Festival of the Lion King (Hong Kong)

Festival of the Lion King
Park	Hong Kong Disneyland
Land / area	Adventureland
Type	Live stage musical
Opened	September 12, 2005
Duration	30 minutes
Status	Operating

Festival of the Lion King is a live stage musical at Hong Kong Disneyland, performed in the Theater in the Wild in Adventureland. The roughly 30-minute production retells the story of Disney's 1994 animated film The Lion King through its songs, large parade-style animal floats, acrobatics and fire dancing, with the audience seated in the round around a central rotating stage. It opened with the park on September 12, 2005, and remains one of Hong Kong Disneyland's longest-running shows.

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History

Hong Kong Disneyland opened on September 12, 2005, on reclaimed land at Penny's Bay, Lantau Island, and Festival of the Lion King was part of its opening-day entertainment lineup, giving the new park a large-scale indoor musical from the start.

The show shares its name, its theatre-in-the-round staging and its Lion King music — by Elton John, Tim Rice and Hans Zimmer — with the Festival of the Lion King at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida, which had opened in 1998. The two productions are otherwise different shows. The Florida version is a revue-style celebration with no continuous plot, hosted by four singers; the Hong Kong version was newly arranged as a condensed retelling of the film's story, following Simba from cub to king. Hong Kong's Theater in the Wild seats 2,210 guests per performance, in four sections each named for an animal — lion, giraffe, elephant and warthog — echoing the Florida theatre's arrangement.

The production has held its Adventureland home ever since, typically playing three to five times a day. Its one regular interruption is seasonal: in the autumn Halloween period the Theater in the Wild is given over to the villain musical Let's Get Wicked, and Festival of the Lion King pauses for several weeks before returning.

The show

The story is presented to Simba himself. A Storyteller, played by a female performer, narrates and sings the tale of Simba's life — his childhood in the Pride Lands, the death of Mufasa, his exile and carefree years with Timon and Pumbaa, his reunion with Nala, and his return to confront Scar and claim Pride Rock. Simba watches from a large, elaborate puppet figure mounted on the lion float, one of four big parade-style floats that enter around the central stage, alongside a giraffe, an elephant, and Timon and Pumbaa.

The film's songs carry the narrative in sequence, including "Circle of Life", "I Just Can't Wait to Be King", "Hakuna Matata", "Be Prepared" and "Can You Feel the Love Tonight", closing with a finale medley. Around the singing, the production layers the spectacle Hong Kong Disneyland is known for: acrobatic monkeys, tribal dancers and stilt walkers, an aerial silk duet for the love song, and fire-knife dancers with real flames for the climactic battle, all played on and around the rotating central stage so that every seating section gets a changing view.

The performance is given mainly in English. To serve the park's local audience, two performers costumed as monkeys summarise and translate key lines into Cantonese as the show proceeds, while Simplified Chinese subtitles are projected on screens above each seating section for visitors from mainland China.

See also

• Festival of the Lion King — the distinct Disney's Animal Kingdom production
• Theater in the Wild
• Adventureland
• Hong Kong Disneyland
• List of Hong Kong Disneyland attractions