Disney World reveals 'delightfully wicked' villains show to replace “Cars ”experience with dozens of classic evildoers

Disney's Hollywood Studios is getting a villains-themed show, with the announcement following the D23 reveal that Magic Kingdom will get a full villains land.

There's nothing poor or unfortunate about Disney World's new villains show.

Dozens — that's right, dozens — of classic Disney baddies are headed to the Orlando resort's Hollywood Studios park next summer, as the company announced Tuesday that a new villains show will replace the long-operating Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy production in 2025.

The Cars experience will close at the park's Sunset Showcase theater on Oct. 7 to make way for the villains show, which the official Disney Parks Blog site called "delightfully wicked" in its synopsis of the upcoming performance.

Related: Disney World reveals stunning Indiana Jones ride starring Indy in 'completely new story' at Animal Kingdom

The theater will transform into the "mysterious, reflective realm of the Magic Mirror" from Snow White, with the subsequent production set to star "dozens of the most infamous evildoers" in an all-new story.

101 Dalmatians villainess Cruella de Vil, Peter Pan's Captain Hook, and Sleeping Beauty's shape-shifting witch Maleficent will literally break "through the glass" on stage for individual numbers, with Disney further unveiling a conceptual rendering of Cruella's segment as well as a composite image teasing appearances by Aladdin's Jafar, Alice in Wonderland's Queen of Hearts, Hercules' Hades, Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid villain Ursula, The Lion King's Scar, and Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove.

The new villains show joins the Hollywood Studios park's upcoming The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure stage show that's poised to replace the beloved Voyage of the Little Mermaid theater production, which opened in 1992 inside the Animation Courtyard area, but closed in 2020 and never reopened after the coronavirus pandemic.

The villains show also joins Disney's prior announcement at its D23 convention in August that the all-new Villains Land would open at Disney World's Magic Kingdom park sometime in the future.

"This land will be home to the villains that you know and those that you loathe, which means happily-ever-after might feel like a distant dream," Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D’Amaro told the crowd inside the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., just outside Disneyland park. "It will have two major new attractions, dining, shopping, and so much more fiendish fun for you to explore. This is storytelling on a grand scale that only Disney can deliver, so, be prepared, you poor unfortunate souls. It's going to be a fearless new vision for what a Disney experience can be."

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In a follow-up post after the D23 presentation, the Disney Parks Blog elaborated on the land, writing that it "will encompass all your dreams — er, nightmares," and that it will open on "an incredibly twisted grand scale" unlike anything that Disney has done in the past. Conceptual artwork for the land showed Maleficent in dragon form, standing next to a dark castle, a moody village, and a large roller coaster traveling through thorn bushes.

Disney World's new villains show opens in summer 2025 at the Hollywood Studios park. See a preview of the new show above.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.