A first look at the new Under the Sea ride in the New Fantasyland

While the world of Beauty and The Beast takes up a substantial portion of The New Fantasyland at The Magic Kingdom, all you need to do is take a few steps down the path and you’ll end up “under the sea.”

© Steven Liebman

The new ride Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid is housed in a building featuring Prince Eric’s castle surrounded by rocks and waterfall. A
wood-carving statue of Ariel is on the bow of a shipwreck near the entrance to the ride. Once you walk down the path, you enter what feels like an underground cavern before getting to the loading area. (Next to the ride is Ariel’s Grotto, where you can meet the mermaid herself.)

The ride itself is a quick (about 5 minute) re-telling of the movie “The Little Mermaid.” Once you enter your “clamshell” vehicle, Scuttle the seagull greets you, playing an accordion, to regale you with the tale of Ariel who tells us (spoiler alert) she wants more out of life, falls in love, make a deal with the sea witch, gets her legs, loses her voice, loses the Prince, gets the Prince back and marries the Prince.

Yes, this is all done in about 5 minutes, complete with movie’s musical score and singing by Ursula and a great Busby Berkeley-style choreography of Sebastian’s hit “Under the Sea,” featuring 50 spinning starfish.

© Steven Liebman

Here’s some quick facts about the new ride (from Disney):

• Nearly 200 Audio-Animatronic figures perform in the attraction.
• Ursula is the largest Audio-Animatronic figure in the show at 7½-feet tall and 12-feet wide. Flexible materials allow her to  bounce along with the music.
• The attraction features an Omnimover ride system pioneered by Walt Disney Imagineers in the 1960s and used for the “Doom Buggies” of the Haunted Mansion. This allows the “clamshell” you ride in to rotate 180 degrees so you can go backwards as you slowly descend “under water.”
• Imagineers
  working on the attraction consulted with Ariel’s animator in the film,
  Glen Keane, who recommended that her hair be treated as a character all
  its own.
• Each
  scene of the attraction was first built as a one-quarter-inch scale
  model first for the Disneyland ride and then as a one‑inch scale model, so Imagineers could “ride”
  through the attraction scene-by-scene before full construction began.