Walt Disney World announced the Summer 2025 opening date of the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure stage show at Hollywood Studios. This shares the debut date and new details, plus predictions about soft openings & previews, Lightning Lanes vs. standby lines, crowds, and more! (Updated May 13, 2025.)
In case you’re unfamiliar with it, “The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure” is a reimagined theatrical production set to replace Voyage of the Little Mermaid. The latter was a casualty of the COVID closure, and over 5 years later, is going to be replaced by this updated show. It should be similar in spirit and substance, with differences in style and (some) songs.
The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure is inspired by the Walt Disney Animation Studios classic movie, and will debut in the newly-refreshed theater in Animation Courtyard. The show was originally slated to debut last fall, but now is on track to debut alongside Villains Unfairly Ever After in Summer 2025.
When the new Little Mermaid Musical Adventure opens, the stage show will feature stunning new set pieces, cutting-edge effects, and a bold new design that captures Ariel’s imagination and emotions through her unique view of the world around her. Watch as Ariel follows her dreams to be part of the human world. This little mermaid’s adventure is brimming with familiar moments—like encounters with King Triton and Ursula—and stirring scenes.
Unsurprisingly, it’s also brimming with music–hence the name. Throughout Ariel’s journey, get swept away by moving musical numbers like “Part of Your World,” “Under the Sea,” “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” “Kiss the Girl” and more!
Fans won’t have to wait too much longer for there to finally be a Little Mermaid show in Disney’s Hollywood Studios once again. Walt Disney World announced that The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure will officially open on May 27, 2025.
May 13, 2025 Updates: Walt Disney World has shared a bunch of news about The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure in the last few days. First, the Disney Parks channel on YouTube has released a 10-minute long ‘Making of’ video for the new show. (Warning: video contains show spoilers.)
Want to take a sneak peek at the gadgets and gizmos aplenty Disney Live Entertainment have in store? So did Disney Legend and original voice of Ariel herself, Jodi Benson! She’s surprising Cast Members and bringing you along in this exclusive behind-the-scenes video. Pretty cool to see, and much ‘meatier’ than the normal 1-2 minute quick clips we get for new productions like this.
In other news, Walt Disney World has updated the official attraction page, revealing that the showtimes for The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure will be continuous from to
Speaking of lines, The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure has also been added to the Lightning Lane roster–confirming our speculation below. We’ve updated our Guide to Lightning Lanes at Walt Disney World for 2025 accordingly, but the only thing you really need to know is that this won’t be a good use of your line-skipping allocations (unless you’re visiting in the first week or so that it’s open).
Note that May 27, 2025 is the date that both The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure and Villains Unfairly Ever After will debut in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. This is likely strategic, coming right after Memorial Day weekend, which is usually the unofficial kickoff to the summer season’s marketing campaign.
Although not explicitly stated by Disney in this announcement, one thing to note is that “The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure” is debuting around the same time that MuppetVision 3D and Muppet Courtyard closes on the other side of Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
It’s likely that the two new stage shows will pick up the slack and capacity of losing MuppetVision, especially at a time when Walt Disney World attendance has been softening. In any case, you’ll have only a little over one week to enjoy both “The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure” and MuppetVision 3D. So plan your summer vacations accordingly if your family is full of muppets and mermaid fans!
Now, let’s turn to questions about the Little Mermaid Musical Adventure’s potential soft openings, AP/DVC previews, and more…
Soft Openings
The first two sections here are essentially identical to what we’ve written for Villains Unfairly Ever After. If you’ve already read that, you might as well skip ahead to the Lightning Lane section. The bottom line is that the two new stage shows are equally likely or unlikely to offer soft openings and/or affiliation previews.
If one does and the other doesn’t, it be a matter of complete coincidence, luck, or because one is further ahead in rehearsals than the other. None of those are things we can predict (and we don’t have any inside info on either).
To reiterate, Walt Disney World had moved away from soft openings in the last few years, before bringing them back with TRON Lightcycle Run two years ago. That was the last big brand-new attraction to debut, before Tiana’s Bayou Adventure last summer, which did not have soft openings.
Our guess is that the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure could easily go either way with soft openings. In digging back through the DTB Archives, I can’t find a single instance of a stage show having a soft opening before its general public debut. It’s nevertheless still possible given that the opening date is being set a couple months in advance and in light of the timing around Epic Universe.
