Walt Disney World announced the Summer 2025 opening date of the Villains Unfairly Ever After stage show at Hollywood Studios. This shares the debut date and new details, plus predictions about soft openings & previews, Lightning Lanes vs. standby lines, crowds, and more! (Updated April 12, 2025.)
In case you’re unfamiliar with it, Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After is a stage show coming to Hollywood Studios back in the corner of Sunset Boulevard behind Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. During this live entertainment production, the Magic Mirror has summoned villainous guests to hear each of them out and judge who has been treated most unfairly over the years.
Never ones to let a dramatic performance pass them by, fiendish foes Cruella de Vil, Captain Hook, and Maleficent will break through the glass and present their cases on stage, persuading with wicked wisdom and wisecracks. Will you be swayed by their hijinks and humor? Villains Unfairly Ever After is a spellbinding show with moving music and a most memorable finale.
In the end, guests make the final call on who has been treated most unfairly (unfairliest?) in a delightfully wicked finale filled with dozens of the most infamous evildoers awaiting your decision from within the Magic Mirror’s realm. (Horizons fans rejoice–choose your own ending has returned!)
Fans won’t have to wait too much longer, or for all of the construction walls to come down in order to experience the new exploration trail! Walt Disney World announced that Villains Unfairly Ever After will officially open on May 27, 2025.
It’s potentially worth noting that Villains Unfairly Ever After is officially opening on the Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend. The timing is a bit odd, and not what we’d normally expect to see from summer offerings. As discussed below, this could open the door for soft openings and previews, or be a strategic decision since Walt Disney World expects the holiday weekend to be busy, regardless, so they do not “need” to offer anything new, whereas the following week could use a boost.
April 12, 2025 Update: Walt Disney World has released the poster art for Villains Unfairly Ever After, shown above. Pictured in the art are Hades, Captain Hook, Evil Queen, Maleficent, and Cruella de Vil.
In addition to this, Disney also released new key art for Cruella de Vil, Captain Hook, and Maleficent. It’s becoming fairly clear that these three fiendish foes are the stars of the show; it’ll be interesting to see how they’re highlighted as compared to the other villains, and how much stage time the supporting players receive.
Prior to this, Disney Live Entertainment released a time lapse showing the installation of the Magic Mirror in Sunset Showcase. Although it’s unclear when this footage was filmed, it reveals that a lot of work still had to be done inside the theater. Since this will be a tech-heavy production, lots of test & adjust and rehearsals will be necessary after construction is finished–so perhaps soft openings aren’t in the cards.
In order for these villainous fiends take the spotlight at Sunset Showcase, Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy closed permanently last October. Villains Unfairly Ever After is the direct replacement for this stage show, which is in its own little courtyard that’s somewhat detached from the rest of the park and almost feels backstage.
We suspect that Villains Unfairly Ever After is also an indirect successor to Villains Land at Magic Kingdom, with Disney wanting to test some ideas, technologies and characters during development of that land. As such, this stage show might be best viewed as a stop-gap that’ll only last ~5 years (about how long Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy ran).
Now, let’s turn to questions about Villains Unfairly Ever After’s Lightning Lane status, potential soft openings, AP/DVC previews, and more…
Soft Openings
Soft openings are also known as trial operations or technical rehearsals, and are basically an unannounced and controlled test period. They provide an opportunity for theme parks to open an attraction prior to its official opening and conduct operations and Cast Member training in a more forgiving and low stress environment.
Typically, these are not publicized via official resources: not on park maps, the official Disney Parks Blog, annoying TikTok videos, wait time boards, or even in the My Disney Experience app. As a result, they always draw significantly fewer crowds than official openings. They’re a nice perk for guests who are already in the park and the most plugged-in Walt Disney World fans.
Walt Disney World had moved away from soft openings in the last few years, before bringing them back with TRON Lightcycle Run two years ago. That was the last big brand-new attraction to debut, before Tiana’s Bayou Adventure last summer, which did not have soft openings.
Normally, our guess would be that Villains Unfairly Ever After would not have soft openings. That would simply be the safe bet on the basis of past precedent. In digging back through the DTB Archives, I can’t find a single instance of a stage show having a soft opening before its general public debut. However, it’s still possible given that the opening date is being set a couple of months in advance.
The show might be ready to run ahead of schedule, in which case Walt Disney World could pull back the curtain earlier to help absorb summer crowds. Memorial Day weekend is not typically one of the busier holidays, so that probably won’t be “necessary” from May 22-26, 2025–but it’s possible.
Another possibility is that Universal’s Epic Universe is throwing a monkey wrench into this opening date and the start of “Cool Kid Summer” as a whole for Walt Disney World.
