Review: Disney Live! Presents Mickey's Magic Show

On Saturday, we went to go see Disney Live! - our first live show like this that we've seen. Unfortunately, Little Miss was home with pneumonia, but Mister Man insisted on calling her as soon as the show was over to fill her in on what she missed and tell her all about the great show.

And to be honest, it was a pretty great show. It wasn't David Blaine disappearing elephants from the stage type magic, but it was really cute and aimed at kids. Plus, it focused on the moral that persistence pays off, and in the end - of course - it does. After all, this is Disney!

The characters I remember had unmoving eyes and mouths. I noticed right away that these characters had eyes that blinked and mouths that moved. Oddly, I found that I had to take some time to get used to this, but it was really neat to make the characters even more real.

The tricks were entertaining from making Jasmine rise up into the air to squishing Benny flat so he could be rolled up to shoot from a cannon. Mister Man sat enthralled throughout the show.

It was really cute how they interspersed the stories from Disney into the magic - like with Jasmine (though in the movie she flew on the magic carpet, to be technical).

For part of it, Mickey made Disney princesses appear with the use of the magic word (and the audience's help!) and then Goofy would try and ... mess up the magic word so the nemesis would appear or something would come out a little wrong. Thus, Cinderella's fairy godmother appeared and magically changed her raggedy dress into the gorgeous ballgown.

I love that they did the less common Disney bits, as well, like Mickey and the Sorceror's Apprentice. A lot of the magic included comedy, which was a great touch with kids. In this bit, Mickey never realized that the brooms behind him were doing what he commanded the immobile broom in front of him.

All in all, it was a cute show. I will say that the volume was way too loud for my tastes, but volume tends to be an issue everywhere. The Rosemont Theater holds sound well, and we saw a child next to us holding his ears throughout the performance. Fortunately, it didn't affect us to that degree.

Interestingly, Mister Man loved the whole show with one exception. The finale was a double sawing of a woman in half. Two women were halved then spun around in their containers only to be put back together backwards such that each woman had the other woman's bottom. Mister Man was freaked out by this. When talking about the show afterwards, he refused to discuss this act, simply saying that it creeped him out and he didn't want to talk about it. I thought it was kind of cool though.

If you haven't seen Disney Live! yet, check to see if it's coming to a city near you. We had a blast, and we can't wait for the next Disney show!

In the interest of full disclosure, I received tickets to see the show. I did not receive any compensation, and all opinions expressed are my own.