The first thing Walt Disney’s Snow White says on screen isn’t to a dwarf, a prince, or even the magic mirror. It’s to a group of pigeons. That’s the kind of detail that separates people who’ve actually watched these movies recently from people who’ve been coasting on a memory formed when they were six years old and eating cereal on the carpet. And I can tell you, after running Disney movie trivia rounds for years, almost everyone is coasting.
The person searching for disney movie trivia right now probably falls into one of two camps. They’re either prepping a quiz night and need questions that’ll actually land, or they’re sitting with a friend and someone just said “I know literally everything about Disney movies” and now it’s time to prove them wrong. Either way, I’ve built this set the way I’d build a live round. Some of these will feel like layups. Some will make you argue with your own brain. A few will genuinely hurt.
The Ones You Think You Know
1. In The Lion King, what’s the name of Simba’s mother?
This is the question I open every Disney round with because it sorts the room instantly. Half the people answer immediately. The other half realize they’ve watched this movie thirty times and cannot produce the name.
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Sarabi. The most common wrong answer is Nala, which is Simba’s friend and eventual mate. People conflate the two most important female lions in Simba’s life, and the confidence on their face when they say “Nala” is always worth the wait.
2. What are the names of Cinderella’s two stepsisters?
People always get one. Getting both is where the trouble starts.
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Anastasia and Drizella. Anastasia comes easy for most people. Drizella is the one that slips away, and you’ll see people mouthing syllables trying to pull it from somewhere deep.
3. In Aladdin, how many wishes does the Genie say Aladdin gets?
Read the question carefully before you commit.
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Three. This one’s straightforward, but I include it because it sets people up to feel confident before the harder Aladdin questions come later. Confidence is a resource I like to build up before I take it away.
4. What kind of fish is Nemo in Finding Nemo?
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A clownfish (specifically an ocellaris clownfish). Everyone gets this one, but it matters for pacing. Let people feel good early.
5. In Frozen, what is the name of the kingdom where Anna and Elsa live?
Parents of kids born between 2010 and 2016 answer this one before I finish asking it. Everyone else squints.
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Arendelle. Inspired by the Norwegian town of Arendal, which most people don’t know, and which makes the answer feel less made-up once you do.
6. How many dwarfs live in the cottage Snow White finds in the forest?
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Seven. I know. But you’d be amazed how often someone in a room, usually after a couple drinks, says “eight” with absolute conviction and then can’t name the eighth one.
7. In Toy Story, what’s written on the bottom of Woody’s boot?
This one plays beautifully because people can see it in their mind’s eye. They just can’t quite read it.
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ANDY. It’s one of the most emotionally loaded props in Pixar history, and the fact that people hesitate on it tells you something about the difference between watching and remembering.
Where the Floor Gets Slippery
8. In the original Beauty and the Beast, what is the name of Gaston’s sidekick?
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LeFou. His name literally translates to “the fool” in French, which is the kind of detail that makes you appreciate how little Disney trusted subtlety in the naming department.
9. What was the first Pixar movie to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature?
The trick here is that the category didn’t exist for most of Pixar’s early run. People default to Toy Story and it’s not even close.
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Finding Nemo (2003). The Best Animated Feature category wasn’t introduced until 2001, so Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters, Inc. all missed out. Monsters, Inc. was nominated in the category’s first year but lost to Shrek.
10. In The Little Mermaid, what does Ariel call a fork?
I’ve seen tables erupt over this one. Everyone remembers the scene. Not everyone remembers the word.
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A dinglehopper. Scuttle tells her it’s used for combing hair. The wrong answer people give most often is “snarfblatt,” which is actually what Scuttle calls a tobacco pipe.
11. What is the name of the toy store in Toy Story 2?
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Al’s Toy Barn. Run by Al McWhiggin, the chicken-suit-wearing villain, played by Wayne Knight. That casting detail alone usually gets a reaction.
