Because we’re good parents last night we took the kids to see Disney on Ice…. Well, because we’re good parents and because Wed tickets are only $10.  We’re definitely not good enough parents to pay $20.

We followed one of our family’s time honored rules and didn’t tell the kids where we were going.  I have found that there is little to be gained by telling your kids about the exciting things they are about to do, because if something happens at the last minute and you can’t go, the kids are devastated.  But if you tell the kids to hurry up and get in the car and then take them to see Mickey Mouse doing double axels, instead of, say, the dentist, they’re thrilled.

So, how to describe an evening of people in giant animal costumes skating?  Well, it was entertaining, I guess.  In a people in giant animal costumes sort of way.

Disney is a master of trying to appeal to all ages, so this show had 5 parts:  Mickey and Friends, Cars, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and Faeries.  Literally something for everyone, well, everyone under age 8.

Our 6 year old Audra loved it.  She got so excited when each new character showed up.  She pointed and stared wide eyed when Tinkerbell flew in and clapped when Donald told her to.  Our three year old, Asher, also liked it, but not significantly more than say a rerun of Bob the Builder.  Sure there were people sliding around the ice dressed as lions, but did any of them build an observatory for the new park?

Here are a few other observations from this night of glamour, spectacle and triple lutzes.

• Some characters can skate a little easier than others.  The Little Mermaid’s unencumbered legs managed to do a lot more than Donald Duck, who had the challenge of having to skate with a giant beach ball for a body.

• Seeing the different cars characters was a lot of fun and the cheers going up from the kids seem to indicate this was a favorite.  The great irony of course is that the cars were not wearing ice skates, they were just cars, you know….driving.  The same show could have been done in a Wal-mart parking lot.  Honestly though, the cars looked a lot more like their cartoon doppelgangers than, say, Ursula the sea witch, who  looked a lot like someone wearing a purple inflatable sumo suit, because, well, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.

• For each of the movies they did sort of an abbreviated 15 minute synopsis of the film.  This meant that the Little Mermaid was boiled down to an “under the sea” routine, falling in love, and then defeating the sea witch by kissing the overly coiffed prince.  All good fun.  Cut out the boring stuff and let’s hit the highlights.  Ok.  So lets think for a minute.  If you had to do a similarly abbreviated version of the Lion King, what would you cut out? 
You know, what minor tidbit I might cut out of that 90 minute movie:  the death scene.  Yeah, yeah, I know, the purists are horrified, but if you have to take some artistic license with a movie to abbreviate it down to the highlights, I just might cut the scene where the main character’s father is murdered and left for dead in the middle of the ice in front of 5,000 four-year-olds.  That’s just me though.  To each his own

• So, we were going to get some cotton candy.  We normally try not to buy a lot of junk at these events, because you only have so much need for a plastic lighted sword once you leave the arena, but cotton candy seemed like fun, and it came with a foam hat shaped like a flower (why is not abundantly clear).  However, I only had $7.00 on me and as we all know, the going rate for cotton candy with a foam hat is $10

• Alissa Czinny, the US 2007 Figure Skating Bronze Medalist is not in the show.  Neither is the 4th, 8th  or 12th place finishers.  The skating in this production is perfectly fine and I give high marks to anyone who can skate on all fours while dressed as a warthog, but I have to admit that the whole time I was watching, I kept hearing Scott Hamilton in the back of my head.  “Ok, this is where Simba is going to attempt a triple lutz, triple toe loop combination!   Here it comes!  Oh, and he doubled it!  That’s disappointing Bob.   He has almost no chance of retaking the title from Goofy now.”

• It was nice to see how lame the Broadway version of the Lion King could have been.  For those of you who haven’t seen that production, it uses exotic puppets, African masks and people on stilts as giraffes.  The ice version was more like people in lion colored leotards with lots of fake fur.  It looked like they had all gotten their costumes at the Card and Party Outlet a couple of hours before the show

• There is something very surreal about seeing a lion grab another lion by the heels and swing her around and around in what I believe is called the death spiral (really now.  Does the lion king need 2 deaths?)

• The Fairies thing was interesting.  It was all about Tinkerbell and how she came to this creatively named place called Fairy Hollow and made friends and enemies and both ruined everything and saved the day, all in about 20 minutes.  Her enemy was sort of this Amy Winehouse Fairy with big hair, a bad attitude and track marks.
They production made good use of their one special effect which involved strapping fairies to a suspended meat hook and dragging them along a rail over the ice.  It looked a lot like flying to all the blind attendees and the kids all thought it was pretty cool.  I’m afraid that those of us with a y chromosome and an age with two digits were a little on the bored side, though.  I kept hoping for Captain Hook to pop out and make things interesting.  Where’s a good fairy massacre when you need one?

• The 40 something lady who sat behind us and who appeared to have come to the show by herself disturbed me…. On so many levels.

All in all, it was a fun night and definitely worth the $10 we spent.  Would it be worth $15?  I’m not so sure, but for $10, absolutely.  Alexander Hamilton has never made kids so happy.   That being said, I would absolutely pay 10 disney dollars to see Treasury Secretaries on Ice, but that’s probably just me. 

Come on Henry Paulson, show us a double salchow.

Ok, that’s random enough.  I’m done.