Princesses on Ice

The Evil Geniuses at the Walt Disney company who masterminded the brilliant scheme that is the Disney Princesses have done it again. They have several "Disney On Ice" productions, which includes two Princess shows. I don't know why the "On Ice" piece is so important. Why do our favorite Disney characters need to be ice skating? Why can't there just be a stage show without the perils of performing on thin blades of metal on slippery ice? I guess Olympic non-hopefuls need jobs too.

The good news: the fifteen years of skating lessons have paid off. The bad news: you're an ice dancing table setting.



We were in the St. Louis area over the weekend of the performances, so we took a chance that Madeleine was old enough and got tickets for her and myself. We didn't tell her about it until the Friday of the performance, though, because I couldn't handle a week of, "We go to see princesses now, Mommy?" When we did tell her that we were going to see the Princesses in person, I'm not sure she quite understood, however, and mention of the Princesses really revs her up, so we were suffeciently excited at the start of the performance. We got to our seats with less than five minutes to showtime, which is perfect timing when you have a two year old. We bought a small souvenir, a Princesses on Ice coloring book. The lights went down and the music started and Tinkerbell! It's Tinkerbell Mommy! And then Oh My Gosh! It's Mickey and Minnie Mouse! Madeleine was quivering with excitement. We then saw Jasmine and Snow White, Mulan and Belle, etc., all with Tinkerbell comming out between acts to skate around and wave her glittery wand. The girl was entranced. At the intermission, we fought our way through the bathroom and got popcorn and Sprite to share (soda's an exceptional treat for Madeleine) and went back to our seats. The music as good, the lighting and set pieces were pretty cool. The skating was fair. Not that I think I could do any better. I can't even make myself stop when I'm ice skating without running into a wall. All was well and beautiful and princessey in Madeleine's world until the firebreathing dragon came out breathing fire and scaring the bejesus out of her! The dragon was from the story of Sleeping Beauty, and the prince had to slay it to get to Sleeping Beauty. The dragon was a three-person puppet, that actually blew fire effects from it's mouth and I thought was pretty cool.

Madeleine did not.

She climbed up my shoulder, crying and shaking. I tried to get her to put her head down and not look, but she wouldn't. She was too horrified. The dragon also stopped directly in front of us (we had second row seats) and set fire to the ice at one point. Again, pretty cool as far as I'm concerned. My daughter, not so much. Finally, Prince Phillip slayed the dragon, kissed Sleeping Beauty awake, and they started skating to "Once Upon A Dream", which Madeleine loves. She stopped crying when she recognized the music, but she wouldn't relax her body and sit down in my lap for the rest of the show. Mercifully, the next princess was Cinderella, Madeleine's favorite, and the last act of the show. Cinderella came out in her pumpkin coach, unfortunately from behind the same curtain the dragon came out of. As soon as the curtain was drawn back, she started to shake and whine, but relaxed when she saw the coach and who was inside. For the curtain call, all the princesses came out and skated with their princes, and then Tinkerbell came out riding inside Cinderella's coach. The coach stopped in the center of the ice, Tinkerbell waving and blowing kisses like a fool, and then for some reason, the body of the coach rose into the air a good 12-15 feet, fireworks shooting off from the corners and comming down from the light rigging. Good grief! I had just gotten my two year old calmed down from the most frightening experience of her life, she's still skitish, I'm trying not to make any sudden moves and the Disney on Ice people shower us with fireworks! When the show was over, we waited for the crowds to clear out and some skaters came back out when the house lights came up and demonstrated some fancy ice skating jumps and stuff. I got Madeleine off my neck when the lights came up, but she would not take her eye off that curtain where the dragon came through until we left the arena.

On the way back to Belleville from downtown St. Louis, I tried to get her to talk about the show. I asked, "What was your favorite part? What are you going to tell Daddy about when we get back? Did you like seeing Ariel and Cinderella?" All I got from her was, "I'm not scared. I'm not scared" with a little dismissive wave of her hand. I tried several times, but I got the same response each time, so I finally gave up. She was still awake when we got back to my mother in law's house, and she and Shannon both tried to get her to talk about the show, but all she would say was, "I'm not scared" and wave her hand in front of her. This went on most of the weekend, but by Sunday there were small signs that she was starting to process the night. We continued to talk to her about it, and to try and get her to talk about it too. We also talked a lot about the dragon, how it was a puppet, only in the show, and wouldn't hurt her, but it was okay to be scared. Slowly, she started talking about it, and everyday, she'd talk about more and more, including the dragon. It's been a month, and now she talks about it with gusto. "Pemember when we saw Princesses on Ice, Mommy? And the dragon came out! And we saw Belle and Ariel and the bubbles came down from the ceiling?" Thank God she has some fun memories of that night. I was a little worried I had scarred her for life. I probably did anyway. It was bound to happen eventually. I was just hoping to wait until she was a little older.

The "waterfall" behind Madeleine is the curtain the dragon and coach came out of. I could not get the girl to smile for these pictures for anything!