12. In Mulan, what’s the name of her dragon companion?
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Mushu, voiced by Eddie Murphy. He was originally supposed to be a much more serious character. Eddie Murphy made him something else entirely.
13. What year was the original Fantasia released?
People always guess later than the actual answer. Always.
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1940. Just three years after Snow White. The ambition of making Fantasia that early in the studio’s history is staggering when you think about it. It was also a financial disappointment at the time, which feels impossible now.
14. In Moana, what is the name of Moana’s pet rooster?
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Heihei. Possibly the dumbest character in Disney history by design, and I mean that as the highest compliment. Alan Tudyk voiced him, which means he was paid to make chicken sounds, and honestly, good for him.
15. What color is the dress that Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother gives her for the ball?
I love this question because it starts arguments that have no clean resolution.
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Silver/white in the original 1950 film. Most people say blue because the merchandise, the theme parks, and the cultural memory have all shifted it to blue over the decades. Disney themselves market it as blue now. But go watch the movie. The dress shimmers silver and white. This is one of those questions where the “wrong” answer is defensible, which makes it perfect for a room.
16. In Up, what is the name of the boy scout who shows up on Carl’s porch?
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Russell. He’s a Wilderness Explorer, not technically a Boy Scout, which is a correction someone in every room makes, and they’re right, and nobody thanks them for it.
The Deep Cuts Start Here
17. What is the name of the pizza restaurant chain that appears in multiple Pixar movies?
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Pizza Planet. It first appeared in Toy Story and has been referenced or featured in nearly every Pixar film since. The Pizza Planet truck is one of Pixar’s most famous Easter eggs.
18. In Sleeping Beauty, what are the names of the three good fairies?
Getting all three is the challenge. Two out of three doesn’t count in my rounds.
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Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather. Merryweather is the one that trips people up. Flora and Fauna feel like a natural pair, and the brain wants to stop there.
19. What is the name of Captain Hook’s ship in Peter Pan?
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The Jolly Roger. This one’s more of a general knowledge question than a pure Disney one, but it separates people who’ve absorbed pirate lore from people who haven’t, and that’s a useful thing to know about your friends.
20. In Ratatouille, what is the full name of the food critic who writes the climactic review?
Everyone remembers the review. The speech about criticism and creation. Fewer people remember who gave it.
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Anton Ego. Voiced by Peter O’Toole, who brought a gravity to the role that made that final monologue feel like it belonged in a different, more serious movie. And it still worked.
21. What Disney movie was the first to have its entire soundtrack composed by Elton John and Tim Rice?
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The Lion King (1994). Hans Zimmer scored the film, but the songs were John and Rice. People sometimes say Aladdin, confusing the John/Rice partnership with the Menken/Ashman team.
22. In Tangled, what is Flynn Rider’s real name?
This one plays differently depending on the room. Parents of daughters born in the 2010s don’t even blink. Everyone else guesses wildly.
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Eugene Fitzherbert. The reveal is played for comedy in the film, and the name is deliberately unglamorous, which is the whole point.
23. What was Disney’s first animated feature film to be set in Asia?
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Mulan is the answer most people give, and it’s not wrong if we’re talking about the Walt Disney Animation Studios canon specifically. Some people argue for The Jungle Book (set in India, 1967), which predates Mulan by decades. This is one of those questions where the argument IS the entertainment.
24. In Monsters, Inc., what’s the name of the little girl who calls Sulley “Kitty”?
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Boo. Her real name, visible briefly on a drawing in the film, is Mary. Almost nobody knows that second part, and it lands beautifully as a follow-up.
25. Which Disney Renaissance film was released first: Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast?
People feel like they know this and then start second-guessing themselves, which is exactly what I want.
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Beauty and the Beast (1991). Aladdin came out in 1992. The Renaissance era is generally considered to run from The Little Mermaid (1989) through Tarzan (1999), and the chronological order of those films trips people up constantly.