It’s possible (if not probable) that what Walt Disney World really wants to do is debut Villains Unfairly Ever After on May 22 or 23, which is the most logical and common launch date for summer entertainment. However, they might dislike the optics of having two stage shows be Walt Disney World’s so-called “answer” to Epic Universe.
Or they may simply not want the official opening of the shows be overshadowed by that brand-new park, which is definitely what would happen if they officially debuted over the holiday weekend. The same goes for the new character experiences and everything else that’s part of Cool Kid Summer.
There’s really no good precedent for this type of dynamic, but it passes the smell test for me. On this basis, I actually think there’s a pretty persuasive case to be made for Villains Unfairly Ever After and/or the Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure having soft openings a few days to a full week in advance.
AP & DVC Previews
Walt Disney World’s recent approach has been to forgo soft openings in favor of more controlled previews for select affiliation groups, including Disney Vacation Club Members, Annual Passholders, Golden Oak Residents, Club 33 Members.
Affiliation previews are possible for Villains Unfairly Ever After, but they’re far from guaranteed. Again, the immediate predecessor in this same space, Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy, did not have soft openings when it debuted a little over 5 years ago.
Even though that was only 2019, it was a different era and things have changed since then. Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge was the big thing on the horizon then, and the stage show was a gap-filler to add capacity. Since then, there are more local Walt Disney World fans and Annual Passholders, along with others willing to travel. To that point, Moana’s Journey of Water had AP and DVC previews that drew huge crowds.
Whether Villains Unfairly Ever After has AP/DVC previews is probably about 50/50 at this point. If it does, expect this to work almost exactly like the previews for the last several years, right down to all eligible APs not receiving the email before slots started filling up. (I wouldn’t expect Disney to go the ‘no registration’ route of Moana’s Journey of Water, as that’s a walkthrough and this is a much more limited-capacity venue with showtimes.)
In any case, receiving the email for preview registration does not matter! The link inside is what’s important, and anyone who is eligible can use that. Both of us will be monitoring our emails like hawks in the coming weeks and will give you a heads up ASAP if/when preview registration goes live. You can subscribe to our free email newsletter for instant alerts.
Lightning Lane Status
Don’t laugh or roll your eyes. On the plus side, I think/hope there’s not much of a chance that Villains Unfairly Ever After will be a Lightning Lane attraction. Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy was not a Lightning Lane attraction, so the infrastructure is not there for it. Walt Disney World would have to go out of their way to add a separate queue.
Hopefully they’ve learned their lesson from Red Carpet Dreams and other lower-capacity character experiences at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, all of which have ditched their Lightning Lanes over the years due to the operational and logistical woes those caused. However, those are character meet & greets, so not exactly the same.
On the other hand, money. Villains Unfairly Ever After being part of Lightning Lane Multi-Pass and Premier Pass would help sell the service, and also “allow” Walt Disney World to raise the price of LLMP at DHS. It would also add capacity to the paid Lightning Lane services, enabling Disney to raise the threshold for a sell-out.
With that said, I’ll be the optimist here: Villains Unfairly Ever After probably won’t offer a Lightning Lane. Yeah, Walt Disney World loves money, but this isn’t going to move the needle that much on sales and it would introduce logistical headaches given the low seat count (versus other large-scale stage shows at DHS). Given that they removed Lightning Lanes from other character experiences, I think the operational and capacity counterpoints are more compelling.
Sometimes Disney does pass on making a buck when it’ll come at the expense of the guest experience. My bet is that’s what happens here.
Ultimately, I’m excited for Disney Villains Unfairly Ever After. The concept has a lot of potential and Walt Disney World likely realizes that it needs to be done right if it’s going to help boost attendance and be an actual marketable draw to Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Then there’s the track record of Disney Live Entertainment in recent years, which has been quite strong. Walt Disney World hasn’t seen this as frequently as literally any of the other parks, but Disney has gotten quite good at stage shows, including the montage medley variety.
For that matter, they’re also really good at producing villainous entertainment. Minus that weird World of Color, all of the villains shows that I’ve seen in the last decade or so have been pretty good. This includes gone-too-soon productions at Walt Disney World hard ticket events and more.
With all of that said, and at the risk of pointing out the obvious, Disney Villains Unfairly Ever After is not going to compete with Universal’s Epic Universe. I can already anticipate the social media posts drawing unfavorable comparisons between the envelope-pushing attractions in Dark Universe and this stage show as Walt Disney World’s “answer” to all of that. It should go without saying, but this isn’t on the same level. We’ll have to wait another ~5 years for Disney’s actual answer to Dark Universe, when Villains Land opens in Magic Kingdom.
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of Villains Unfairly Ever After? Excited to experience this during your summer-time trip to Walt Disney World? Will you try to do it right away, or wait until demand dies down and it’s easier to experience the stage show without lengthy waits? Think it’ll have a Lightning Lane or be standby-only? What about soft openings v. pre-registered previews? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!