Why You Might Need To Change Your Lightning Lane Strategy at Hollywood Studios

Disney World has welcomed two new shows to Hollywood Studios, and as much as we love new attractions, this changes how we do our park day.

Animation Courtyard

The Little Mermaid — A Musical Adventure debuted and has a Lightning Lane queue, but should you use it? Let’s find out!

Lightning Lane Multi Pass can help you skip those dreaded lines during your park day. When we go to Hollywood Studios, there are some attractions we will always choose for one of our Lightning Lane selections. The Little Mermaid — A Musical Adventure will become a Lightning Lane option in about a month.

New signs!

Slinky Dog Dash is usually one of our top picks! That queue can get long, no matter what time of day you go, and we try to avoid a long queue in the heat as much as we can.

Slinky Dog Dash

The Tower of Terror and Toy Story Mania! are other options that we tend to choose. Both are busy, and while we might be able to sneak in at a lower wait time, if we know we can’t leave Hollywood Studios without riding them, we’ll pick it for our Lightning Lane.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios

What about this new Little Mermaid show? During the first day of operations, we saw the standby queue get as high as 80 minutes. That’s pretty long for a show that’s about 20 minutes long! Again, we won’t be able to pick it as a Lightning Lane for about another month so the crowds might be drastically lower by then.

©Disney

Shows from 9:15 AM to 7:15 PM, and if they’re running shows about every 30 minutes, on average, that’s about 20 shows you could view. While the theater isn’t massive, it’s not small and fits a good number of people.

The theatre!

Since there are so many showings, we are leaning toward skipping this as a Lightning Lane selection. If those long wait times continue past the first week, we might change our opinions and say book that Lightning Lane! It most likely won’t be the first attraction we choose, but if you know you need to see the show, we would book it for peace of mind.

Ariel

Hollywood Studios is filled with lots of different live show offerings, so if you’re not obsessed with The Little Mermaid but know you want to sit down in a theater for a bit, there are other options to choose from:

Beauty and the Beast — Live on Stage
For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-along Celebration
Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After
Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular

If you just want to watch something new in Hollywood Studios, you can even catch Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After, which debuted the same day as The Little Mermaid. This show does not offer a Lightning Lane.

Maleficent in Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After

At the end of the day, you also don’t need a Lightning Lane to watch the attraction! If you didn’t choose The Little Mermaid as one of your options and decide last minute that you do want to see it, you can hop in the queue and wait for the next available show.

Little Mermaid Theater

You tell us: would you choose The Little Mermaid as a Lightning Lane selection? Tell us in the comments, and keep following Disney Food Blog for more Disney details for your next vacation.

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