New Disney’s Hollywood Studios Shows Debut to Triple-Digit Wait Times
The only two new attractions opening in 2025 at Walt Disney World both debuted today (May 27) to huge crowds and high wait times. This covers the long lines you should expect to encounter for the Little Mermaid Musical Adventure and Villains Unfairly Ever After, although with short-term strategy for incorporating these stage shows into your DHS itinerary.
Before we dig into opening day of these two new attractions at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, let’s talk bigger picture crowds. This has been a hot topic of late, as covered in Epic Universe is Dead. That covered how Universal Orlando’s new park was seeing COVID-era attendance over the weekend, with walk-on wait times and crowd levels that’ll barely crack 1/10 once there’s more data in the system.
This post has not been well received on social media, presumably among Universal stans who don’t know how to read beyond headlines (you made it to paragraph three, so that thankfully isn’t you!). That’s because bolded as the first sentence in the second paragraph is a “huge kudos” to Universal Orlando for choosing low crowds. In any case, the UOR diehards have countered this commentary by pointing out that crowds were also low at Walt Disney World over the weekend. And you know what: they’re not wrong!
This also isn’t exactly stop-the-presses news. By holiday weekend standards, Memorial Day weekend is not a ‘red flag’ holiday. Even though it’s the unofficial start of summer, most school districts in Florida and other states are out until a few days to a few weeks after Memorial Day.
Even for those districts that are out, Memorial Day is usually too early for big summer vacations–those usually occur a bit later into the summer, with Memorial Day being more of a quick weekend getaway or grilling at home. Memorial Day is in no man’s land, somewhat similar to Martin Luther King Day (between New Year’s and winter break) or Labor Day (between summer vacation and fall break). Crowd levels are similar as a result, as the primary draw is locals.
Suffice to say, Memorial Day tends to be right on par with Labor Day as the least-busy “major” holiday of the year. Independence Day is actually becoming a dark horse candidate to surpass both, but that’s a problem of Disney’s own making–and not due to a lack of organic demand based on travel trends.
The important point is that Memorial Day weekend is less busy than lower-profile holidays like Presidents’ Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day, as well as the big ones that are usually week-long breaks. Memorial Day Weekend is average, at best, by normal standards and slow by holiday standards.
To illustrate, let’s look at past crowd levels with wait time data and graphs courtesy of Thrill-Data.com:
Above is a graph of crowd levels and average daily wait times across all of Walt Disney World for the entirety of the last 365 days. On the far left side, you’ll see last summer. Those are weekly crowd levels averaging 3/10 to 5/10 for the end of May through the end of June.
On the far right side of the graph is May 2025. It’s a very similar story there, with mostly 3/10 crowd levels (if we looked back at crowd levels for mid-May last year, crowds would be fairly comparable). June 2025 hasn’t started yet, so we obviously do not have that data.
Now let’s take a look at Memorial Day, specifically, on a year-over-year basis:
In case you want more comparisons, above is a graph of Memorial Day wait times for the last several years. (The color-coding is relative to other Memorial Days, not each year as a whole.)
The busiest Memorial Days were 2019 and 2022, when the average wait time was 41 minutes. To put that into perspective, that is about on par with MLK Day (the full week), which averaged 40 minutes and well above last Labor Day, which averaged 33 minutes. Against the last 365 days, 41 minutes would be the lower end of an 8/10 crowd level.
It’s also fair to point out that 2019 and 2022 are anomalies. The former was a record-setting year for Walt Disney World attendance that has yet to be surpassed (and probably won’t until the 2030s when Villains Land opens), and the latter was the peak of pent-up demand. Memorial Days since have been coming back to reality, with the 2025 Memorial Day Weekend having 2/10 to 5/10 crowd levels. That’s slightly below expectations, but nothing shocking.
From my perspective, that’s the biggest difference between this weekend’s crowds at Epic Universe and Walt Disney World–expectations vs. reality. And we actually didn’t have that high of expectations for Epic Universe’s opening weekend.
Based on known capacity caps, we were anticipating something on par with later paid previews. Instead, average posted wait times were around one-third the final week of previews. On-the-ground reports suggested even lower levels–that most posted wait times were inflated, and everything but Battle at the Ministry and Toothless was a walk-on or close to it for most of the weekend. (Worth noting that now that the weekend is over, Epic Universe wait times have already increased to paid preview levels.)
