Saturday morning. Along with every other expat family with children under the age of 7 we dutifully trudged towards the HK Convention Centre. We marched up the numerous escalators to the appointed hall. Disney on Ice was in town - Beauty and the Beast version. On entering the arena two things were immediately obvious - our seats were not good and Disney have refined to an art form the various means to extract every last dollar from your wallet. The seating situation was easily remedied - a quick move ten rows back and across and the view was fine. The problem was the giant sucking sound of Disney drawing money from my hip pocket.

Disney form a three pronged attack on you in this regard. Firstly there is the food. This ranges from sickly sweet popcorn to sickly sweet ice crushes, all kept in cheap but memorable Disney buckets or cups. Second are the assorted stuff toys, play swords and some parts that looked more appropriate for the Mummies and Daddies. Thirdly was the programmes (yes, that's how I spell it, deal with it).

The man selling the programmes was an elderly American who had a superb command of Cantonese. He was miked up and sang two repeating jingles to hook the kids in - the English one was a neat rhyming couplet that went "Come buy a programme or your kids won't love you." Something like that. Being large, colourful and Disney they were in hot demand. Until one reached the counter. For a measly HK$70 one went away with an overlarge collection of photos from the American version of the show. However even more perverse was the programmes were only available in Chinese. There were no English versions whatsoever, despite numerous people asking for it (both local and expat). What is even more strange is the entire production was in English, without any translation.

So the geniuses (or genii for the pedants) at Disney on Ice stage an entire show in English, with English speaking voice overs, characters, and music, but the programmes are only in Chinese. Does anyone else find that strange? I mean besides the 2,000 bewildered patrons on Saturday morning?

Disney have enough to answer for already. They just added to the list.