one of our coincidental D activities for last weekend was Disney on Ice.

holy hell.

i knew what i was getting into a little bit due to a friend’s similar experience but i definitely wasn’t prepared for the whirlwind of emotions that is Disney on Ice.

i don’t really know where to begin. i won’t waste time on the annoying parking situation because that was a given. so, i’ll jump straight to the fact that before we could even sit down i shelled out $30 on a plush ariel doll for darla. in all fairness, i chose the doll because i thought she’d be able to hug it throughout the performance and that it would offer up some form of distraction when she got antsy. this plan worked. plus i had to make good on my promise that i’d buy her something special to get her past those guys hawking annoying light up wands outside. gawd, i felt like a sucker.

we got seated late. so after stumbling down dark stairs and bothering the overweight family to haul themselves out of their seats so we could squeeze past, we had to make a hasty arrangement of who was going to sit where, passing out popcorn and making sure that effing overpriced plushie had an ok seat on darla’s lap.

the first 20 minutes of the show was pure bliss. girls were happy. entranced. delighted. popcorn-fed. disney-fied zombies. i even got into the excitement of seeing the magic reflected on darla’s face.

then the spell broke. darla lost interest, started looking around and realized people had refreshments other than popcorn. she was hungry. she was starving. she said she needed food right away. luckily, intermission was upon us.

i took her to get food but under the condition that she go to the bathroom while we were out so we wouldn’t have to cause the happy-meal family any more trouble. then we forged through the crowds to concessions.

oh the crowds. 4-year-olds with pacifiers. 5-year-olds in strollers. my brother-in-law sat next to a middle-aged couple with no kids in tow. wtf?

we arrived at concessions and i checked just once to see if the beer taps were open that day. i wouldn’t have, but i was thinking about it. alas, they were not up and running. darla declared she wanted only peanuts. i tried to reason that if she was so starving she needed something more substantial than peanuts. NO. PEANUTS.

we got peanuts. i didn’t dispute because they were the cheapest option.

back to our seats we filed, late again. i sat in a bath of cynicism as i watched ice dancers with FML written all across their faces. you could tell they all abhorred their existence on the ice. i think every time someone attempted a lutz or salchow they ended on their ass, furthering my suspicion that they were all drunk.

my critical state-of-mind was reaching an all time high when the entire cast came out to perform “it’s a small world after all” and there was a noticeable lack of any black or jewish representation. everyone knows walt was a raging anti-semite and xenophobe but this is 2012, people. if you’re going to include holland then you got to put at least one country from the continent of africa in there and representation from one of the oldest cultures in the world.

but then those bastards put mickey in an emblazoned hot air balloon to float above me and i had to give in. all my cynicism broke down as they started to play “when you wish upon a star.”

a tear sprang to my eye as i watched darla’s face lit by the indoor fireworks. for, no matter how corny and over-the-top it was, disney remains the ever positive voice urging us:

when you wish upon a star,

makes no difference who you are,

anything your heart desires,

will come to you