The novelisation *spoilers*
I've just finished reading the book based on this film which is available from Amazon. It's quite different in some places from the film and, in my opinion, the story it tells is much better and hangs together better. I'm about to describe some of the main differences so if you don't want to know and would prefer to read it for yourself, stop here!
Firstly, and probably most importantly, Bernard is in it, in his rightful place as head elf with Curtis as his second-in-command, the way it should be!
There is no reference to Lucy's "warm hugs", only the folk who are meant to be magical exibit any supernatural powers - more on that later!
The reindeer don't "talk" - Scott is just very good at interpreting their animal grunts, much more like in the first film.
Carol uses a magical action figure to demonstrate to the elf students how Scott became Santa.
Curtis actually shows Jack Frost the hall of Snowglobes after Jack taunts him by suggesting that he doesn't know how to get in! The hall itself is much more like I imagined it would be - lined with shelves of snowglobes. Scott's is identifyable because it is clean and bright whereas the older ones are gathering dust and fading. It all sounds far more elegant and mysterious, like a room which might be found at Hogwarts!
Carol's dad doesn't tell Scott he looks like Father Time, instead he says: "Santa called - he wants his beard back!"
In the alternate reality, Carol has married Jack Frost/Santa and is living very unhappily at the North Pole theme park. Not sure how this is supposed to have come about. This is the one change I wasn't too sure about but it did give an opportunity for a conversation between her and Scott in the "Frostmas" reality.
Laura tells Scott that the North Pole theme park was "built to look like Santa's workshop" - clearly most people don't believe it's real.
Frost's North Pole is slowly loosing magic as children stop "believing" in Christmas (a reference back to the first film when Bernard tells Scott that children "carry the spirit of Christmas in their hearts"?). The elf's ears are becoming steadily less pointly and Frost is having to use stick-on beard extensions as his real Santa beard is dropping out.
It is explained why Scott and Frost remember how things used to be - apparently the escape clause takes until midnight on the day it is invoked to work fully. Scott has to set things right before then otherwise he will forget his old life and will fully become the Scott from the "Frostmas" reality.
After divorcing from Laura, Neil has re-married. His wife's name is Elyse and she is a vacuous shopahollic who loves tacky christmas paraphenalia - I wondered if she was meant to be the woman Scott had a disasterous date with in SC2?
There is no recording pen. Scott tricks Frost in to mimicing him while he throws the globe. He catches it just as he says the last word.
Neil and Laura are never frozen. When the status-quo is restored, Jack Frost is banished to the South Pole where he ends the book trying to tell his story to a disinterested bunch of emperor penguins - much funnier :-)
Anyway, I would really recommend the book to anyone who is a fan of the first two films, it's SC3 as it should have been! Here's hoping for a director's cut DVD!