No reasonable person with any knowledge of crowd patterns or realistic expectations would’ve forecast dramatically different crowd levels at Walt Disney World. If anything, the safe bet would’ve been that Universal would win the weekend, with locals and tourists alike pulled away from WDW and to UOR. This final conclusion actually is correct. Universal did “win” the weekend…by virtue of higher crowd levels at Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida.
Anyway, on with the analysis of the new attractions at Disney’s Hollywood Studios…
Disney Villains Unfairly Ever After has set showtimes, meaning it does not currently post a wait time. That could change if high demand proves to be enduring, but in the meantime, the show is presented on the hour in the morning and evening, and every half-hour during the middle of the day and afternoon.
The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure, by contrast, operates on a continuous performance schedule from 9:15 am to 7:15 pm each day. This is similar to any other attraction, meaning guests can queue up throughout the day rather than arriving for scheduled showtimes. It also means the Little Mermaid show has a posted wait time.
According to the data, the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure posted wait time peaked at 110 minutes around 10:45 am. Before and after that, it hovered around 85 minutes. Throughout the day, it has been one of the highest–if not the highest–posted wait times in Disney’s Hollywood Studios and all of Walt Disney World. As I type this just after 4 pm Eastern, the wait time is still holding firm at 80 minutes, even as Slinky Dog Dash and everything else is at or under an hour!
As is probably obvious, this won’t last. The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure is not going to be a top 5 wait time in all of Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Its predecessor wasn’t, and although this looks like a lovely glow-up, the new version will not be that popular over time.
Anything new at Walt Disney World has an initial rush. This is unsurprisingly true of headliner attractions, but it happens with the smaller-scale stuff, too. Moana’s Journey of Water opened with a virtual queue and 5+ hour wait! Heck, if they brought Stitch’s Great Escape back today, it would have the highest wait time in Magic Kingdom. (Probably not the best example given the box office performance of the remake.)
Point being, it’s going to take a few days or weeks before the dust settles and the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure falls into predictable patterns. In the meantime, there’s the initial rush of locals, Annual Passholders, vloggers, bloggers, etc. all who need to be first to see this.
Looking at June 2025 and beyond, my expectation is that the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure will have a wait time roughly on par with Alien Swirling Saucers. I suspect it’s going to be fairly common to have a measurable wait time, meaning you might not be able to see the immediately upcoming performance.
The reasons for this are fairly simple. The show does look like a meaningful reimagining and improvement of its predecessor, and it’s the biggest ‘new’ attraction for 2025 at Walt Disney World. On top of that, it’ll fill the void left by MuppetVision as the “easier” high-quality counterprogramming to the headliner attractions. It’s also indoors, air-conditioned, and with a decent duration.
All of this strikes me as a recipe for a somewhat-elevated wait time into 2026 as tourists and non-local Walt Disney World regulars are drawn to the attraction. It’s not going to be routinely eclipsing an hour, but waits of around 30 minutes wouldn’t be the least bit surprising.
The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure will be a Lightning Lane Multi-Pass attraction somewhat soon-ish. It’s not yet clear when that’ll launch, but the touchpoints and Lightning Lane queue are already in place. Our assumption is that Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Premier Pass will roll out before June 2025 is over.
Once the Lightning Lane is introduced, the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure will actually be a decent same-day selection. Assuming our assessment of ~30 minute wait times is accurate, line-skipping could be the difference between making the current showtime or the next one. This means that the time-savings of the Lightning Lane vs. standby line of this stage show could actually exceed that of some rides–at least in the short term.
One way or another, this will make Lightning Lane Multi-Pass more valuable at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Either to reduce your wait for this attraction, or a different ride in order to fit in everything else. Disney’s Hollywood Studios has overtaken Magic Kingdom as the #1 park at Walt Disney World for LLMP, so you should’ve been purchasing paid FastPass even before this.
As for tentative touring strategy, our advice is simply slotting in the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure and/or Disney Villains Unfairly Ever After in the late morning, early afternoon or early evening. Disregard the opening day wait times, as even in the short-term, these are not attractions that are going to have peak wait times before noon.
