There’s no kitchen sink in “Iceploration,” the new ice-skating show at Busch Gardens in Tampa, but it wouldn’t be that surprising.
The production features a dozen ice skaters (including one that takes flight), life-size elephant puppets, cheetah costuming, a Siberian lynx and other live animals, acrobats on trampolines, a three-story tree, a virtual snowstorm and high-tech video mapping to tell a round-the-world story in about half an hour.
“It’s about three hours of show in 30 minutes,” creative director Scott Swenson says. “Iceploration” debuts at the theme park Thursday.
The plot centers on an 11-year-old boy who communicates mainly through his electronic devices, and his grandfather, who encourages him to come out of his room and “journey to the four corners of the earth.” Swenson says.
The global nature of “Iceploration” is achieved through ever-morphing staging created by technique known as video mapping, which projects images onto different surfaces inside the park’s Moroccan Palace Theater.
