sections where people were two rows deep. I don’t think this would negatively impact the experience too much as you’re still pretty close to the stage.
Each child gets :
Drawstring bag
Olaf hat
Mandolin
Themed cup
Activity book
Picnic blanket
Necklace
Troll plush (not pictured above)
We placed a beverage order (“special” juice combos were available) shortly after we sat, and the experience began!
The show itself is entertaining enough. Led by Baroness Dagmar Birgir, we get appearances / performances from Olaf, Kristoff, Anna, and Elsa.
They come on stage, perform, and then visit with each table. They do classic Frozen songs—In Summer, Fixer Upper, Let it Go, Do You Want to Build a Snowman.
It’s overall a fun show. There isn’t much unexpected, though if you’ve never met “Bowl-af”, that’s a cute punny treat.
In between performances, food is served. The first course is finger foods. As vegetarians, we were given small sandwiches containing (I think), avocado, tapenade, and some sort of mayo-based salad (maybe egg?). Muffins also came with this course.
The second course was dessert—cake bars, cookie sandwiches, a small tart, and cupcakes (missed a picture of the cupcake specifically but it’s in that picture of Zoe and Elsa above).
While I didn’t love the finger foods, the dessert was delicious and more than enough for us. I don’t know if meat eaters got anything more substantial with their first course, but I found the balance a little odd.
If you ate a typical lunch, you’d be too full for the tasty desserts. If you skipped lunch, I think the finger foods are a little insufficient, but maybe you just go hard on dessert because that’s sort of the point?
Once the show ends (about 55 minutes into the picnic), your child(ren) will have a chance to line up for a photo with Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff.
I believe this photo is available for free download in your Disney Cruise account, but you should confirm this (and take your own, if necessary). In any case, I recommend downloading it before you get off the ship (as I do with all cruise photos). If you can’t find it or have any issues, you’ll want to deal with these onboard if possible.
Conclusions
The tricky pricing structure makes the “is it worth it?” question especially tricky for this activity. Each kid adds a whopping $220, and in return you get a bunch more stuff.
When booking, I considered just letting Zoe and Emily go without me, because I suspected I wouldn’t get $69 of value out of the experience. In the end, of course I’m glad I went. But I don’t think one parent should hesitate to skip it if it doesn’t sound like it’s for them. (If possible, one parent might schedule something like a Whiskey Tasting around the same time, for example.)
I think the bigger challenge is going to be for families with more than one kid. You wind up paying an astronomical price ($578 for a family of four, for example) for little additional return. Having multiples of every included item might actually be more of a burden than a perk depending on how you packed. Maybe you can convince your kids to share one set of items, but even in that case you’d still be paying full price for each.
The items themselves are worth at least some small amount. A few weeks after the cruise, we still get regular use out of the picnic blanket, which is pretty sturdy, along with the hat, cup, and bag. The activity book and troll plush are, of course, lost to the depths of their respective bins at home.
While I felt like the event itself was “worth it” for our small family, there was one additional benefit for us. The next night, we had dinner at Arendelle as part of rotational dining, and we had what was probably the worst seat in the restaurant. The view was bad, and the characters didn’t come particularly close to our table:
While dinner at Arendelle and Olaf’s Royal Picnic have different shows, I definitely felt relieved that Zoe had already had an excellent Frozen experience when we wound up with that bad table. Since I don’t particularly like rotational dining, in the future I’d maybe even consider doing Olaf’s Royal Picnic and then skipping the Arendelle meal altogether to free up that time (yes, I dislike rotational dining $358 per meal’s worth, apparently).
The flipside of this is that if you have a good dinner table—or even just an average table—you might not feel like spending extra money on another Frozen show. You might compare the shows on YouTube if this is a concern, while also noting the individual greetings at Olaf’s Royal Picnic are a step above the characters mostly just walking by at dinner.