The Villains are coming a bit earlier than expected at the Walt Disney World Resort.
Disney announced today that it will debut a new Disney Villains-themed show at Disney's Hollywood Studios next summer.
Themed to the Magic Mirror, the new production "will feature appearances by dozens of the most infamous evildoers, with fiendish foes Cruella de Vil, Captain Hook and Maleficent each breaking through the glass to take the stage in live production numbers," according to Walt Disney World's announcement.
At the D23 event in Anaheim last month, Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D'Amaro announced that Disney will build a new Villains-themed land as part of an expansion of the Magic Kingdom theme park. There's no announced opening date for that yet.
To make way for the new show in Disney's Hollywood Studios, Walt Disney World will close Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy on October 7. That Cars-themed production currently occupies the Sunset Showcase building that will be the home to the new Villains show.
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Or more rather to whet their appetites.
We've had "Club Villain" there before. Similar?
But yes. Sounds like a test the water, before a full budget is allocated and a final decision is made. Lets hope that's not the case and full plans are already agreed/building about to start.
If it is at all possible, I'd like to see them open the Disney Villains land before they shut down the Rivers of America.
If this is indeed a trail balloon of the Villains concept, then the land at MK won't open until 2030 at the earliest. Villains land is slated to occupy virgin ground outside of the current MK perimeter, which will require major reworking of the land to make it viable for building as well as extensions of the network of utilidoors to service the new land. That's at least a 4-5 year construction timeline, so if you assume WDI would collect at least 4-6 months of data from the new DHS show before giving Villains Land the green light, MK construction won't start until 2026, meaning 2030 would be the absolute earliest the expansion would open. I just don't think Disney wants to wait that long to perform this expansion, especially since construction would probably be more efficient if it was performed concurrently with the new Cars Land.
I thought the Lightning McQueen show was cute, but lacked that wow factor that I hope WDI will be able to generate with this new show. They can't just have characters showing up and dancing around, there has to be some type of effect or experience that sets this apart from other theme park offerings.
This feels like yet another "cruise ship" character musical, just focused on the Villains.
Oy vey...
I don't think they need to test the waters. They know how popular a concept it is (very) and have likely already done actual audience research before they even started the blue sky concept. Remember how crazy popular those Villain Night events at Studios were? This is more to start whetting the appetite as @fattyackin said and to replace a show that wasn't that great or popular, and is no longer needed with Cars Land 2.0 coming to MK soon.
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I wonder if this isn't a bit of a test to check the true apettite for a villains theme amongst general park goers.