Disney On Ice: Rockin Ever After

Hello & welcome back to A Look at Disney.  This past Christmas,  I went to California to visit my family.  It was a great time and today, I'm going to talk about one of my Christmas presents.  You see,  the night of Christmas Eve, we went over to my aunt's house and I thought it was just so that we could spend time with her and her family as her granddaughter opened presents but come to find out, we were there for our presents as well, as you see my aunt had set up a scavenger hunt for us to find our Christmas presents.  They were under the tree, the entire time and she had put them in little boxes.   It turned out that our presents were tickets to Disney On Ice: Rockin' Ever.  My aunt and my mom had set this up before, we even went out there. And to be honest, I'm surprised I didn't pick up on it sooner seeing the boxes were wrapped in wrapping paper that Disney princesses on them and I was just sitting there trying to see if Rapunzel was on the wrapping paper and listing off all of the princesses that were on the wrapping paper.  That weekend, we drove up to the arena, where the ice show was going and even by the time, we were going there,  I was already excited as the speakers were playing Belle,  Something That I Want (which my pointed out to my mom was from Tangled as my mom has not seen that film), and whatever that song from Brave is and Part of Your World. 


Now I'll freely admit that I was excited to see the show and it opened with Mickey and the gang holding a talent show, where characters such as Pinocchio and the Wicked Step-sisters came out to showcase their talents.   The latter sang Sweet Nightingale.  Now,  I remember when Minnie mentioned that the next act were two sisters, I was expecting Elsa and Anna to show up and sing Do You Want To Build A Snowman but alas that was not the case. Still, it was fun.

After that Sebastian and Ariel's sisters showed up leading unto our first movie that was abridged as all of the films were. Some made more sense than others and yeah, this does  reshuffle some of the songs but that doesn't come until Tangled. (and yeah,  I had my fanboy moments there)

 

We then cut to Ariel and we open with her seeing Eric shipwrecked and falling in love with  him  and it goes through the movie with Ariel meeting with Ursula and Kiss The Girl  (which was kept in)  

How  hard must it be to maneuver that Ursula costume?

Now, there is one complaint that I and this with the other films featured as well is that they cut some characters and details such as Triton does not appear in the Mermaid section.   While this was nice, the next story featured got me excited because after Mermaid was Tangled.  YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   This opened with the thugs from The Snuggly Duckling preforming in  the talent show,  where they were being rowdy and Minnie asked them, if they ever had a dream and they break into "I Have A Dream".

And the number ends with Rapunzel appearing.  Yay!   And then we cut to  the tower, where Rapunzel tells Mother Gothel that she just had the greatest dream and  this is after "When Will My Life Begin"  and we  we get Rapunzel asks her mother if she can go and we get "Mother Knows Best". 

   Now, this is the thing that really confused me because I am the biggest Tangled fan in the world and I was like "wait, that doesn't make sense"  because the first reprise of "When Will My Life Begin?"  is before "Mother Knows Best"  and this reshuffling doesn't work because of this lyric.

 Mother might just, let me go.

This bugged me only slightly because  I have my issues with reshuffling of song orders and this is an example of why.  By putting "Mother Knows Best" before the first reprise,  you lose the weight of that lyric because by putting "Mother Knows Best"  first, we already know that Gothel doesn't want Rapunzel to leave the tower and it  just doesn't really make sense.  Now maybe I'm just nitpicking here but I was very critical of this section seeing as well, it's Tangled and you know my feelings about Tangled.  Now, they really rushed through the rest such as Flynn and Rapunzel meeting and yes, Maximus was included and that was cool. Oh, and I might add that Flynn had a cool entrance as he  walked past the audience before hitting the rink.

 

 It was clear, it was two people in a costume.  And the show ended with "I See The Light" as lights were lifted into the sky.  And I have to say for as much that was cut,  I still loved it because it was done very well.   And after Tangled, we had our intermission and honestly, by that point I didn't care what was next because I was expecting Tangled to not come until the second act but getting to see the Tangled made me super happy. Now  I should mention the skating,  it was great and really fun to watch and my eyes were on the characters, the entire time.  And the performers did a stellar job. So,  during our intermissions, ads played for what was coming next, and it was just some Disney Junior Live: Onstage Show starring Jake and The Neverland Pirates and Sofia The First.  (I've seen images of the Sofia section and it's creepy).   So, after a short intermission,  Mickey and the gang return and we find out that from Minnie that the next person entered in this meaningless talent show that just served as wraparound .  And Mickey, at first doesn't think he has any special talents,  and then we get Mickey reading as his friends tell him that he is a master storyteller and what story is he telling.

Brave

 

Now this section  seemed to be the shortest and cut the most out of the plot as it cut the whole bear storyline and it also cut out Fergus. And instead just focused on the relationship between Merida and Elinor.   Now, the competition for Merida's hand in marriage and it did include a really moment, where Merida from across one end of the rink shot an arrow and broke the target in half. 

 

Now, I don't want to sacrilegious here as I do like Brave but oddly,  I found by cutting out the bear subplot, it made the focus on the mother/daughter relationship tighter.  I still like Brave and would watch it over Wreck-It Ralph in a heartbeat but it is a film that is not without it's flaws.  I mean it's probably in the middle of the pack in terms of my favorite Pixar films.  And  our last section was Beauty and The Beast. And it opened with the talent show, with Gaston singing what else, "Gaston" 

And I'll be honest and say that I forgot a lot of happened in this section. Keep in mind, that it was December, when I saw this but again, this cut out Maurice (which was really odd) but it kept the things like Be Our Guest and The Mob Song and the Enchanted Rose.

Now, this was still a great time and the show ended with everyone coming out to wave to the audience and just because I feel like it and since my mom made sure to get her picture, I'm going to end this  with Rapunzel.

All in all, this was a great event and easily one of my favorite Christmas presents. Sure, I had my little nitpicks but this was just so much fun to watch.   The skating was great, I got to see some of my favorite characters brought to life. Hear some of my favorite Disney songs,  I can't complain.  This is probably the third or fourth Disney On Ice show that I've seen but  I think it was probably my favorite out of all of them that I've seen.   Peace!