Afternoon at the Ice Capades

This weekend we took Cara to see Toy Story 3 on Ice officially completing our requirements to join the order of full-fledged parenthood. I was on the fence about going, Kevin was really leading the charge. I thought she might still be too young, that she wouldn't sit through it, that she might get scared. My mom’s advice was to go. She reasoned that one of two things would happen: Cara would love it, in which case, great, or she wouldn't and I would be right. My mom knows how much I like to be right. Here is my ‘in-depth’ analysis of the afternoon.

Pro – It started on time, promptly at 11am

Con – It was about an hour and fifteen minutes too long. Not sure what genius thought a program for children needed to go on for 2+ hours. By the end there were about 5,000 kids on the verge of a major meltdown.

Pro – Tickets were inexpensive, and by buying them only a few days before the event we grabbed great seats for half the price had we planned in advance.
Con – Once you are in, you are shelling out $12 for a small tub of popcorn that probably cost $0.50 to produce, $20 for a plastic Frisbee-like toy they demo’d before the show so EVERY kid wants one and another $20 for a random “grab bag” of toys. Seriously, that is what they were calling it. And that doesn’t count photos or face painting. Fortunately, Cara is still too young to ask for all these things, but our days are numbered.

Pro – Genius mommy thought it would be fun to ride the train to the show. We parked at a nearby station and road up a stop. The side benefit was saving on parking.

Con – All those parents parked on-site shelled out another $20 for the privilege and missed out on what was probably the highlight of our day.

Pro – The kids got to see the lovable characters they know from the Toy Story franchise.

Con – Apparently Disney couldn’t afford to pay the actual voice actors to dub the entire performance, so throughout the program Woody was played by a combination of Tom Hanks, and Joe Whatshisname as if we couldn’t tell. Also, they borrowed liberally from both Toy Story 1 and 2 to use songs and characters that had no place in the third movie. These kids have seen the movie 100 times! Don’t think you pulled a fast one Disney, everybody knows.

Other observations

They went to the trouble of introducing the evil emperor Zurg which ended up scaring Cara. Fifteen minutes in and Cara is sad and telling me she wants to go home. Buzz does defeat him, but that isn't even accurate to the movie, so not only did it scare my kid, but it wasn't even relevant to the storyline. Thanks.

And finally, at one point the space men were dancing to the Star Wars cantina music (also not the movie). How about you take that royalty money and pump it back into storyboarding. Would it kill you to put a little effort into making a program that the parents could also enjoy somewhat. This is an embarrassment to Pixar who tries so hard to appeal to parents and children alike, they should be pissed.

That all said, it was all worth it to see Cara’s face light up when the music stared and Woody glided onto the ice and I can still claim partial rightness. However, we may have been better off riding BART for an hour or so, grabbing lunch and getting home BEFORE nap time. Lesson learned.