King Neptune: Inspiration for The Little Mermaid?

The Silly Symphonies were a series of short films made by Walt Disney from 1929 to 1939 as a companion to the Mickey Mouse series. Unlike Mickey Mouse, though, this series would have no main character and eventually be made in color. There were seventy-five in all. "King Neptune" is the thirtieth. A humorous, albeit slightly inappropriate film, it is the story of a mermaid who is abducted by pirates and whose ocean friends save the day. Eventually, it is King Neptune who destroys the pirate ship. Some of the elements of this short film are very similar to the ones in The Little Mermaid, which was made fifty-seven years later.

First, you've got singing mermaids coming out of a clamshell. There's a redhead who's different from all of the others. At the end, the giant King Neptune using his trident to create a whirlpool to sink the ship is eerily familiar. So what do you think, was "King Neptune" inspiration for scenes in The Little Mermaid?