If you missed Disney on Ice in Boston you have two more weekends to check it out with performances April 2-5 at the DCU Center in Worcester, and April 8-12 in Springfield at the MassMutual Center. Having been to last year’s Disney on Ice, we were pretty excited to attend the opening night in Worcester.

Spoiler alert: if you don’t want to know what happens in the show, stop reading now!

The show is emceed by Mickey and Minnie with Goofy, Donald and the Chipmunks helping throughout. You are taken on a whirlwind tour of the Disney library in this hour and 45 minute show.

The first half of the show included Aladdin, Nemo, Beauty and the Beast, the Princess dance, Toy Story, and a trip to It’s a Small World. These 45 minutes were packed with well choreographed numbers representing the main parts of each story. We were especially impressed with the huge shark chasing Nemo, which required two skaters working in perfect harmony. Beauty and the Beast performed a short version of their story, followed by a dance with the Princesses and their respective Prince; featured were Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, Pocahontas and Snow White. The children in the audience screamed with delight when each one skated through smoke into the rink. The biggest surprise of the night was a trip to Disney’s “It’s a Small World,” ending with a classic rendition of the Electric Light Parade, including fireworks. Whether you are an old or new Disney fan, this was a spectacular sequence.

The second half of the show had fewer characters, but each sequence was longer than the first half of the show. It started with the fairy from Pinocchio being lowered from the ceiling to the ice, where she made Pinocchio come alive. We watched his growing nose as well as an enormous Monstro (sea creature) which swallowed Geppetto and Pinocchio in the middle of the rink. Don’t worry – they find a way to get out! The story of Mulan was presented next and included some great fight scenes and real-looking snow. Afterwards, Edna Mode, the costume maker for The Incredibles, hosts a fashion show featuring the entire Incredibles family followed by characters from Lion King. ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight’ and ‘Hakuna Matata’ were highlighted during their performance.

The show ended with most of the key characters filling the ice and singing ‘Circle of Life.’ They spent time at the end shaking hands and waving to all the kids in the lower section. If your kids are huge Disney fans and you can afford the more expensive seats, you may want to think about sitting close up so they can see their favorites close up at the end of the show.

With any large arena show, plan ahead for snacks, bathroom breaks and other entertainment for any little ones. At our intermission the women’s bathroom lines were so long the women were sneaking their daughters into the men’s room. Our show started at 7:05 and each half was about 45 minutes long.

Dad Says: Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah! This show was pretty much non-stop action. I didn’t see too many kids bored with this one. There are plenty of extras your kids might want such as keepsake slushy cups, pictures with Disney backgrounds, plastic knives and swords and many other Disney toys. It took a long time to leave the parking garage; my advice is to pack pajamas for the kids to change quickly in the car, making bedtime at home a lot easier.

Mom Says: I’m a HUGE Disney fan, so you aren’t going to get a bad word out of me. I went to the Princess show last year and as much as I love those ladies, this show was much better. The Small World/Light Parade sequence brings back a lot of childhood memories of Disney World, and I was overjoyed for my son to see that for the first time. He is on the younger side and I was worried that he wouldn’t last the entire time, but he takes after me and also appears to be a big Disney fan – he didn’t start to wipe out until the last couple of minutes.

Website: Disney on Ice

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 5:41 am and is filed under Events. If you use RSS, you can subscribe to the RSS feed , or if you would rather receive an e-mail, please subscribe to the e-mail in the lower right hand corner of this page. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.