Extinct Attractions - King Triton's Concert at the Mermaid Lagoon Theater

Welcome to Extinct Attractions.This week, I took a look back at an attraction that got to the heart of the magic of The Little Mermaid.

Tokyo DisneySea is in the midst of its 25th anniversary celebration with the monorails even getting in on the action. The monorail line opened just over 25 years ago to help connect Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea, which are right next to each other, but their entrances sit on opposite sides making it very difficult to walk from one to the other.

Mermaid Lagoon was an opening day land at Tokyo DisneySea, meaning it is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, too. Amazingly, for as popular as The Little Mermaid is, it was only the second group of attractions themed to the film at the Disney Parks and the first time that Disney had built an entire land around one film. Today, it’s the norm, but at the time, they were still testing the waters (literally), with many of the attractions being much more child-friendly and simple in nature.

All that being said, when I visited last year, I found the land to be extremely charming and adorable, but was bummed that I never got the chance to experience the Under the Sea show at the Mermaid Lagoon Theater. Also known as King Triton’s Concert after a brief closure in 2014, the show brought guests into the world of Ariel with a bunch of our other favorite characters around.

The show started out with some cool fish puppets “floating” around the stage before a life-sized Audio-Animatronic of King Triton emerged from the shadows. There were some nice screens on the side as well to add to the ambiance.

To kick things off, Sebastian was introduced for a full-on concert number with Ariel’s sisters, similar to the one in the film. It was a high energy burst to begin the show that helped set the tempo for the fun everyone was about to embark on. The show was in Japanese, so it was a bit hard for me to know exactly what was happening, but luckily it had characters we all know and love.

Via Disney Wiki 

The next number in the show saw Ariel emerge from the sky on some wires that allowed her to “swim” around the entire theater. Of course, she started by singing “Part of Your World” with a lot of her trinkets surrounding her. From there, the show transitioned to a song that I didn’t recognize but included a lot more “swimming” and Flounder getting to join the party, too. 

The fun of that original song melded perfectly with a finale number of “Under the Sea” that had bubbles everywhere plus more puppet fish and King Triton and Ariel hanging around. Seeing a real life Ariel interact with the animatronic was really cool and probably even better in real life. Ariel herself was also very impressive being on wires for a solid ten minutes. 

There was so much going on with the show that it was a great way to cool down during a hot summer day. The fact that it was able to stick around for nearly 20 years before becoming a COVID casualty on January 31, 2020 shows how well it stood the test of time. Though it is now just a meet and greet with Ariel, the Mermaid Lagoon Theater does still stand with Ariel making appearances daily. It’s a bummer to not have the show anymore, but luckily Tokyo DisneySea definitely does not lack for live entertainment.

Via AOL 

As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world.

Thanks for reading and have a magical day!