What do you do if you’re a beloved theme park musical rumored to be permanently closed? You just keep swimming!
Finding Nemo: The Musical has been one of our favorite shows at Disney World since it debuted. Over the years, it has had great production values, amazing puppets, talented performers, and genuinely catchy songs written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (of Frozen fame). But since it closed during the pandemic, the future of the show has been murkier than the deepest part of the ocean. For context, Disneyland permanently canceled their popular shows Frozen: The Musical and Mickey & the Magical Map during 2020’s closure. While a revised version of The Festival of the Lion King returned earlier this year at Animal Kingdom, rumors about Nemo’s closure began to swirl around with more power than the EAC (okay, that’s the last sea-based simile for now).
Fans of the long-running Disney World musical have reason to rejoice. Disney Parks Blog confirmed that a new version of Finding Nemo: The Musical will debut at Animal Kingdom in 2022.
In the brief update, Shawn Slater of Disney Parks Blog wrote:
“Finding Nemo — The Musical” has been delighting our guests since 2007, and I’m excited to tell you a reimagined show, based on the same beloved characters, will debut in 2022. Although our Disney Live Entertainment team is still in the early stages of development for the show, the musical retelling of this underwater tale of family, friendship and kindness will feature new story material, as well as fan favorite songs such as “In the Big Blue World” and “Go with the Flow.”
The update is welcome news, albeit a bit curious and cryptic. It will be a reimagined show, but feature the same characters, at least two of the same songs, and some new story material. It’s possible this is a euphemistic way to describe a cut-down version of the show, which was my initial guess at reading this news. But it’s also possible that “new story material” and “based on the same beloved characters” could mean that there might be brand new scenes or even a Finding Dory component to the new show.
Like the stars of the show, I won’t hold my breath for that to happen (because gills… get it? Oh, sorry, I forgot about the promise to stop my sea-based shenanigans). We’ll see what the new and hopefully improved version of Finding Nemo: The Musical is like next year when it comes back to Animal Kingdom.
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