Las Vegas skater’s dream comes true as part of the cast of Disney on Ice
Some people spend their lives trying to figure out what they want to do with them.
Michaella Bradley knew when she turned 8. When a family friend took her skating, “the moment I got on the ice I just fell in love,” Bradley recalls. “I remember begging my mom to take me back.”
Since then, she’s never really left the ice.
The Las Vegas native, now 20, returns to her hometown with fellow cast members in Disney on Ice’s “Worlds of Enchantment,” which opens a four-day run Thursday at the Thomas & Mack Center.
Being in the Disney-themed show also triggers fond memories for Bradley, who recalls seeing Disney on Ice — from a front-row vantage point — as a young girl.
“It was so exciting — I was just wonder-struck,” she recalls. “I told my mom that was what I wanted to do.”
And while some people may experience slips and falls in their quest to transform dreams into reality, Bradley has skated steadily forward.
In “Worlds of Enchantment,” her roles include a green army soldier in the show’s “Toy Story 3” segment, a citizen in “Frozen’s” fictional realm of Arendelle and “one of the anemones” in “The Little Mermaid” sequence. (Bradley’s previous Disney on Ice roles range from “Toy Story’s” rootin-tootin’ Jessie to “Beauty and the Beast’s” Belle and “Alice in Wonderland’s” title character.)
Bradley initially auditioned for Disney on Ice in January 2015 — during the show’s annual Las Vegas tour stop — but didn’t find out she’d made the cast until August of that year.
Her success doesn’t surprise her figure skating coach, Camilla Nilsson, skating director at the Fiesta Rancho’s SoBe Ice Arena.
“She’s a little stubborn, so that was good,” Nilsson says of Bradley. “You don’t want to give up.”
Although “it took awhile in getting the right lines for her, she could jump,” the coach says of her former student. “The rest was just training.”
Overall, Nilsson adds, “I’m really, really happy that she can use what she trained for so long.”
When Bradley first hit the ice, she responded to “the fact that I just felt free,” she says. “I loved the challenging part of the sport. I thought, ‘This is hard to do, but I’m going to make it (look) easy.’ ”
Starting with group lessons, then advancing to junior lessons, Bradley competed — starting at age 9 and continuing into her teens — and won some medals along the way.
“I wanted to go to the Olympics,” she acknowledges, but “I knew how long a road that was.”
Besides, “I didn’t love competing,” Bradley adds during a telephone interview from a Disney on Ice tour stop in Southern California.
“I loved performing and showing off,” as opposed to being “consistently nervous and afraid” that judges wouldn’t approve of her skating, she explains. “I always knew I was leaning more toward show skating.”
To accommodate her commitment to her sport, Bradley — who attended Northwest Career and Technical Academy — switched to an online charter school, Beacon Academy, to complete her high school studies.
She plans to return to school to study psychology — ultimately becoming a sports psychologist — in five or six years.
For now, however, Bradley’s happy to hit the road, traveling North America with her Disney on Ice family.
“It’s quite the change of lifestyle,” she admits, describing it as “a whole new world” from her life in northwest Las Vegas with her parents, who operate a local animal clinic.
“I struggled my first year” on tour, Bradley notes, admitting she “got pretty homesick.”
That is, until she remembered “how lucky I was and how blessed I was” — and realized she and her fellow Disney on Ice skaters were “like one big family,” too. “I couldn’t be happier to spend nine months a year with them.”
Read more from Carol Cling at reviewjournalcom. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.
Preview
What: Disney on Ice
When: 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday; 11:30 a.m., 3 and 7 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 5 p.m. Sunday
Where: Thomas & Mack Center, Tropicana Avenue and Swenson Street
Tickets: $18-$83 (702-739-3267, UNLVtickets.com)
