Director: Shane Zalvin
Santa's elite Elite Elf Force is back for one more holiday mission, and this time a stray snowball threatens to unravel Wayne's entire night.
What is Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol about?
Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol drops veteran elf Wayne back into the field just as a routine delivery run starts to slide sideways. Convinced he's about to land in serious trouble with Santa over the mishap, Wayne spirals into memory after memory of past missions that went just as wrong, each one funnier and more chaotic than the last. The short strings together these flashbacks like a highlight reel of near-disasters, letting the humor come from precise slapstick timing rather than any real threat to Christmas itself. Running a lean twenty-two minutes, it never lingers on a joke too long, moving from one holiday-logistics catastrophe to the next until Wayne has to decide whether to own up to the mess or try to quietly fix it before morning.
Cast & crew
Dave Foley leads the voice cast as Wayne, playing the character's anxious spiral for maximum comic effect, alongside Derek Richardson and Sarah Chalke as fellow members of the delivery team. Christopher Swindle, Manny Jacinto, and Dulcé Sloan fill out the supporting roles that populate Wayne's chain of flashbacks. Director Shane Zalvin keeps the pacing tight across the short's brisk runtime.
Context & significance
Released in 2025 as a joint Canada–United States production, The Snowball Protocol sits in the Adventure, Animation, and Short categories, built as a quick, self-contained watch rather than a full feature. Its short format makes it an easy addition to a holiday viewing lineup, playable in a single sitting alongside other seasonal titles without requiring any prior familiarity with earlier Prep & Landing entries.
Where & how to watch
The Snowball Protocol is available on K-Time with a free account login, and this page can be read without signing in first. K-Time's Farsi-first design means Persian-speaking viewers can browse the holiday lineup and queue up short animated titles like this one in an interface built for them.