During an ideal day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, we currently recommend penciling in MuppetVision 3D for late morning, in equal part because it has showtimes before the big stage shows, and because it’s playing to packed houses to say farewell–and that’s a way to beat those crowds. Similar idea here with either of these new shows.
Watching around 10 or 11 am will let you ‘ride the wave’ of crowds for Early Entry and rope drop, and then see the shows before their rushes start. My expectation is that this is not all that tentative, and will prove to be the best strategy once the dust settles.
Before lunch will be the sweet spot, especially as ride wait times peak and the other counterprogramming of the ‘big’ stage shows don’t yet have conflicting showtimes. Same goes for the late afternoon or early evening, after the big shows wrap their daily performances. Just be done before ride wait times start dropping.
The biggest challenge is going to be fitting the park’s half-dozen shows (5 once MuppetVision closes) into a single day. Our best guess is that most guests will not do this, and we’ll see slightly lower crowds at the Frozen Sing-Along and Beauty and the Beast: Live on Stage as a result. Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular will probably see less of an impact given how dissimilar it is to the two new productions.
The other indirect consequence of these two new stage shows could be guests extending their days at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. One of the dynamics we’ve written about a lot is wait times peaking early at DHS, guests “hitting a wall” and heading for the exits early. That pacing yourself to outlast the crowds–or even taking a midday break–is the savviest strategy, as the last 2-3 hours of the evening are glorious, with the lowest wait times of the day.
These two new shows could help offset the top heavy ride roster at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and bridge the midday for more guests, meaning higher wait times into the night. We doubt that’ll happen. It’s not like we’re on completely untrodden ground here. Up until March 2020, both of these venues had comparable shows and MuppetVision was running. The dynamic was no different then, and should be no different now.
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of these wait times and crowd levels? Looking forward to the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure or Disney Villains Unfairly Ever After? Will these be must-dos for you? Thinking the Mermaid Musical will be a good use of a Lightning Lane once the dust settles? 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!
You complain about people not receiving your click bait article well when you purposely wrote it vague and verbose to get the attention you’re getting. Also your entire universal article was ridiculous and naive, or at the very least blowing smoke up Universal’s backside in order to attempt to stay in good with them for future media events, thinking that theme park owners purposely chose to not sell out their brand new park because attendance and money are something they don’t want over guest experience when your entire logic is flawed by the fact ticket sales have been down for months, advertising didn’t do what they expected it to do because they didn’t advertise the park enough except on social media so it didn’t even reach the audience they intended it to. If you open the very social media you’re complaining about reacting to your blatently click bait article, for every comment praising epic universe there’s a dozen who have no idea what it even is.
Universal Orlando historically is an add on park experience that the hordes of travelers tack onto their central Florida vacation as an add on day or possibly two and has alwsys more popular with locals, very similar to the Disneyland experience in California, and they have always had problems positioning themselves as a true vacation destination and all inclusive package and they are proving that is still very much the case. Disney hotels sell out months in advance and universal had not only open rooms every day of epic universe opening weeks it had massive Florida resident discounts offered showing their expectations and realities of attendance were two very different things. This was massively apparent when Universal Parks and experiences opened the previews up to the general public by complete surprise weeks before official opening to try and generate buzz for the parks.
The biggest problem with epic universe is it is still a stand alone ticket with no multi day packages or discounts available and a huge amount of universal traffic is repeat and annual passholders and locals are not going to pay to play every day at epic universe which is already apparent in their daily operations, as ride times have basically stalled except on weekends with a large wait in the morning followed very quickly by huge drops leaving most attractions at a consistent 15 minutes or less for most of the evening.
As long as universal still continues to treat epic as a separate entity completely from its other resort offerings and doesn’t add it to annual pass perks or offer multi day deals and discounts they will drive the park attendance into the ground. The misstep here is apparent even in the daily park operations because they built this huge beautiful theme park that they designed to be even more beautiful at night with specific light up affects and groundbreaking attractions that are made for the night time and didn’t even make their park open at night time and had to adjust park opening times after guests clearly complained about it.
