Children, you have no idea what your parents endure to get you a little "Frozen."

Merchandise is scarce. Birthday parties with official tie-in decorations are nearly impossible to pull off. And the theme-park lines to meet Anna and Elsa, the sibling royals at the heart of the world's highest-ever-grossing animated movie, are long.

Very, very, very long.

I was dispatched to Disneyland in Anaheim, California, to stand in one of those very, very, very long lines — to observe the struggle, to witness the phenomenon, to figure out the why, as in, why do people do this to themselves?

To be honest, I didn't think I would see or learn much. I arrived at Disneyland on the Wednesday after Easter. Most area school children were back in the classroom, their spring breaks done. How much "Frozen" clamor could there be on a non-holiday, midweek morning?

View photos

As I walked from the parking lot (not crowded) to the entrance (not crowded), I had a plan: I'd zip through the Anna and Elsa line, and then get back in it and zip through it again. I would write about the time I beat the system, met Anna and Elsa multiple times and became the envy of all my 5-year-old friends.

Insert knowing laughter here.

"Anna and Elsa are most definitely the characters to meet..," Deborah Bowen, a professor of writing at the University of South Florida, and a Disney travel guru, told me via email the day before my visit. "When they were still located in the Norway pavilion in Epcot [at Walt Disney World in Florida] posted wait times got as high as six hours!"

[Related: Play 'Frozen' Find-It! Discover All the Easter Eggs in Disney's Blockbuster]

Bowen had advised me to pack "boredom-busting" games, crackers, trail mix, nuts and dried fruit. So, I bought a tall Starbucks tea, and, to mess with the franchise gods (and catch up with my speed-reading 7-year-old), stuffed a library copy of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" in my backpack.

I passed through the admission turnstile at 9:03 a.m. The park had been open for three minutes. I unfolded my Disneyland map, consulted the day's itinerary insert and set off for Fantasyland. When I say I "set off," I mean I walked.

Let me repeat: I walked to Fantasyland.

Ah, but how I paid for that mistake.

Per my keen navigational skills, I had determined that Anna, the princess of Arendelle (voiced by Kristen Bell in the movie) and Elsa, the Snow Queen (voiced by Idina "Adele Dazeem" Menzel), were based just beyond Sleeping Beauty Castle, tucked in between the Pinocchio ride and the Village Haus restaurant.

I found the spot. I saw what seemed a smallish group of people queued up outside a fake-snow-topped roof. I looked up and saw a sign that said the Anna-and-Elsa wait from this point, the very point where I was standing, was 120 minutes.

View photos