Disney Junior – Let the Schlocking Begin

Uncle Dave got us box seat tickets at Agganis Arena  to see the Disney Junior tour which featured Sophia the First and Jake and the Neverland Pirates as well as a small opening from Doc McStuffins as well as Minnie and Mickey.  We attended the earliest of three shows that day and it was a struggle to get there on time.  A valiant effort was thwarted by the annual Walk for Hunger which is a great benefit that clogged up the streets of Boston and which seems to be bring people of all ages together who share one common thread – they love events where you can move slow enough to snack while participating.  I think the route is organized around maximizing 7-11 coverage in case the blood sugar runs low.  Could something more useful be done with the 1000s of person-hours burned on the walk – yes.   Probably anything would be more useful and I would be just as responsive to a request to sponsor someone to stock soup kitchens or organize food collections as I would be to handing money to someone who did not cover 50% of their claimed mileage.    Enough about that.  Dave hooked us up with great box seats and they were great because the kids had some freedom but at the same time were contained.  The schlock-shock in the vending area was significant and I had to push through what would have consumed an entire  40-foot container bound from Shanghai to get my pretzel.  The Disney branding is disgustingly over the top.  Ellie has started asking me what different words say and after reading Doc McStuffins one night we were looking at the back cover.  The Disney Junior logo  had been badly marred by the removal of the price tag but when I queried Ellie as to what it said she responded correctly.  Although both segments were great I personally preferred the Pirates segment of the show to the Sophia segment.  It had a lot more action and impressive tethered acrobatics that bested anything I had seen from the Julie Andrews version of Peter Pan that I went to see as a young kid for what might possibly be the main cultural experience of my childhood.  It was plenty, more than enough probably.   One thing that I found astounding was that it appeared that the entire Disney show was pre-recorded.  That actors lip-synched and mimed motions and interacted with characters and objects on an enormous rear-projection screen and the show progressed with absolute precision.   Nonetheless, the kids were entranced.  Ellie was so focused on the show she was effectively frozen in her seat.