While epic is a beautiful park and the best park for what it is, a thrill seeking park, and not a very accessible or family friendly one, with basically zero shade opportunity in a city known for triple digit summers, it still has massive pitfalls and one of those is the individual price point and daily ticket only option. The shade thing being the most glaringly obvious. You can write this off with “trees need time to grow” in celestial park gardens but no they don’t. The team at epic had billions of dollars and could have easily spent money on bringing in full size shaded trees like Disney has consistently in parks and experiences for years. They even did it in the berm areas of most of the portals. So the lack of anywhere to find respite from 100 degree Florida head including a MASSIVE parking lot with zero coverage for NO REASON when they could have built a parking garage just like their other resort that offered at least some shade and took up less space was a huge misstep.
The truth of the matter is many opening factors ended up outside of Universal’s control including an unstable economy caused by instability in the current administration and a growing economic recession that is causing many families to cancel or second guess and not plan big vacations and until they realize this and lean back into passholder and multi day offerings the shiny new excitement behind epic universe will die as quickly as it began as already evidenced in daily attendance.
Universal has recently started attempting to course correct by assuring press and influencers this whole park attendance fiasco is absolutely part of their grand plan to allow guests to experience the park at a more relaxed pace and that is all well and good if they hadn’t opened the previews the weeks before opening causing a rapid flood of people for a few days that disappeared over the following weekend.
The inconsistent wait times and flux of people on weekends is showing that this is false and there are multiple things universal just doesn’t want to admit because the last things billion dollar corporations do is admit they fumbled something as huge as the first major theme park opening in 25 years.
To be fair many of these factors were far beyond Universal’s control such as the economic and political factors currently plaguing the country, however, the fact Universal pulled the plug on many actors and added experiences right at the finish line of park opening further solidified the fact they spent too much money and are not seeing the initial return they expected for the long run.
This also shows Disney is absolutely correct in their predictions Epic won’t deter from the Disney world offerings but rather enhance it and draw more crowds. This is evident by the consistent crowds in Disney world and rise in hotel bookings for the summer during what has proven to be a slower season for central Florida parks ever since covid decided to throw a wrench in how America vacations.
I have to applaud Disney for taking this stance publicly as it is good to show theme parks aren’t “competing” rather than bringing different experiences to the same space and that’s fine as competition fuels growth and innovention and Epic is clearly targeted towards the Universal target market which is teens, tweens, and adult thrillseekers. This is evident by even the tamest rides having seemingly arbitrary height requirements. By cutting down the types of rides people with varied families or small children or disabilities can ride it greatly cuts back on the parks appeal to a wider audience and while that’s perfectly fine as the thrill seeking park is one that had been lacking in true themeing experience and needed a park like Epic to show places like Cedar Fair the potential six flags can live up to, it’s not going to be closing down Disney any time soon as the offerings are quite different.
https://themeparks.matthewe.me/tickets
A reddit user even created a site to show the sale of epic universe tickets and track the crowd levels in real time and ticket sales are consistent with weekend and holiday traffic driving the force but weekdays often being at 70% or less in sales for even the reduced capacity numbers.
https://themeparks.matthewe.me/tickets
“The only two new attractions opening in 2025 at Walt Disney World both debuted today (May 27)….”
Didn’t get past your first sentence before alarms went off. Does this mean that Test Track 3.0 will not open this year???? We have a trip planned later this year and the kids will be sorely disappointed if Test Track is still closed. Though the new shows at DHS will be fun to see and I appreciate your advice on strategy, Tom. Thanks for another great and informative post!
Test Track 3.0 is a ride reimagining–I wouldn’t classify it as a new attraction. I suppose the same could be said for the Little Mermaid musical, but they gave it a new name and are treating it as new.
As far as I know, Test Track is still on track to reopen in 2025. I suspect it’ll be a bit later, but the official line is still “later this summer.”
Testtrack 3.0 is a ride reimagining but the Little Mermaid 2.0 is a new attraction…dude even your responses are horrible and just to avoid saying you wrote an entire article to provide discourse and interaction and it has actually zero substance. I’m all about hustling to get your clicks and views but doing so while treating park goers as dumb as you do is insulting.