Disney on Ice

On Sunday evening I took B to see Disney on Ice. How was it you ask? Well, it was a Disney production, so it was pretty fabulous, of course - they know how to put on a show. They opened with Aladdin pretty much and incorporated all the princess/prince characters in pair figure skating - the other bigger productions were Finding Nemo - yes, with the sharks, Pinocchio with a whale, Mulan - Mulan was pretty spectacular -the ice was colored with red lights - at one point there was an "avalanche" of a huge white curtain that was drawn over the Huns, and Mulan even shot off a cannon with a flare.

The show right next to us was pretty interesting too. B and I were sitting in the last two seats of an entire row of 14. The rest of the seats were taken by several women and children who all knew each other. They had ALL the regalia - each of them wore crowns, including the women. The crowns had either Mickey Mouse ears, or the jewels in the crown lit up and flashed. The kids also all had flashing light wands. They were really having a good time. They also were all eating event food - mammoth cups of pop - I mean, is it possible to drink that much pop without your bladder exploding or going into insulin shock? Also, plastic trays with compartments of "nachos", which were really tortilla chips in one section, salsa in one section, and then Cheez Whiz or whatever in the last section. They were really enjoying that too. During the performance, they had their feet up on the wall in front of us, watched and ate. At the same time I was watching this, I was observing in general that there was not very much applause following each act, and I wondered why. I might be wrong about this, but while watching the group next to me and pondering the applause dilemma, I sort of thought for a lot of people there, it was simply "watching TV", only live. Know what I mean? The TV was just different. Hmm. They weren't really participating, just watching. Interesting.I am not making them "wrong", just thinking how different this was as opposed to an audience that would have seen a production like this even 10 or 20 years ago. And so I am pondering this in a lot of areas . . watching vs. participating . . .