Photos & Video First Look: New Villains Unfairly Ever After Stage Show at Disney World!
Walt Disney World has released first look photos & video offering a sneak peek at the new Villains Unfairly Ever After stage show opening at Hollywood Studios in less than a week! This shares the preview photos & footage, offering a glimpse of what you can expect from one of WDW’s main “Cool Kid Summer” offerings.
As a reminder, Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After is a stage show coming to Hollywood Studios back in the corner of Sunset Boulevard behind Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. During this live entertainment production, Walt Disney World invites guests to enter the realm of the Magic Mirror, where dozens of villains are trapped! They want the Mirror to reveal the truth: which villain has been treated the most unfairly of them all?
Never ones to let a dramatic performance pass them by, fiendish foes Cruella de Vil, Captain Hook, and Maleficent will break through the glass and present their cases on stage, persuading with wicked wisdom and wisecracks. Will you be swayed by their hijinks and humor? Villains Unfairly Ever After is a spellbinding show with moving music and a most memorable finale.
In the end, guests make the final call on who has been treated most unfairly (unfairliest?) in a delightfully wicked finale filled with dozens of the most infamous evildoers awaiting your decision from within the Magic Mirror’s realm. (Horizons fans rejoice–choose your own ending has returned!)
Personally, I like the audience interactivity angle, but still think it’s odd that Walt Disney World opted against the obvious “Disney Villains: Unhappily Ever After” name. Maybe that’s just me, though. (Is it?) Every time I do a write-up on this show, I have to scan the text to make sure I didn’t mistakenly refer to it as Villains Unhappily Ever After. Here’s hoping that Disney is just saving that name for a future nighttime spectacular on Cinderella Castle for the opening of Villains Land in ~5 years!
Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After is now in Cast Member previews, and will officially open on May 27, 2025. While a soft opening over the weekend is still possible, we’re not expecting any other previews beyond those for Cast Members. In any case, these first few showings have yielded first look photos & video of the new production at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Here’s a look:
The video footage of Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After shows the three villains that will appear on stage, as well as the high-tech screens supplementing the stage show. There’s also an extended ‘first listen’ to the original song created for Unfairly Ever After.
Here’s a look/listen:
Walt Disney World shared a FIRST LOOK at Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After at Disney’s Hollywood Studios! The show will officially debut on May 27. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/0Yn8ybYDJq
— Drew Smith (@DrewDisneyDude) May 21, 2025
Even as an alleged professional, I make a point of avoiding spoilers before experiencing theme park offerings in person. I made an exception for the Disney Villains Unfairly Ever After video because we cancelled our weekend trip to Florida, so I won’t see this until mid-July or whenever Starlight debuts, whichever is earlier. And also, because I honestly don’t care that much about Villains Unfairly Ever After.
All of this is to say that I don’t love judging video, as it’s often not an accurate reflection of the in-person experience, and that I’m not used to doing so. Nevertheless, what surprises me about this sneak peek is that it kinda falls flat. Maybe it’ll present differently in person, but only having one villain on stage at a time with zero other performers feels cheap and lower energy than this show otherwise could and should be. It’s fairly easy to contrast this with Hocus Pocus Villain Spelltacular, which is head and shoulders better than this (even allowing for the possibility that Villains Unfairly Ever After presents much better in person).
I do like the original song (it’s not good-good, but it’s a good earworm), as well as the presentation on the screens. If these were merely supplemental, they’d work really well. But it seems as if they’ll be asked to carry too much weight of the production. Honestly, though, I’m not too worked up about any of this. Here’s why…
First, because Disney’s Hollywood Studios needs an easy-to-see show like Villains Unfairly Ever After. In case you missed last week’s update, there are performances of this every half-hour for most of the day, which strongly suggests this is a tight production. (That should also help prevent it from wearing out its welcome; keeping a tight pace and remaining engaging even without background performers.)
Walt Disney World has still not released the runtime for Villains Unfairly Ever After, but showtimes occurring every 30 minutes suggests it’ll be 15 minutes long at the absolute most. It takes at least 15 minutes to reset the theater and load/unload guests, so if they haven’t allocated that much time for cycling, they’ll have to shift these times.
Our bet is that Villains Unfairly Ever After ends up being 12-13 minutes long at most. Maybe as low as 10 minutes long. This is a decent duration, and a tight show plus the trio of villains mixed with high-tech visuals might be good enough. At the very least, Villains Unfairly Ever After should be lower stakes–requiring much less planning than the big stage shows that are longer and more infrequent. It’ll help fill the counterprogramming void left when MuppetVision 3D closes.
Speaking of MuppetVision 3D, I honestly don’t want Disney Villains Unfairly Ever After to be too good or too well-received.
