Unfortunately, the theming was centered around "The Incredibles." However, to make it more palatable, the Disney on Ice people twisted it so the Incredibles were interacting with classic Disney characters at Disneyland locations, rather than having the ice show follow the movie directly, as many of these tours do. Every year, they have several of these shows that travel the country... usually one show centers around the most recent movie, but ones based on the Princesses or Mickey & Minnie are always a safe sales bet. In the Incredibles' case (Disney/Pixar's least universally beloved film), they must have realized that they couldn't fill a stadium to watch the movie plot play out on an ice rink for 2+ hours... so they married it to Disney Proper. Remember, these are really ugly characters, and they make even uglier ice skaters, so having Mickey come out to puncture the awkward tension is welcome relief.

The idea is that the Parr family want to spend a normal vacation at Disneyland, but of course they tend to misunderstand the animatronic attractions and use their secret superpowers to "protect" themselves. Like when Dad takes out a robot alligator on the Jungle Cruise or destroys the Runaway Mine Cart coaster. Putting the Incredibles aside, the show does a really nice job of presenting all the classic Disney attractions. The Haunted Mansion set comes with one of those stretching portraits. The Pirates of the Caribbean portion features the iconic imagery of the three guys in jail trying to get the key from that mangy yellow dog. That's just good Disney detailing in action. Of course, this being an ice show, most sets are just fodder to start a familiar tune (the other problem with The Incredibles as a solo act is that there are no songs) and bring out the whole ensemble for plenty of choreographed costumed skating.

They even trot out Baloo during the Jungle Cruise bit to do 'I Wan'na Be Like You.' No King Louie, though. I recently read on Paul Dini's weblog that the estate of Louie Prima sued Disney to prevent future use of poor ol' Louie, since the character as played in Jungle Book is pretty much an exact copy of Mr. Prima himself. Sort of how Genie is pretty much Robin Williams, it's a case of the voice actor taking over the character early in the movie's development. So that would be my guess as to why Baloo has to sing his famous duet all alone now.

Anyway, I was happy to see Baloo. I do likes the Baloo.

Just before the intermission, Syndrome shows up and kidnaps Mickey and Minnie. Interestingly, the family consistently refers to this Syndrome as a "robotic duplicate" of Syndrome himself, presumably so the ice show can stay in continuity. I'm not sure why they would bother stressing this, seeing as how the show mixes a human-sized Buzz Lightyear with short-adult-portraying-a-kid Dash at one point, among other filmic incongruities. I mean, come on, it's an ice show. We just went from the Tiki Room to Snow White to Chip 'n' Dale to Frozone. We're not really concerned with canon here.

Robot Syndrome himself makes no mention of being merely a robot, which I guess is the ultimate compliment to his self-aware programming. After the fifth time they reinforced his droidishness, I thought maybe they were building towards something, like physically knocking off his metal robot head... or, less violently, have him stuck in some famous Disney animatronic diorama, doomed to repeat the same meaningless actions over and over. But no, being a robot has nothing to do with the end, when Frozone simply skates in out of nowhere and freezes both him and his big evil machine.

Sorry, "Spoiler."

He deserves it. His plan to turn Disneyland into "Syndromeland" includes turning the It's A Small World dolls into evil bumper cars. We can't have that.

Clark did really well, considering how this trip was edging him out of both his bedtime and his comfort zone. For most of the first act, he watched it or watched the people around him. Once or twice he got into a song and started beating his arms wildly. He fussed briefly, but it was so damn loud I couldn't even hear him and I was sitting right next to him. During the overlong Pirates number in the second act, he fell asleep and didn't wake up until it was time to go.

The neatest trick of the night was saved for the finale, wherein Syndrome is defeated and "the magic" is returned to Disneyland, thanks to Frozone. Each kid was given a free lightup wristband on entry, so during this key sequence, we were all told to hit the buttons on the wristband. When you looked around the stadium, you saw hundreds of little blinking red lights from everybody's wristband! The free "Incredi-Band" was mentioned in the TV commercial, so it was pure bait to get people in TicketMaster, but it was still cute in action.

I suppose it's too early in the box office to tell if next year's show will be Chicken Little on Ice. Or at least, Chicken Little's Amazing Disneyland Adventure with Mickey, Minnie and Your Favorite Disney Princesses.