Disney’s Hollywood Studios is now home to two new live shows. Last week both The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure and Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After premiered. The night before their official openings, my family and I were invited to special viewings of each as part of the kickoff to Walt Disney World’s “Cool Kid Summer” event. Afterwards I also got a chance to talk members of the creative teams who brought them to life.
What can fans expect from these two shows? Are they good? (Yes.) And what did I learn about the productions? From the audience to backstage, here’s what I learned about the first of the two shows I saw, which took me under the sea for a visual feast.
The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure
What Is The Little Mermaid- A Musical Adventure at Walt Disney World?
The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure is the new live stage show in Animation Courtyard at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It opened on May 27, 2025. The theater it calls home previously belonged to a different live show also based on the iconic film, Voyage of the Little Mermaid. That production ran from 1992 to 2020.
The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure was first announced in 2023 and was first set to open in the fall of 2024. This new “fully-reimagined” iteration runs roughly 15 minutes and blends both practical and special visual effects. It features live actors, motion-capture performances, animation, “new digital puppetry,” real puppets (both big and small), multiple screens, and songs from the original 1989 film.
Is The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure Good?
If, like me, you love the 1989 animated film, it’s hard to imagine you won’t absolutely love The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure. It captures the spirit, tone, and energy of the movie. But it does so while dropping some unexpected little twists to make it feel fresh. That includes during its performance of “Under the Sea,” a genuine visual extravaganza that combines all of the shows effects into one amazing experience.
What makes this lively, bright, colorful show really soar (or I guess in this case swim) is the production. It’s simply incredible. Pure Disney. It seamlessly blends real humans with puppets and multiple screens full of animation. Images of the show don’t come close to doing justice to what it’s like to see it live. (They also can’t convey what it’s like seeing Ariel “swim” onto stage, a simple effect that instantly won me over.)
The show uses two main screens, one at the front and one at the back. During the show, many smaller ones in-between move in and out during, though you often don’t even realize it until an animated character appears. At times, animated renderings suddenly transform into real puppets and vice versa without it feeling like there’s a difference. It’s a show with Broadway quality production values that also takes inspiration from Walt Disney’s own techniques. But the massively impressive technical elements only work cause there’s also a great story and performances, most notably from Ariel who felt like she came straight out of the animated movie.
Even if you aren’t a huge fan of The Little Mermaid (how?), this is a must-see for theater fans. Beyond the technical prowess which feels impossible, there are some inspired theatrical sequences. That includes the big showdown between Prince Eric and Ursula.
Will Kids Like The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure at Walt Disney World?
My son, who is just a couple months shy of his fourth birthday, absolutely loved The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure. He was captivated before it even began. The theater makes you feel like you’re underwater (or at least under deck on a ship). The stage exterior is also decorated like Ariel’s grotto full of human trinkets, so there’s plenty to look at before it even starts. But the real magic happened during the show. It followed along the whole time and had a big smile on his face during his favorite moments from the film.
The air conditioned theater is also a great way to beat that Orlando heat. And with performances running all day, you can see it when you need to cool off and rest your feet.
How Did Disney Make The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure?
To find out I spoke to two of the leading creative minds behind The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure.
James Silson, Show Director with Disney Live Entertainment
James Silson directs The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure.
Nerdist: How do you even begin to direct a show with multiple screens, puppets, and live actors?
James Silson: Wow, that’s a very loaded question.
Yeah, it is, because it’s a very loaded show.
Silson: :laughs: It’s a lot. There’s a lot going on there.
Ultimately it starts with the bare bones of you’re telling a great story. That’s the most important thing. You’re looking at the arcs of the story and where it dips and where it has to energize. Then you ask yourself how best to present that.
Where we started first was this conceit of looking at the show through the lens of Ariel. That helped to inform our art aesthetic for the show and the stage aesthetic, which you’ll see in the proscenium. You show those fun objects and everything, and you see in the set pieces there’s this collage. It’s almost like what you would expect in a teenager’s bedroom. If you think about a teenager, go inside their bedroom and look at the walls, look at the stuff. Everyone collects all these things, and they put them up and it becomes part of the decoration. So we really leaned into that as a kind of first step into understanding the style of the show we wanted to approach.
Then the other thing was just the idea of, “How do we make this a more immersive experience for our guests? Something that allows us to feel transfixed and transported into the story of The Little Mermaid in a way that elevated it for the stage in a way that’s never been done before.” For that we pulled, again, inspiration from Disney, of the multiplane approach to animation. That was something that was founded at Disney. It’s the idea that we could animate multiple surfaces and create multiple layers. We could immerse our characters in that story in a way that felt truly magical. So that became the next bit.