As we’ve said from the day Villains Unhappily Ever After was announced, we view this as an interim show. It’s likely that Disney wants to do in-park market research on villains, while also freeing up that Lightning McQueen AA for Cars Land in Magic Kingdom. Once Villains Land opens in ~2030, it’s unlikely that Villains Unhappily Ever After has much of a future. It probably has a ~5 year shelf life, similar to Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy, the show that came before it.
With the Muppets takeover of Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, my dream scenario is Sunset Showcase becoming the new Muppet Courtyard. That’s something first discussed back in Where Will MuppetVision Be Relocated After It Closes at Disney’s Hollywood Studios? We also cover why it’s unlikely to happen, even though it makes so much sense. As evidenced by a Beauty and the Beast bar in the Victorian-themed hotel instead of the then-new French Riviera-themed one (among many other curious decisions in the last ~5 years), Disney doesn’t often take the logical path-of-least-resistance to themed design.
Regardless, I’m holding out hope that Imagineering is able to “win” that battle and bring Muppet Courtyard back to life at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The first piece of that puzzle is Villains Unfairly Ever After being only okay, and due for replacement in ~5 years. The second step is Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring the Muppets being extremely well-done and well-received. So this show doesn’t have performers or whatever because Imagineering is blowing the budget on the RnRC reimagining…fine by me!
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of Villains Unfairly Ever After? Excited to experience this during your summer-time trip to Walt Disney World? Thoughts on the energy of the production? Wish there were more performers on stage at a time? Do you like the song or screen-centric background? 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!
We visited Hollywood Studios last week and found this show to be a letdown, mostly due to its un-repeatability. Entertaining enough once, but with the same three villains every time, pretty much a one and done for us. Cruella was great though!
honestly viewing this show was like watching a home video from Disney. Perhaps three well known villains could be
center stage and a a chorus line in back of them doing a can-can or some line dance. Not impressed by this coming attraction and I think little ones will be scared to death!
The plot sounds very reminiscent of Six — “a modern retelling of the lives of the six wives of Henry VIII, presented in the form of a singing competition. In the show, the wives take turns telling their story to determine who suffered the most from their shared husband, but ultimately seek to reclaim their individual identities and rewrite their stories.”
After watching the video, I feel like 4-5 background dancers with each villain would have made this a great deal better. I will see this show in person in two weeks so I will have a better gauge at that point.
I wish they’d gone with something like “Evil Ever After” to really separate it from the “Happily Ever After” sentiment..
oh well, excited to hopefully see it on our trip next week!
I can almost guarantee some high-level Disney exec saw the word “unhappily” in the originally proposed title and said “we can’t imply that anyone is unhappy in a Disney park! Find a new word!”
I will agree that the footage looks underwhelming, but that is true for almost all stage shows when recorded for the small screen. I remember seeing an early promo performance of Hamilton on the Colbert show (knowing almost nothing about it) and thinking “oh, this is so silly and cringeworthy!” Then within a couple of years (and seeing it live a few times) it had become my favorite musical of all time.
Obviously this show isn’t threatening to become the next Hamilton, and for the same reasoning you shared above I do hope it falls flat. But I don’t believe anyone can really know that until they experience it in person.
I think it’s “Unfairly Ever After” because they don’t want guests to confuse it in any way with “Happily Ever After” over at the MK. Plus the story in this new show has to do with villains being treated unfairly and misunderstood, not necessarily being unhappy in their villainhood.
My granddaughter (age 4) finds many Disney villains scary – duh, of course she does – so not sure how she will handle this show. Her brother (6) will be fine. I think we’ll sit on the end of one of the benches so we can beat a hasty retreat if need be.
Should’ve just moved the beloved Muppets 3-D there. Poor planning Disnay strikes again! My kids would much rather spend time with Muppets than the villains…..
Another Disney dud!
Show should have three villains at time and switch them up so you can see this (utilize the space) more than once in a day.
I hate to mention this, but lately there are so many ads, including video ads, that I can’t read your articles all the way through. They disappear leaving only white space and ads like ACME. This is on a laptop not a phone. Is the ACME ad one of yours or is Wile E. Coyote sabatoging Disney articles?
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you have “Unhappily” instead of “Unfairly” in the paragraph under the MuppetVision 3D photo. (Honestly probably wouldn’t have even noticed if you didn’t call out this habit in your intro)
Uhhhh…that was on purpose to prove my point? Yeah, let’s go with that as my explanation/excuse. 😉
(Guess I forgot to scan this article.)
Cautiously optimistic- do you think this will be just standby or have a genie plus or whatever its called now booking?
There’s no Lightning Lane–standby only.
The newly-reimagined Little Mermaid show does have a Lightning Lane, but I cannot imagine it’ll be “necessary” after the first couple weeks, outside of maybe peak season.