A Review of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular

The wife and I love Christmastime in New York City. There are countless places to go and things to see in the city this time of year. We even like the lame, tourist attractions in the city.

For that reason (and the fact that Em has been dreaming of seeing the Rockettes since she was a little girl) we made the trek to Radio City Music Hall last week for the Christmas Spectacular.

This is the 75 year for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and, even though Em lived in New York for two years, neither of us had ever seen the popular show. With that said, we had high expectations heading into the show.

Now that we have seen it, it's safe to say that neither of us would call the show "spectacular." It was...nice. We had fun. I think we'd both rename it the Radio City Christmas Show That You'll Enjoy and Clap For but Not Necessarily Something You'll Reminisce About for the Rest of Your Life.

Yeah. That sounds right.

The show opened with a group of six individuals singing "Let Christmas Shine," which we learned is the theme of (at least) this year's Christmas Spectacular. I hope that you like this song. You'll hear it about four times throughout the show. From there, Santa comes out on his sleigh, which is pulled by the famous Rockettes.

The following segment was probably the coolest part of the entire show. Santa disappears behind the curtain and an animated Santa appears on the screen. Using 3-D glasses that are given to the entire audience, the crowd watches Santa fly from the North Pole to New York City.

Along the route, Santa encounters snowball-throwing Polar Bears and flying geese, both of which are very cool in 3-D. The presents that Santa throws out to the crowd are also very cool in 3-D. I wouldn't go so far to say that the Christmas Spectacular went downhill from here. I'd just say that nothing in the show was better than this portion.