The latest Disney on Ice show, which was in Bridgeport this weekend and hits the Hartford XL Center for nine performances Jan. 12-16, goes by the title “100 Years of Magic.”
In fact, “100 Years of Magic” has been a steady slogan of a whole nostalgic subset of the Disney universe.
But how do they figure 100? “Join the celebration as 65 of Disney’s unforgettable characters from 18 beloved stories come to life in Disney on Ice celebrates 100 Years of Magic, reads a video come-on on the Disney on Ice page of disney.go.com. That clunky sentence might lead some to assume that Disney on Ice itself is a century old, which boggles belief. In fact, the skate-happy entertainment spectacle has been around since 1981. Thirty years of Disney on Ice Magic! A nice round number which Feld Entertainment, which produces the shows, chooses not to use.
“Celebrate the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney’s birth,” says a different page on the Disney.go.com site, which is clearer. Yet Disney was born December 5, 1901. That means an additional decade of Disney Magic is not even being acknowledged.
And that’s only if you buy that the birth of Disney corresponds with the birth of Disney Magic. If that’s the case, then did the Magic die with Disney’s corporeal demise on December 16, 1966?
The equation in which we measure Disney Magic appears to be:
X (The length of the mortal Walt Disney’s life, in years) + Y (the number of years the Walt Disney company has outlived its founder) – any number which does not let X + Y add up to 100.
In any case, Disney On Ice, 100 Years of Magic wraps up its Bridgeport engagement today with a 5 p.m. performance, then slips over to Hartford for performances Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m., thrice on Saturday (at 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.) and twice on Sunday (1 & 4:30 p.m.). Tickets run $17-$77.75. (And you know there had to be some guy in marketing suggesting “We should charge $100!”)
By the way, there was a previous On Ice show with similar anniversarial zeal. It was called Disney on Ice: 75 years of Disney Magic.
It toured in the year 2000.