26. What animal does Emperor Kuzco get turned into in The Emperor’s New Groove?
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A llama. This movie is criminally underrated in the Disney canon, and every time I ask this question, someone in the room goes on a five-minute tangent about how it’s the funniest Disney movie ever made. They might be right.
The Ones That Start Arguments
27. How many fingers does Mickey Mouse have on each hand?
I’m asking about his total fingers per hand, including the thumb.
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Four (three fingers and a thumb). Walt Disney himself said that giving Mickey five fingers would have made his hands look like “a bunch of bananas.” Four fingers was a practical animation decision that became one of the most recognizable design choices in history.
28. In Bambi, what is the first word Bambi learns to say?
People guess “mama” almost every time. It’s not mama.
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“Bird.” Thumper teaches him. The scene is one of the most gentle moments in all of Disney animation, and the fact that Bambi’s first word is something so simple and observational rather than emotional is part of why it works.
29. What is the only Disney animated film where both parents are present and alive throughout the entire movie?
This question always generates shouting. People start naming movies and then immediately realize the parent dies or disappears. It’s a beautiful chaos.
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101 Dalmatians (1961). Pongo and Perdita’s owners, Roger and Anita, are both present and alive the whole time. Some people argue for Peter Pan (the Darling parents), and there’s a case there, though they’re barely in it. Others argue for Brave or Tangled, but those have major complications. The real point of this question is watching a room full of adults realize how many Disney parents are dead.
30. In Hercules, how many Muses narrate the story?
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Five. In Greek mythology there are nine Muses, but Disney went with five. People who know their mythology often overthink this one, which is exactly the kind of trap I enjoy setting.
31. What was the first Disney animated film to receive a PG rating?
This one surprises people every time. They assume it’s something from the 2000s.
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The Black Cauldron (1985). It was so dark that Disney actually cut scenes to avoid a PG-13 rating. The film was a box office disaster and nearly killed the animation department entirely. Without its failure, the Renaissance might never have happened, which is a strange kind of legacy.
32. In Coco, what is the name of the song that serves as a central plot point?
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“Remember Me.” Written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, the same duo behind Frozen‘s songs. The way the song shifts meaning across the film, from a bombastic performance number to a quiet lullaby, is one of the best pieces of musical storytelling Disney has ever done.
33. What is Scar’s real name in The Lion King?
Most people don’t even know he has one.
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Taka, which means “waste” or “garbage” in Swahili. This comes from supplementary material rather than the film itself, but it adds a brutal layer to his character. He was called garbage by his own family before he was ever a villain.
34. In Zootopia, what kind of animal is the crime boss Mr. Big?
The joke only works if you remember what he actually is.
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An arctic shrew. The entire character is a Godfather parody, and making the most feared crime boss in Zootopia one of the smallest mammals in the city is the kind of gag that works on every age level.
35. Which Disney princess has the least amount of screen time in her own movie?
This one’s contested, but the generally accepted answer catches people off guard.
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Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. She has roughly 18 minutes of screen time in a 75-minute film, and she speaks only 18 lines of dialogue. The movie named after her barely features her, which is a wild thing to realize as an adult.
You Either Know It or You Don’t
36. What is the name of the restaurant that Remy and Linguini open at the end of Ratatouille?
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La Ratatouille. It’s a small bistro, not the fancy Gusteau’s. The film’s ending is quietly radical: the message isn’t “anyone can become a great chef at a prestigious restaurant.” It’s “build your own thing.”
37. In Lilo & Stitch, what is Stitch’s experiment number?
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626. This one separates casual fans from people who had the bedsheets. There’s no in-between.
38. What was the last Disney animated film to use hand-drawn animation as its primary technique?
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Winnie the Pooh (2011). Not The Princess and the Frog (2009), which is the answer most people give. Winnie the Pooh came out two years later, was barely marketed, opened against the final Harry Potter film, and was essentially sent out to die. It’s also quite lovely.
