Directed by Julie Taymor. Book by Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi. Music and lyrics by Elton John and Tim Rice, with additional music by Hans Zimmer and Lebo M. At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Sunday, June 21. Continues until July 12

It would be easy to be jaded about the musical-theatre world’s number-one money-making juggernaut, a production that has raked in over $6 billion worldwide and played to millions of people since its 1997 Broadway debut.

But The Lion King’s artful visual innovations—undulating silk-banner rivers with jewel-toned shadow-puppet fish, towering giraffes with stilt legs, and dancing human savannahs with waving grass headpieces—still feel fresh and awe-inducing. Their handmade beauty still elicits childlike wonder in a time of 3-D digital projections. The show has aged better than just about any other mega-musical out there; witness the wide-ranging Vancouver audience of kindergartners and their parents, grannies, tour groups, and a surprising core of 20-something Lion King fangirls geeking out in their finest merch.

Its staying power is largely due to director and costume, mask, and puppet designer Julie Taymor, the American alternative-theatre visionary who Disney recruited to so radically reimagine its hit animated movie of the same name—an act of trust that’s almost inconceivable today.

Her flourishes, including the showstopping stampede of puppet elephants, high-circling birds, rhinos, and cats that parade down the aisles and onto a packed Queen Elizabeth Stage during the beginning’s rafter-shaking “Circle of Life”, are still the show’s biggest strength. Lebo M.’s music, with its African chorales and percussive rhythms, is its other huge draw: his pieces, including the rousing a cappella Act 2 opener, “One by One”, have aged better than Elton John and Tim Rice’s cornier hits on the program.

And choreographer Garth Fagan’s choreography has rarely looked richer.

The quasi-Shakespearean plot still finds enough malice and triumph to entertain. While it suffers from adopting the film’s oversimplified relationship between the heroic king Mufasa and his naughty young heir, Simba, it boosts the role of women, particularly through the lionesses. Performance highlights in this production include Patrick R. Brown’s camp, perennially bored Scar, and his antithesis, the supercharged soothsayer Rafiki (Yael Pineda-Hall, ably filling in for Tshidi Manye). Drew Hirshfield also does inexhaustible work as the puppeteer for the comedic bird Zazu.

The cartoon slapstick and fart jokes between the warthog Pumbaa and meerkat Timon almost seem incongruous with Taymor’s gorgeously crafted world—though some of the production’s new jokes, including a jab at Frozen and a reference to Canadian Tire, bring the house down.

Still, it’s the music and the spectacle that maintain this show’s king-of-the-jungle status. And on the highly unlikely chance you and your kids don’t count yourselves among the roughly 110 million who have seen it, you might want to head down and join the masses offering up standing ovations at Pride Rock.