The show might be ready to run ahead of schedule, in which case Walt Disney World could pull back the curtain earlier to help absorb summer crowds. There’s little to no precedent for that happening with a stage show like this. But on the other hand, there’s also no precedent for opening new stage shows as “counterprogramming” to a new theme park at Universal Orlando.
AP & DVC Previews
Walt Disney World’s recent approach has been to forgo soft openings in favor of more controlled previews for select affiliation groups, including Disney Vacation Club Members, Annual Passholders, Golden Oak Residents, Club 33 Members.
Affiliation previews are more likely than soft openings for Little Mermaid Musical Adventure, but they’re far from guaranteed. We’d say it’s about 50/50 at this point. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a preview “bundle” of sorts, where Annual Passholders and Disney Vacation Club Members register for previews of both stage shows, and they occur on the same dates.
If these shows do offer previews, expect them to work almost exactly like the previews for the last several years, right down to all eligible APs not receiving the email before slots started filling up. (I wouldn’t expect Disney to go the ‘no registration’ route of Moana’s Journey of Water, as that’s a walkthrough and this is a much more limited-capacity venue with showtimes.)
In any case, receiving the email for preview registration does not matter! The link inside is what’s important, and anyone who is eligible can use that. Both of us will be monitoring our emails like hawks in the coming weeks and will give you a heads up ASAP if/when preview registration goes live. You can subscribe to our free email newsletter for instant alerts.
Lightning Lane Status
Our first difference between Villains Unfairly Ever After and the Little Mermaid Musical Adventure! As with that new DHS stage show, our prediction here largely comes down to precedent. Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy was not a FastPass or Lightning Lane attraction, so the infrastructure was not there for it. Walt Disney World would have to go out of their way to add a separate queue.
By contrast, Voyage of the Little Mermaid was a FastPass+ attraction. (It never offered a Lightning Lane because, again, this theater has been dark for the last 5+ years, so it’s missed the entire Lightning Lane era to date.) This means all of the infrastructure is always in place. Walt Disney World would have to go out of their way to remove the separate queue, or simply pretend it doesn’t exist.
It is possible that Walt Disney World will remove the Lightning Lane from this queue. After all, Voyage of the Little Mermaid almost never needed FastPass outside of a few peak weeks per year. Even then, “need” would be a stretch. Like so many stage shows, this was basically a “bonus” FastPass aimed at creating capacity and the illusion of value without actually offering something of value.
Expect the same to be true here. Having a Lightning Lane at the Little Mermaid Musical Adventure will help Walt Disney World sell Multi-Pass and Premier Pass, and also “allow” Walt Disney World to raise the price of LLMP at DHS. It would also add capacity to the paid Lightning Lane services, enabling Disney to raise the threshold for a sell-out.
Unlike the character meet & greets that have had Lightning Lanes removed, it’s also not the case that the Little Mermaid Musical Adventure has such low capacity or throughput that a Lightning Lane causes operational or logistical issues. In other words, it’s neither a positive nor negative for guests. But it is a light positive for Walt Disney World and the path of least resistance is retaining the queue for the Lightning Lane, so it’ll probably have one. Still far from a sure thing, but easily way above 50/50 odds. More like 80/20, if not 90/10.
Ultimately, I’m looking forward to the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure. I’m also a bit bitter that it’s taken over 5 years to get a reimagined replacement in this space, which is over two years longer than all other venues. I’m sure it’ll be a fun stage show that we’ll really enjoy. I’m already looking forward to taking Megatron to it!
I’m just a bit frustrated by Walt Disney World’s lackadaisical approach over the last several years. It seems like the only things done with a sense of urgency are upcharges, cutbacks, and Disney Vacation Club construction. For everything else, there’s the implicit expectation that we, as fans, should simply be appreciative about whatever Walt Disney World–an expensive vacation destination–chooses to give us.
It’s no secret to anyone in park management that wait times are high at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. That people leave the park early out of frustration. That more balance is needed in the attraction and entertainment lineup. And yet, they chose to allocate resources to developing stage shows for Jollywood Nights (among other things) as opposed to expediting The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure.
A couple of years from now, we’ll probably have forgotten all about how long it took to bring back a Little Mermaid production–I’m already “over” how long it took to build TRON Lightcycle Run. But for now, I’ll be enjoying the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure show while also wondering: what took so long?!
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure? Excited to have a new stage show, or bitter that this space has been dark for over 5 years? Excited to experience this during your summer-time trip to Walt Disney World? Think it’ll have a Lightning Lane or be standby-only? What about soft openings vs. pre-registered previews? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
