June 3 Update: After a few days on the discontinuous schedule discussed below, the show has switched back to a single block from 8:15AM to 7PM today. Basically, if you’re visiting in the coming days and weeks you’ll want to check the schedule in the morning!
Over at Hollywood Studios, The Little Mermaid - A Musical Adventure, has gotten a modified schedule that is discontinuous throughout the day. Here’s a screenshot from today:
You can see that rather than being open simply from 9:15AM to 7:00PM, the schedule is broken into four blocks:
9:15AM to 10:25AM
11:35AM to 1:05PM
2:15PM to 4:25PM
5:35PM to 7:00PM
This leaves 3 hours and 30 minutes (spread across three 70-minute breaks) in the middle of the day when the show will not run.
The Little Mermaid - A Musical Adventure runs continuously during its operational hours. This is in contrast to the other new show, Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After, which runs are (frequent) scheduled showtimes. The shows are about the same length. You can see from yesterday—when this discontinuous schedule was also in effect—that the show continues to post wait times (usually around 30 minutes to an hour) when operational.
I can’t speak to why they’ve done this or what’s happening in between the shows. According to thrill-data, the show was still posting a 30-minute wait as of 10:22AM today, 3 minutes before the break in operational hours. That would imply shows still continuously ran through the hour, with perhaps a gap of 20-minutes or so at some point. Perhaps the break has something to do with managing the queue and waits.
It’s possible this is just a byproduct of the popularity of a new show. The show has received positive reviews, too. We’ve always warned of unpredictability when new rides / shows debut, and this fits into that narrative. It seems probable (I’m not on the ground to check) that people aren’t being allowed to queue during these gaps, though I’d be interested to see what crowding outside the queue looks like, in that case.
The bottom line is that if you’re planning to see the show in the coming days (weeks?), you’ve got a new wrinkle to contend with. Luckily, the show is centrally located, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to try and fit it into your schedule (read more about planning your day at Hollywood Studios here). My top priority would be getting a sense of what happens during these breaks—if it turned out I could show up at the start of an operational block and walk into the next show, for example, I’d definitely be angling to do that.
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