Magical Ballroom is anything but

This is another Disney software package that we bought for our daughter in hopes that it would have some redeeming value. Scratch that idea.

The theme of this game sounded good. Belle and the castle staff want to have a surprise party for the Beast but they need your help with the preparations. Who could refuse such an offer?

I started to lose confidence when I saw there are only 3 ‘game’ segments to the whole thing:

Mrs. Potts’ Tea Time Table: this segment has three levels in which you get a ‘menu’ of items that you need to drop from the kitchen cupboard onto the 4 rotating place mats before the hourglass runs out of sand. The easiest is ‘tea’ in which you need to place in order, saucer, spoon, cup, sugar and creamer. One my 5 year old daughter got the hang of this, she completed this level in just 2 tries. The second level is the main course of sandwiches. This has a few more items and a little less time but she still managed to finish it in less than a half-dozen tries. The dessert was very hard and although she got close several times, she got frustrated after losing more than a dozen times. I offered to show her it could be done. Agreed my reflexes may not be as fast at 43 as they were at 23 but it took me several tries to complete this myself.

Belle’s Writing Desk: this segment allows you to make your own invitations, greeting cards and select different colors for preset stained glass pieces. This area has the standard Disney ‘color forms’ concept with background and stickers to paste onto them. As with ‘Little Mermaid II’, deciding to recolor one segment may recolor any number of pieces. For example, an entire bookcase within the library background is split into only 3 color segments. I realize they can’t have each individual book separate but they could do a little better job than this! Our daughter even asked, “Why does it change so many pieces?” Out of the mouths of babes…

Cogsworth’s Library Mystery: this is the only potentially saving grace for this software. The bookcase contains 20 books with various Disney characters on the binders with different background colors. Using the various clue choices, you have 7 guesses to figure out exactly which book Cogsworth is thinking of. At each of the three levels you receive a segment of a key. When you complete the key, the level is done. Our daughter enjoyed this segment and after finishing the entire game went back to it several times. I think she prefers the deductive reasoning to the video games.

After completing these three segments, you can then enter the ballroom to help select the music, dance steps and dress that Belle will wear to the party. We have tried selecting a different outfit for Belle at least a dozen times and have never been able to get it to show on her for the final party. As for creating the dance, the computer told my daughter that she was limited to only two steps toward the end but when she selected one of them it told her there wasn’t enough time for it. Sounds to me like a glitch.

Speaking of glitches, it can take several more than the standard two clicks to move from screen to screen. At one point I counted 6 clicks before it actually registered and returned to the game entry point. The vocal intros on most of the screens are another problem and can take up to a minute to play through. The entire time my daughter is impatiently trying to select things to do. I decided that we had played this long enough when she yelled out at the screen, “Would you please be QUIET!!”. I don’t believe Belle will be planning any more surprise parties for a long long time.

Unlike most good software packages (see my reviews of Humongous Entertainment products for Putt Putt and Freddi Fish), this game plays the same every single time. Can you say ‘BORING’? My 5 year old can!!

The one positive thing I can say is that most of the voices sounded like the original movie cast, although I’m not sure about Jo Ann Worley (wardrobe) or Robbie Benson (Beast). They sounded close but not close enough to totally convince me.

There is no age range listed on the software but I can’t see any age girl having much fun with this for more than a couple minutes. Maybe Disney needed to conduct a little more market research on this one. Rest assured that after 2 software purchase failures in a row (see ‘Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea’ review), it will be a long time before we waste money on another Disney interactive game.