39. In Pocahontas, what is the name of her raccoon companion?
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Meeko. The hummingbird is Flit. People mix these up constantly, and the ones who get it right usually look slightly embarrassed about how quickly they answered.
40. What is the only Disney animated feature where the title character never speaks?
Think carefully. The character’s name is in the title.
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Dumbo. He never says a single word in the entire film. The 1941 original is also one of Disney’s shortest features at just 64 minutes, which feels impossible given how much emotional ground it covers.
41. In Inside Out, what are the five core emotions represented as characters?
Getting four is easy. Getting all five requires you to remember which one people always forget.
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Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. Fear is the one that falls out of people’s memory most often, which is ironic given that fear of forgetting things is basically the plot of the movie.
42. Who voiced Maleficent in the original 1959 Sleeping Beauty?
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Eleanor Audley, who also voiced Lady Tremaine (the stepmother) in Cinderella. She gave Disney two of its most iconic villains, and most people have never heard her name.
43. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, what is the name of the captain of the guard who helps Quasimodo?
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Phoebus, voiced by Kevin Kline. This movie is arguably the darkest film Disney has ever released under its main banner, and Frollo’s villain song “Hellfire” is one of the most intense sequences in any animated film, period.
44. What is the name of the boat in The Little Mermaid that Prince Eric sails on?
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There are actually multiple ships. His main ship at the beginning doesn’t have a widely confirmed name in the film, but the ship he sails at the climax is sometimes referred to in supplementary materials. The answer most trivia sources accept is that his birthday ship has no explicitly stated name in the film itself. This is a trick question that rewards honesty over confidence, and it’s one I use when I want to humble a room.
45. Which Disney movie features the song “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat”?
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The Aristocats (1970). This movie lives in a strange zone where everyone knows the song but fewer and fewer people have actually watched the film recently. It’s becoming a trivia fossil.
The Final Stretch
46. In Encanto, what is the name of the miracle that gives the Madrigal family their powers?
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The candle (la velita). The miracle is embodied in a magical candle that never goes out. The film is really about generational trauma disguised as a movie about magic, which is Disney’s most reliable trick.
47. What real-life location inspired the kingdom in Tangled?
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Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France. The island kingdom of Corona, with its castle rising from the water, is modeled directly on it. Once you see the comparison, you can’t unsee it.
48. In Pinocchio, what does the Blue Fairy tell Pinocchio he must prove himself to be in order to become a real boy?
Everyone knows the general idea. The specific words matter here.
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“Brave, truthful, and unselfish.” Not just “good.” The specificity of those three virtues is something the film takes seriously, and it’s more demanding than people remember. Being good isn’t enough. You have to be three particular kinds of good.
49. What was the first Disney animated feature to gross over $1 billion worldwide?
People’s instinct is to say The Lion King or Finding Nemo. Both are wrong.
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Toy Story 3 (2010). It crossed the billion-dollar mark during its theatrical run, becoming the first animated Disney/Pixar film to do so. Frozen would later shatter that record, but Toy Story 3 got there first, powered largely by adults who’d grown up with the franchise and were now watching Andy leave for college while trying not to cry in public.
50. In The Lion King, what does “Hakuna Matata” translate to?
I save this one for last not because it’s hard. It’s probably the easiest question in this entire set. But I’ve closed hundreds of rounds with it, and here’s what happens every single time: the whole room answers together. Out loud. Without being asked to. Sometimes they sing it. And for a moment, a room full of adults who’ve been competing against each other all night are suddenly on the same side, sharing something they all learned from the same place, at roughly the same age, and none of them have forgotten.
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“No worries.” It’s a Swahili phrase. And it’s the only trivia answer I’ve ever heard an entire room say in unison while smiling.
After 5 years of writing music trivia from Nashville, TN, I've developed a theory: the best music questions are the ones where someone at every table is absolutely certain they know it, and about half of them are wrong. I've written for JetPunk trivia, and I take the same care with every set I write.
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