Disney on Ice

On March 4, 2013 · Leave a Comment · In birthdays, nora

For Christmas, one of the gifts my mom gave us was tickets for all of us (plus my brother, sister-in-law, my nephew, and herself) to see Disney on Ice together. A few weeks ago was “the day,” and we headed to the arena to see the show. Nora was psyched; she even wore her Minnie Mouse ears—purchased at Disneyland just a few weeks earlier—in the car on the way there, and through the majority of the show.

Our seats were good. We were basically in the third row, with only the people a couple rows of people “on the ice” in front of us. When the show first started and Mickey and Minnie came out, Nora was immediately on guard. She was nervous, and it was obvious. She barely tolerated the schtick by Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, Chip and Dale, etc., interjecting with random cries of “Mama!” but then… Aladdin came out. And he had a big blue genie with him.

Nora FREAKED.

She turned around in my lap, basically trying to crawl up my torso to bury herself in my neck. I was trying to get her to sit, reassuring her it was fine, but she started crying and looked me straight in the face, yelling, begging, “MAMA!! BYE-BYE! MAMA, BYE-BYE!!” I didn’t know what else to do, so I grabbed her and we excused ourselves from our seats. I ran up the stairs to the top of our section, where she continued to cling to me like a monkey and bury her face in my neck.

An usher came by and said to me, “Is the music too loud for her?” I said, “I’m not quite sure what it is, honestly.” He said, “I wish I could tell you it gets better, but it doesn’t.” He invited us to sit anywhere with open seats (the show wasn’t sold out).

After a few minutes, I could tell that Nora was still watching the show, but she was doing so with her head on my shoulder, and clutching my neck with a death grip. So we sat down in the last row of our section (instead of being in the first row of our section, ha!), and Michael came up to join us. I held Nora tightly, reassuring her that it was OK. But damn, the following acts didn’t do me any favors. After Aladdin and a million genies, Nemo came out. I thought this would go well (she loves the movie), but then of course, they had to act out the shark scene. Three big, scary sharks with loud, booming voices over the loud speaker who are trying to eat Nemo. Awesome.

Then? Beauty and the Beast. The part where the Beast gets angry at Belle for going in the West Wing or whatever and he flips out on her. Nora was no longer freaking out, but she sure didn’t seem to be enjoying herself, either.

But then! Then, the Beast turned into a prince, and they did a routine to the Beauty and the Beast theme song and Nora was… won over. That transitioned into a medley of all of the princesses with all of their princes and theme songs, and Nora was officially enjoying herself. She was even quietly singing along to some of the songs. Girl loves her princesses.

Throughout the rest of the first act/half, I asked Nora a few times if she wanted to go back down to sit with Grammy, Hunter, and company, and she kept adamantly saying “NO!” But at intermission, we successfully got her back down there with the lure that Grammy had fruit snacks. Hey, we’re not above using bribes sometimes. :)

And what do you know? She was fine the rest of the show, even from our up-close-and-personal seats. There were even some scary parts—Pinocchio being eaten by a whale, deep drums and an army of men from Mulan, etc.—and she was a trooper. I guess she just needed time to adjust.

Overall, we thought it was a great show. It was a lot better once Nora was no longer terrified, of course. Lots of songs, lots of characters, and some very entertaining effects. I would definitely take her back next year.

After the show, we went out to dinner with everyone. It was actually Michael’s birthday! Nora and I had made a cake earlier in the day, so when the three of us got home, Nora was chanting, “CAKE TIME! CAKE TIME!” She was convinced that it was her birthday, too. :)