Memory 078 – Finding Nemo – The Musical

Come and join us for another installment of the WDW-Memories podcast, where I try to make it possible for you relive your Walt Disney World Memories when you can’t actually be there.

** Binaural Audio **
Time: 46:58

So as you know, I’m the father of two children. Susie who is about to turn five, and Mikey who is almost two. Until becoming a father though, I don’t think I ever fully understood the story of Finding Nemo. If one of my children were lost, I too would swim the entire ocean to find them. So when I relistened to the memory today in preparation for this podcast, it really hit me. Finding Nemo – The Musical is a very powerful and emotional show, with strong themes and deep emotion, more so than any other stage show in Walt Disney World. It really draws you in and makes you feel the pain and later elation, all while entertaining everyone from every age.

Obviously, today’s request is for Finding Nemo – The Musical. And it came to us again from Mike, the same one that request Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular in Memory 075. He wrote about this show:

I first saw the Finding Nemo musical with my wife on a much more recent trip to WDW. It was 2007 and I’ve been wanting to see the Tarzan Rocks show but we found out it had been replaced by the Finding Nemo show. We didn’t know if we would like it because it was a new show back then and didn’t hear anything on it but we figured what the hey and and saw the show and were both amazed by the end of it! I feel that out of all the musical shows in WDW, this one is the best!

As always, I tossed out to the various social media sites to see what other listeners thought of this great attraction. Here’s some of the best ones:

On Facebook, Daniel wrote:

We didn’t watch this show till our third trip to [Disney World], and I feel like we missed out!! Very well performed, almost as good as the movie itself. Highly recommend.

Also on Facebook, Michelle wrote:

I’m not a fan of Animal Kingdom so I seldom visit the park, but I cried the first time I saw this beautiful show and now I make it a point to see it every time I’m at WDW. As many times as I’ve seen it, the puppets and music blow me away every time!

Here’s another one from Facebook, from Frederick this time. He wrote:

Saw this for the first time ever just a few weeks ago, and I’m glad I didn’t miss it again. It was an inspiring production. The theatre also provided excellent shelter when a strong thunderstorm rolled in.

And one final one from Facebook. This one from Adam, he wrote:

One of the sort of hidden secrets of the Animal Kingdom, missed it the first couple of times there and finally decided to go in and loved every minute of it

Thanks all for sharing your thoughts and stories. I too was sad to see Tarzan Rocks! show go, but never fear we’ll get to revisit that memory at a later date due to a recent request. In the meantime, Finding Nemo – The Musical is no slouch. But sadly, I’ve only seen this show one time, and it wasn’t on my most recent trip. I unfortunately didn’t make it over to Disney’s Animal Kingdom this summer, so we’ll just have to rely on the audio from a previous trip. For today’s memory we’re returning to that anniversary trip in December of 2006.

Now the timeframe is kind of important for this memory. You see, the show opened for previews in November 2006, and didn’t officially begin operation till January of 2007. So this memory is technically from the previews. I don’t believe the show has changed much if any since then, so your memory should still match this one.

So as I was saying, it’s December of 2006. Traci and I are joined today by her parents, and we’ve been having fun this morning in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. We’ve done the new Expedition Everest a couple times, been on Kilimanjaro Safaris Expedition, and seen the Flights of Wonder. I’ve heard other people’s recordings of this show, so I know it’s going to be good. So the family and I head over to Dinoland U.S.A. and get into the show with little to no problems as the park is not very crowded in the beginning of December. We arrived about 10 minutes before the show starts, and the theater is pretty full. We were forced to the far right wall, near the back half of the theater. Doesn’t matter though, because there are no real bad views of this show. We’ll join up with this memory as we’ve taken our seats and Traci and I are discussing what we want to show her parents. This is their first time in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and we’re also going to Park Hop over to Disney’s Hollywood Studios for their first visit their later today. The show announcements are made, we settle into our seats, and it begins.