The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure

A brand-new show called “The Little Mermaid — A Musical Adventure” has arrived in Disney World!

This new show opened on May 27th, 2025, is a fully reimagined theatrical production inspired by the animated movie. Just like Voyage of the Little Mermaid, it will include a mix of live actors and puppets in some scenes.

Disney Live Entertainment has been working on this new telling of the show for over a year bringing new elements to the beloved story.

The show will feature some of our all-time Disney favorite songs like “Part of Your World”, “Poor Unfortunate Souls”, and “Kiss the Girl”. Now that we’ve watched it, these are our thoughts!

If you LOVE The Little Mermaid animated film, this show was built for you. Let us explain — almost everything that you might have seen of the former show’s elements have returned for this newly imagined show’s take.

The outside queue line is still made up of the metal switch backs that will lead you into a holding room just beyond the building’s doors. It’s made up of nautical themed wooden details that almost remind us of shipping containers from a shipwreck.

As you enter the theater you’ll be directed to slide over to comfortable theater-style folding seats with ADA accommodative seating and space for wheelchairs in the front and the back of the theater. We happen to notice that this theater had the ability to seat two wheelchairs beside each other, whereas the Villains: Unfairly Ever After show’s theater was not as roomy.

The show was enjoyable, but you might find the use of screens throughout the show a bit off-putting. If you’re a fan of the shows around Disney’s Hollywood Studios that use several actors on stage at once, this show might feel a bit sparse too, since it’s two physical actors on stage are Ariel and Prince Eric.

The show isn’t terribly long and keeps good pacing with condensing The Little Mermaid’s storyline from the movie into an abridged version for the show’s runtime. It’s inclusion of the movie’s catchy tunes in “Part of Your World”, “Under The Sea”, and “Kiss The Girl”.

There were also several points where you’ll see Ariel “swim” mid-air on stage while performing to songs and bantering with her father, King Triton, through the use of the screens.

And y’all — if you’ve missed the MASSIVE Ursula puppet that slithers across the stage (with diva-like grace), she’s BACK! And the seamless use of the puppet interacting with the screen images behind her (and eventually in front of her)  makes for a convincing scene.

We could definitely see this show being a great place to land to get out of the sun on a sunny summer day and for fans young and young at heart, that want relive the classic story that so many of us know and love.

The “Voyage of the Little Mermaid” show has been closed since 2020, and “The Little Mermaid — A Musical Adventure” is the NEW attraction that is replacing it. The new show was announced in 2023, and as of May 27th, it is finally here! This show is inspired by the original 1989 animated classic from Walt Disney Animation Studios — The Little Mermaid. 

It has been maintaining a consistently high wait time all day. Right around 11 AM, we even spotted the show posting a 100-minute wait time. However, for the most part it has been sitting closer to a 60-minute wait time. At 2 PM, it had a 60-minute wait, and it had one of the higher waits in the park!

While a Lightning Lane sign was installed for the show and we spotted them being offered in the My Disney Experience app, it seems that we might be waiting a bit before the Lightning Lane line will be utilized. When we spoke with a Cast Member, they told us that they weren’t expecting Lightning Lanes to be offered for another month. It could be sooner or later than that, but as of right now, you won’t be able to get a Lightning Lane for “The Little Mermaid — A Musical Adventure”.

There is definitely a lot of excitement for this new show on opening day, and we will be curious to see if wait times remain as high in the future. We will also be keeping an eye on the status of Lightning Lanes to experience the show.

Lots of people are eager to see this new show.