When you are a thousand miles away from Disney World, it can be difficult to get a Disney fix in any other way but television. But this year, a little Disney magic came to us over the holidays. Our family has twelve cousins in it, and so instead of buying each child a gift at Christmas, we pick names out of a hat. My stepbrother and sister in law happened to choose both our children this year, and they came up with a clever gift idea. Their gift to James and Claire was also a gift for my wife Laura and I. They gave us four tickets to Disney Live: Mickey’s Music Festival at our downtown arena.
Our seats were great! In our section, we sat centered with the stage and only metres away, the magic came alive as Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy came onstage. Claire and James smiled and clapped through the whole first act as Mickey and friends traveled through the show meeting up with Aladdin and the Genie, and Sebastian. As the intermission approached, James who sat on Laura’s lap said “No” not wanting the fun to end. But a walk around the concession brightened him up. We opted to only purchase one cotton candy bag that came with Mickey ears which Claire wore the whole time. Claire is 3 and really wanted them, plus we all wanted the treat. James is ambivalent to hats, so one it was.
But here is the best thing about our purchase – we ended up with four bags of cotton candy. Another customer only wanted the Mickey ears for her niece and nephews and gave us her three accompanying bags of cotton candy for free. I would like to think of this as just another bit of Disney magic.
In the second act, we met Ariel and Eric and watched them fall in love. Woody and Jesse came out to show us some good old fashion cowboy rope tricks. Bullseye even jumped a skipping rope on stage. In the final scene, Mickey and friends sang us out and we left with a little bit of magic from the far away Disney parks.
Claire and James had the best time – singing and clapping along with the show. As we left the arena, I admittedly got a bit of a thrill just seeing the Florida licence plates on the tour busses parked outside the arena. To me it bridges the gap between Disney World visits, and made me very appreciative for the wonderful Christmas gift to my family. The best Christmas gift is a Disney Christmas gift and thank you to Uncle Steve, Aunt Kelly, Jordan, Liam, and Eleanor.