Festival of the Lion King Giraffe and Lion. The show in Hong Kong has been arranged to a simplified version of the story of "The Lion King" along with the songs in the movie. The performance is mainly in English, but two actors dressed as monkeys summarize and translate Rafiki's lines into Cantonese in order to accommodate guests who do not speak English. Simplified Chinese subtitles, for Mainland Chinese visitors, are also projected onto the screens above each seating section. The show is presented to Simba by Rafiki (portrayed by a female actress, as in the Broadway musical) as a re-telling of Simba's life. Simba
Simba of inspiration. Before "The Lion King", Henn's experience as a supervising animator was limited to predominantly female characters; he had just recently completed work on Ariel from "The Little Mermaid" (1989), Belle from "Beauty and the Beast" (1991) and Jasmine from "Aladdin" (1992). When he became involved with "The Lion King", Henn initially expressed interest in animating the film's villain, Scar, because he wanted to do "something different." However, producer Don Hahn felt that he was better suited for animating Simba. Henn approaches animating new characters by "put[ting himself] into the character’s situation." Simba proved to be a challenge because