Disney Brings Emperor’s New Groove Kuzcotopia to Life With Rare Characters

Disney recently celebrated the popularity of The Emperor's New Groove with rare characters and entertainment at an event at Disney's Typhoon Lagoon. We were at this event this past weekend and are ready to share our review and look at all these fun characters!

This event was part of a bigger Disney D23 fan event that took place this weekend. We had to show off some of the cool characters and interesting interactions that we had. At Mickey Visit, we bring you all the latest Disney news and resources.

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Kuzcotopia Night at Typhoon Lagoon

The name of the event, “Kuzcotopia,” is a call-back to “The Emperor's New Groove” film. In the movie, Emperor Kuzco envisions building a utopia as a birthday present to himself called Kuzcotopia. Unfortunately for Pacha and his family, the Emperor wants to build Kuzcotopia right where their home is.

This was a clever idea for an event, especially considering the popularity of this film and the characters. This was an after-hours event that was only available for one night as part of Destination D23. Ticket holders received admission to the event as part of their Destination D23 ticket and some additional tickets were also sold.

I would love to see this event get expanded as a part of the Disney H2O Glow After Hours events, as this theme is way more exciting! Let's get into all the things we experienced during the event, especially all the rare characters!

Kuzcotopia Night RARE Characters

The main feature of the event we were most excited for was the rare appearances of characters from “The Emperor's New Groove,” including Kuzco in llama and human form, Yzma, and Kronk. They made appearances as part of a DJ dance party and took turns on a small stage near the guests. The characters came out about every 15 minutes to the stage, switching off between each character.

The Llama Kuzco was particularly zany and weird. You can see that in the video below.

While the characters didn't pose for traditional meet and greet photos, you could take selfies with them while they were on stage. The characters were strutting and dancing the entire time, which felt quite on brand for all of these characters.

Kronk is one of the most popular characters from the film, voiced by Patrick Warburton. Warburton attended Destination D23 to promote the upcoming Zootopia 2, and we even spotted him at Typhoon Lagoon enjoying the event.

You can see all the theme park and movie news announced at the event here. Check out all of the characters seen at the event in the reel below.

 

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Aside from the main characters, others were roaming the park, including five created just for Kuzcotopia Night:

• Mikos- a Squirrel Cadet
• Cory- Kronk’s mentee
• Parisia- Kuzco Gazette reporter
• Yzma’s makeup artist
• Yzma’s wardrobe designer

This was such a fun idea to incorporate new characters into the event.

Guests could also meet Captain Mary Oceaneer, who is an original Typhoon Lagoon character connected to the Miss Adventure Falls attraction. She can be seen in the photo above on the left-hand side. Her character is part of the Society of Explorers and Adventurers (S.E.A.) backstory that weaves together many different Disney attractions. The organization is part of the backstory for what we recently called the best Disney ride in the world.

Her character is not related to Emperor's New Groove, but I appreciate that they took the opportunity to have her out since there were so many Disney history fans at the water park that evening.

And of course, Donald, Goofy, Mickey, and Minnie were also available for meet and greets in their Disney water park gear. There was quite a long queue to meet these characters throughout the entire night.

The event also featured general photo ops around Typhoon Lagoon.

Guests Could Play “Exotic Bird Bingo”

The event also featured “Exotic Bird Bingo” and could track down different bird markers throughout the park. If you completed the bingo card, the DJ would congratulate you by name on the mic.

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Generally, we really enjoyed Kuzcotopia. In particular I loved seeing the rare characters here and the evening water park atmosphere. This was a great opportunity to enjoy more of Typhoon Lagoon with low wait times out of the hot sun. I hopped on both Crush ‘n' Gusher and Miss Adventure Falls with very low wait times.

This was also the first time that I had been at Typhoon Lagoon in a while and was again impressed by the rockwork and layout of the park. This is such a well-themed water park with tons of fun slides and rides.

Walking away from this event, I feel inclined to get back here again for a nighttime event if given the opportunity. The Florida weather keeps the evening plenty hot to enjoy the water park, and it is so much more exciting to ride everything at night with little to no wait times. Keep an eye out for H2O Glow events (link above) in the future so you can also enjoy some of this evening fun.

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