Voyage of the Little Mermaid
| Voyage of the Little Mermaid | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disney's Hollywood Studios |
| Land / area | Animation Courtyard |
| Type | Live stage show |
| Opened | January 7, 1992 |
| Closed | March 15, 2020 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Duration | About 17 minutes |
| Status | Closed |
Voyage of the Little Mermaid was a live stage show at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World, retelling Disney's 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid in about 17 minutes with a live Ariel, blacklight puppetry, film clips and in-theatre effects. It opened on January 7, 1992, in the Animation Courtyard theatre, and played for 28 years. Its final performance was on March 15, 2020, the day Walt Disney World closed for the COVID-19 pandemic; it never reopened.[1]
History
The show arrived early in the life of Disney-MGM Studios, as the park was then called, when the young studio park leaned heavily on stage shows built around Disney's current films. The Little Mermaid, released in November 1989, had revived Disney feature animation and given it a modern songbook, with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Howard Ashman. Voyage of the Little Mermaid opened on January 7, 1992, replacing Here Come the Muppets in the Animation Courtyard theatre — already the third show to use the space since the park opened in 1989.[2]
The production settled in for an exceptionally long run. It was refreshed in small ways over the years — a 2003 update, among other changes, had Ariel sing from a rock rather than a shell and cut an early scene — but its staging, puppetry and film montage remained recognisably the 1992 show for nearly three decades, surviving the park's renaming in 2008 and the opening of a second, ride-through Little Mermaid attraction, Under the Sea – Journey of the Little Mermaid, at Magic Kingdom in 2012.
Experience
Guests waited in a pre-show room dressed as an undersea grotto of salvaged artefacts, including King Triton's trident, then entered a dark theatre made to feel submerged, with light mist falling over the audience. The running order compressed the film to its songs and turning points.
Sebastian opened with "Under the Sea," performed by more than a hundred blacklight puppets — fish, crabs and sea creatures worked by puppeteers dressed in black, invisible against the dark. Ariel, played by a live performer who sang live at every show, then sang "Part of Your World" among her collected human treasures. The centrepiece was Ursula's "Poor Unfortunate Souls": the sea witch was a giant puppet about 12 feet tall and 10 feet wide, voiced, as in the film, by Pat Carroll, looming over Ariel as she took her voice.[3]
After Ursula gained Ariel's voice, a short film montage — about 75 seconds — carried the story through the witch's defeat, a compression that worked best for guests who already knew the film. King Triton, appearing on screen, then relented and transformed Ariel into a human, in a wash of laser effects and smoke, and the show closed with Eric carrying Ariel off, laser fireworks overhead and a curtain of water across the stage. Other film voices were pre-recorded, including Jess Harnell as Sebastian and Corey Burton as Triton.
Closure
Voyage of the Little Mermaid gave its last performance on March 15, 2020. Walt Disney World closed the following day for the COVID-19 pandemic, and when the park reopened in July 2020 the show did not return. It was listed as temporarily unavailable while other entertainment gradually came back; as the months became years, its park webpage disappeared and the theatre stayed dark, though Disney made no formal closure announcement at the time.
The confirmation came by replacement. On December 19, 2023, Disney announced a wholly reimagined production for the same theatre, The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure, initially planned for autumn 2024. The new show was later delayed to summer 2025 and opened on May 27, 2025, retelling the same film with new staging, digital puppetry and effects in place of the 1992 production's blacklight puppets and film montage.[4]
See also
- Disney's Hollywood Studios
- Under the Sea – Journey of the Little Mermaid
- Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage
- Fantasmic!