I loved, loved, loved this event. It’s perfect for little ones who aren’t going to make it through the whole ballet.
First you go to the McCaw Hall lobby, which is decorated with Nutcracker stage scenes that you and the kids can run around on and get your pictures taken with. There are arts and crafts tables. Hayden loved decorating the foam swords and crowns.
Next you go upstairs for breakfast. We had good food, actually. Hayden loved the big carafes of hot cocoa and the whipped cream being passed around. They had ballerinas serving, which was so cute!
Then we went downstairs to a small stage where they performed a very very very short version of the Nutcracker. It was great for me to see how the kids would do in a real performance situation. Pemberley (age one) really started to crumble toward the end. Hayden (age four) did really well. They invite all the kids to sit in the first four rows. Nice in theory, but when the battle scene happened, some kids were freaking out because they weren’t with their parents and were scared. At the end of the performance, the kids were invited on stage to take pics with the dancers. Hayden was happy to stand next to the pretty ballerinas but wasn’t going anywhere near the other characters.
Side note: they have the gift shop open, which was perfect for picking up some Christmas gifts for the kids. The shop had tons of cute things.
As you left, they also had a table of mini cupcakes. We all loved them and were happy to indulge in one last bite of sugar before heading back to the real world.
I thought this was a must-do event. I definitely thought it was a fun one to do with family and friends. Hope you get to go next year and love it as much as I did!
