Beauty and the Beast. Easily. The story is funny, scary, and genuinely moving. The artwork is stunning, the music is classic Broadway quality, and it has a far deeper bench when it comes to awesome voice casting (Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, Angela Lansbury, Paige O’Hara, Richard White, and Robbie Benson of all people are all splendid). Beauty made animation for adults respectable and even an event. It had class. And no of scatological or scattershot pop culture references masquerading as humor, which sadly is more than you can say for most current kids’ movies.
And to me, Belle is utterly charming and way more of an interesting role model as a heroine. Bookish lass who doesn’t need to transform herself FTW! The only transforming going on is with Beast, and his most important change is internal, not external.
(Though it’s a shame the animation for the transformed Beast made him into such a plastic Ken doll. Wouldn’t mind a Lucasian/Spielbergish retcon of that special effect!)
And I have to repeat: Jerry Orbach and David Ogden Stiers! Hells to the yeah!
The Little Mermaid isn’t even on my personal radar of top ten Disney animated movies. Cute but nothing special IMO. But then I’m weird (and old) and would’ve placed Robin Hood in my top two, so there ya go.