Each of these things that you do as a director, when you’re designing a show and creating a show, you have this team of people, you just continue to ideate and ask the question, “How do we elevate this show? How do we use technology in a way that is additive and supportive of the story and doesn’t step past the story? How do we do all that and still maintain heart and a story that our guests can relate to?” I think we’ve done that with this show.
For all of the magical elements, there are still live performers. What was the key to getting the performances that you needed to tell this legacy story? What’s the key to making sure that your Ariel and your Prince Eric are ones that people are both expecting and something new?
Silson: Thankfully our characters are timeless and relatable. So as actresses and actors are coming in to perform in these shows, we have opportunities to go back to the source material. And that’s what this show is really rooted in, the source material of the film. It is the Ariel from The Little Mermaid. It is the Prince Eric. We didn’t evolve these characters past who they truly are at their core. What we’ve done is we’ve put those wonderful characters into a world that allows us to feel more immersed in their story and in the storytelling, in a way that we could never have done so many years ago.
I’m an old theater nerd myself. I want to know what part of this show that’s going to look easy to the audience is way harder than they would ever guess.
Silson: Oh my goodness. All of it.
I can tell you my most favorite theatrical moment of the show, and that is the battle sequence. The battle sequence you see in phases and lightning. These slow motion captures and flashes of lightning. You see these moments of a battle that are happening between Eric and Ariel and Ursula. And you’re seeing ship pieces come in, you’re seeing ships forming, you’re seeing Eric finally on the ship, braving Ursula. Those moments, that is, right there for me, that is true theater being presented on that stage. And it is very complex. Our performers are doing an amazing job.
At the beginning of this process you have your ideas, you’ve got the script, and obviously the technical elements are unlike most stage shows. What ended up being even better than maybe you imagined when you were thinking it through?
Silson: What ended up working better than I may have thought it would is the seamless blend between the animated content, our puppets, our actors, and the animated scenery mixed with our practical scenery. You have a lot of real practical effects, what you would expect in a theatrical onstage performance. But then you’re immersing it in this animated world.
And there’s a line there of, “When does it feel like it’s truly cohesive and when does it not?” And I think in this show it is truly cohesive. I don’t think the audience ever questions the reality of any of it. I think we’ve done a great job of creating a stage show that fully embodies the film in a way that no one would ever expect on stage. And it’s in good part to that blend of all those elements coming together.
Katrina Mena Rick, Senior Creative Producer with Disney Live Entertainment’s Visual Media Production Team
Katrina Mena Rick led the team of visual effects designers, digital artists, and animators responsible for creating the custom animation and projections in The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure.
Nerdist: I was really blown away by how seamless the digital elements blended in with the live action parts. How many screens are actually involved?
Katrina Mena Rick: Am I allowed to say? We have multiple screens, so we’re really kind of leaning into Walt’s original multiplane environment.
How difficult is that to actually pull off?
Mena Rick: Gosh, it is so, so hard. Especially in a small space like that theater. So what we had to do is pre-visualize a lot of things. We build everything in a game engine so that we can get a preview of what everything will look like. And we were able to move the camera in our digital space to check eye lines and check sight lines. I mean, we really played around with the technology for this because we wanted to get it right.
What new technology does this show have?
Mena Rick: Motion capture technology is not new, but it was the first time I worked with motion capture technology. And I think the first time we used it for a show here. But we were able to partner with our show director and choreographer to get some live actors and they portrayed King Triton. They portrayed Ursula and the daughters of Triton. We wanted to bring that nuance and that human aspect to the characters. Because they’re digital, they cannot replace that live element, but you could still feel it with the emotion that they bring to their performances.
The show was in production for a long time. How much of that was working out these kinks for the multiple projections and the timing with the puppets and live actors?
Mena Rick: There was so much detail put into this. We made 300 fish. We choreographed each and every single one of them. I’m not kidding. And I worked on it personally for two years and it was just a lot of love. Every detail that you see in it? We have Easter eggs in the grotto. There are hidden Mickeys in the show. We really try to be as intentional as possible because a show like this is a legacy show. And Voyage of the Little Mermaid was open for 30 years. So the goal and the hope is that this can transcend for the next generation.
What ended up being even better than maybe you envisioned at the start?
Mena Rick: I really had no idea if “Under the Sea” was going to work. We were either doing something absolutely crazy and awful or something brilliant. And I’m really proud to say that I feel like “Under the Sea” is a show-stopping part of the show because it is the pinnacle of that blending of mixed media and live theater and puppetry and animation. And we have 3D animation, but we also have 2D animation, and it’s all whimsical and bright and fun because the story is being told through the eyes of Ariel and that’s how she sees her world.
We’re hoping that we can bring that emotion to our guests so they can get a little glimpse of Ariel’s mind and be part of her world.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. Obviously he did get emotional during the show. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
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This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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