Aladdin on Broadway, With Captions on Your Phone
A Disney musical in a 1903 Art Nouveau theatre on 42nd Street, with 84 special effects and a carpet that flies.
Aladdin opened at the New Amsterdam Theatre on March 20, 2014 and has not left. It passed the original run of Miss Saigon in August 2025 to become one of the fifteen longest-running shows in Broadway history, and it is now past 4,500 performances. A ticket buys the seat and nothing else, which is worth knowing before you line this listing up against the packages Disney sells direct.
Plan around the interval. Most of the audience stays seated through each act, and the intermission is the one reliable window for a drink or the restrooms.
Klook carries the show ticket as a standalone listing. The card below opens it, and the sections after it cover what the seat gets you once you are inside.
Aladdin on Broadway · New Amsterdam TheatreKlook · Single show ticket · Times Square, Manhattanaffiliate.klook.comWhere the spectacle actually shows up
Disney Theatrical counts 84 special effects in the production, one of them a carpet that flies. The flight belongs to "A Whole New World," and it is the moment most of the audience is waiting for.
Disney has never published how it works. The illusion is credited to Jim Steinmeyer, and the rig was engineered by TAIT Towers, a Pennsylvania firm better known for concert touring equipment. The cast signs confidentiality agreements and deflects the question. Scenic designer Bob Crowley has said in print that he has no idea how it works either. The nearest public answer is TAIT's own patent for a flying platform, which describes spinning the support lines at roughly 1,000 revolutions per minute until they stop registering as lines to anyone in a seat.
"Friend Like Me" is the other set piece. It runs an extended tap break against gold costumes and Art Deco towers, staged as an homage to Busby Berkeley's 1933 film 42nd Street. The theatre stands on 42nd Street, which is not a coincidence. One costume in the show carries 8,644 Swarovski crystals.
The Genie is the part that won the production its only Tony Award, from five nominations in 2014, and it changes hands. Sherri Shepherd plays the Genie from October 16, 2026 through January 3, 2027, the first woman in the role on Broadway, with Caleb A. Barnett on standby for that run. Rodney Ingram plays Aladdin and Sonya Balsara plays Jasmine.
The theatre is half the reason to come early
The New Amsterdam opened in 1903 with Art Nouveau interiors inside a Beaux-Arts shell, and it housed the Ziegfeld Follies from 1913 to 1927. It went to foreclosure in the Depression, became a movie house in 1937, and closed in 1983. Disney leased it in 1995 and reopened it restored in 1997. The production asks you to arrive 30 minutes before curtain, and this room is the reason to take that seriously.
The stage gets used after hours. Disney sells a backstage package with premium orchestra seats, a guided walk through select behind-the-scenes areas and a cast meet and greet, plus a proposal package that puts you on that stage with a photographer. Neither is included in a Klook ticket.
Reading along, and hearing it in five languages
Closed captions run on demand at every performance through the GalaPro app on your own phone. The theatre also keeps I-Caption handsets at a lobby kiosk, free of charge, showing dialogue, lyrics and sound effects.
Audio translation is a separate service. Audien gives scene-by-scene commentary in Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish and Portuguese, for a rental fee. Audio description works like the captions, on demand at every performance, with pre-show notes describing the scenery and characters on loop for the 30 minutes before curtain.
Who it suits, and who should wait
The production recommends the show for ages six and up. Every guest needs a ticket regardless of age, and guests under 14 must be accompanied by someone 14 or older.
Theatrical smoke, fog, pyrotechnics, strobe lighting and loud noises are all used during the performance. There is no dress code. The theatre runs air conditioning year round, and a layer helps in summer.
Where you sit is the other question. A SeatPlan reviewer in the back row of the mezzanine in August 2026 called the legroom conservative and the view good, and found the balcony overhang "barely comes down to the top of the stage, so no impact on the show."
📍 New Amsterdam Theatre, 214 West 42nd Street, Times Square.
The standard week runs Tuesday through Sunday:
- Tuesday to Friday, 7:00 PM
- Saturday, 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM
- Sunday, 1:00 PM and 6:30 PM
- No Monday performances, apart from a handful of holiday weeks
Tickets are mobile. Save yours to your phone wallet before you arrive and tap in at the door.
On changes:
- Refunds are not available on Aladdin tickets
- Exchanges into another performance close 48 hours before curtain, at 10 dollars per ticket
- Exchanges run through whoever sold you the seat, and a third-party seller applies its own policy
- Backstage tours, celebration add-ons and the on-stage proposal are booked direct with the theatre