I remember how much of a slug Lion King was to get through.
It's intentional. Disney didn't think it was a good idea for players to be able to complete one of their games during a rental period, so they asked Westwood Studios, the developer, to increase the difficulty of this video game to encourage users to buy it instead of renting it.
The game became unnecessary hard because of it when it should be as fun as Quack Shot or Castle of Illusion.
But to be fair, same things happened with many platformer games in that era.
Streets of Rage 3 is the perfect example.