Monday, February 19, 2007

Presidents' Day with Ben and Monsters

Ben and I celebrated Presidents' Day in the traditional way...we hid from the cold morning (-18), went to a new McDonald's for lunch, and then enjoyed Disney on Ice, Monster's Inc. style...


The new McDonald's in Lake Placid is a dream in tile and stainless steel...there were about 25 people milling around in the kitchen in starched uniforms, seemingly busy, yet our food took 4 seconds short of forever...


From lunch we went to ORDA, and into the 1980 Arena for the skate-tastic monster-palooza...Ben perused the various gifts and foodstuffs available, and settled on the hardhat and cotton candy combo-pack...probably the best choice...


Before the show started we snuck up to the cheap seats in the Upper Deck...benches in hard and cracky yellow plastic...we preferred our ice-side seats, but the view from above was nice...


The show started off with some familiar Disney characters refreshing the kids' memories about Monsters Inc. and the power of screams...there were 2 howler monkeys dressed like 4 year old girls sitting behind us who could bend light and shatter stone with the power of their voices alone...we were glad when the noise-inducing introduction was finished...


The show itself progressed nicely once it got going, based loosely on the movie, with some added song and ice-dance numbers thrown in to match the venue...


At intermission, we got up to stretch and walk about a bit, and Ben and I split a pretzel and some lemonade...while we were eating, he liked sitting down in a randomly placed folding chair and watching the frenzied mom's and tinies waiting in line with growing antsiness (you can see some of them reflected in the art-house quality image below)...strangely (sadly...), the line to the mens' room was short and fast and essentially kid free...


The second half of the show was as fun as the first...Ben has no stage whisper...he leans over and loudly asks stuff like, "Are those monsters real Daddy, they look real...", and, "Those girls hurt my ears Daddy!", and, "Can we stop for Subs on the way home Daddy?"...He was fascinated by the special effects, especially by the snow-makers in the banishment scene...the hula dancers (you didn't miss that part of the movie, it was added for the ice-show) were engaging enough that he got off of my lap briefly to try and hula in front of our seats (we were in row "A", so had nobody directly in front of us.)...


We both loved the door effects at the climax of the show, with doors spinning every which way on the ice, whirling through the air, and dancers cartwheeling all over the place...



The CDA (Child Detection Agency) scene was expanded as compared to the movie, but was lots of fun...all in all, we had a great time...


We laughed, we cried...it was better than CATS!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a wonderful vacation adventure...McDonald's and a Disney Ice Show, it doesn't get any better. And...anything would be better than "Cats"!!

Rebecca said...

I'm with Gran - not hard to beat Cats - but looks like a good time!