Via Mental Floss
Freeform’s 30 Days of Disney’s Sheroes Week continues today, and the primetime film tonight is Finding Nemo. While I’m not the biggest fan of the movie myself, it’s pretty hard to argue against the film’s success. Upon its release, it became the second-highest-grossing animated film of all-time trailing only The Lion King. Even today, the movie is still the eighth highest-grossing animated movie of all-time domestically, not too shabby considering how much box office grosses have spiked over the past few years.
With this kind of success, Disney was quick to try and get as much Finding Nemo into the parks as quickly as they possibly could. Just a year and a half after the film was released, Turtle Talk with Crush opened in Epcot, a pretty short turnaround for a permanent attraction. Within the next five years, Turtle Talk with Crush was a part of every Disney Resort except for Disneyland Paris.
Via Trip Savvy
At this point, Walt Disney World wasn’t satisfied with having just one Finding Nemo-themed attraction, so in January of 2007, not just one but two more attractions opened at Walt Disney World. The Seas with Nemo and Friends joined the Seas Pavilion at Epcot. Of all the Finding Nemo attractions, I think this one is definitely the best fit because with an entire pavilion being dedicated to marine life, why wouldn’t Nemo and the crew be there?
Via Boardwalk Times
Over in the Animal Kingdom, Finding Nemo the Musical joined the fray. This show is pretty much the opposite of The Seas in that I’m not quite sure how the fish from Finding Nemo manage to fit into Dinoland USA. All of these attractions are still around today, so it is at least nice to see that they’ve been able to have a healthy life. Though, I wouldn’t be too upset if Finding Nemo the Musical ended its run soon because twelve years is a long time for a theme park show to be around and the area could use some fresh meat.
Via Disneyland
Over in Disneyland, the success of Finding Nemo led to the reemergence of the submarines with the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage in June of 2007. After the lagoon had sat untouched for five years, it was great to see something finally go there, though I’m not sure that a Finding Nemo attraction was the best fit for Tomorrowland.
I’m also not the biggest fan of the fact that now both the Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World have Finding Nemo attraction in multiple parks. It’s not just about Finding Nemo, though, because n general I think that it adds a really nice continuity to have pretty much all of a given IP in the same general location. (The fact that Star Tours is still in Tomorrowland while Galaxy’s Edge is open bothers me to no end.)
Via Wikipedia
Earlier, I said that Disneyland Paris didn’t get a version of Turtle Talk with Crush, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t get a Finding Nemo attraction because its sister park, Walt Disney Studios Park, got what is generally known as the best of the Finding Nemo attractions in Crush’s Coaster in June of 2007. If that year seems familiar, it’s because 2007 was the year for Finding Nemo attractions with four of them opening in four different parks across the world.
As you can tell, the powers that be decided to go all in on Finding Nemo to the point where it seemed like pretty much every attraction that was added in a short period of time had to do with the film. In a way, it was a precursor to the craziness that we got with Frozen. It wasn’t quite to the extreme of Frozen Fever, but Finding Fever definitely hit and remains a success considering that all the attractions except for Hong Kong’s Turtle Talk with Crush are still around today.
Finding Nemo airs at 6:30 PM this evening on Freeform, and the basic cable channel’s 30 Days of Disney programming block runs throughout the month of September. It will also be available on Disney+ when the streaming service launches on November 12.