Activity Report: The frills get an ice-skating lesson from Disney on Ice Stars!

I'd never seen a Disney production until earlier year - when we saw Disney Live! Three Classic Fairy Tales and I was hooked.  Forget about the girls, I was taken back to my childhood, and I wanted to stay there with Mickey, Minnie, and the whole gang.

The clock seemed to drag on the morning in the lead up to our meeting.  My girls were all very worried that they were going to be dressed wrong and somehow they would turn up to find everyone in unitards except for them.  To say there were excited would be an ultimate understatement!

We arrived and saw Melanie and Brian practicing on the ice.  It was mesmerising.  Brian and Melanie play Simba and Nala - from the Lion King in the production 'Disney on Ice presents Worlds of Fantasy' which is touring June/July this year here in Australia.

Brian and Melanie met on tour eleven years ago and started dating about a year later.   A year after that they became partners and then just last year, Brian and Melanie got married. (everyone say 'aaaaaah')

I wondered how working together, living together and touring together could work for a couple, because I know, I love my space - but to the Danish Melanie and Aussie Brian  - it just does.

'We love to travel, and we are on tour for ten months of the year - really it's the only way we could be married' Melanie tells me.   They have no fixed address and after touring the west and east coast of the US - which took two years - they then have spent the last year touring Asia and now Australia.  They were due to tour New Zealand but unfortunately that leg of the tour was cancelled due to New Zealand's natural disasters earlier this year.  Next they will move on to Europe.  So conceivably, any show could go on for five years!

'Don't you get sick of the music?' I ask... (as a Mum who has probably listened to Justine and the wiggles eleventy billion times)
'Oh I still love the music three years in' says Melanie 'we do our duet to 'Can you feel the love tonight' and get lost in the performance, we're making so many people happy, how can you get sick of that?'.

Good point.
'I still get nervous before every performance' says Brian - 'Anyone who says they don't are trying to talk themselves out of it because you want to give your audience the best performance you can'.

My girls are dying to get on the ice.  And I mean DYING.  The lovely swagbags have the program, cars hat - but my girls only have eyes for the Tinkerbell hats and moving light show wands!  Oooh pretty.

Yes, Tinkerbell and the fairies also appear in the show, as does Ariel and all the Little Mermaid crowd (Laura is super impressed by this as she loves the Little Mermaid) and the Disney/Pixars Cars too.  There is something for everyone... here's a little video preview:




And you can buy your tickets here through ticketek - all very reasonably priced for something that makes you believe you're in Disneyland!!  (I can't wait and am going to the Wednesday 13th July show in Sydney - let me know if you're going that day too!)

So finally after all the 'boring grown up questions' are finished we get on with the skating lesson..

Olivia is pretty darned excited, don't you think?

Melanie and Brian line them up on the wall - and ask them to put their hands forward and shuffle forward in little steps....

Laura's extremely cautious but Olivia and Eloise are a little TOO keen.  And this is just one of many spills of the day - not one tear amongst them!

Melanie and Brian take them by the hands and one by one lead them around the link to gain their confidence.  I have never seen smiles so big.

Isn't this just what childhood dreams are made of?

And then Olivia graduated in Brian's care to one and one leg swing!!  She was seriously having the time of her life!

 We can't wait to go to the show - me included!  Do you do Disney?

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