I feel pretty conflicted about "Panda!". Some of these acrobats and martial artists have spent their whole lives perfecting their craft and deserve to be applauded and recognized for their skills. It just misses the mark as a total package and I can't put my finger on just one thing.
My friends and coworkers that had already seen this were really down on it. Are Las Vegans collectively so numb and jaded to this kind of show since it's almost all "been there, done that"? I guess I feel that way now which is unfortunate.
I liked the acrobats jumping through hoops, the little kung fu kid and the costumes. The story is pretty loose but I don't really care about that kind of stuff when it comes to Cirque du Shaolin. Some of the sets were done well and I thought the all digital LED background was cool. That made it easy to drastically change the mood and appearance of the stage very quickly.
But the majority of the audience was pretty blahzay about it all this evening. Applause for the performers was pretty apathetic, the juggler dropped his balls, one percussionist was off rhythm like he was playing drunk. Near the end, various performers were trying to get the crowd to clap along to no avail. That was kind of embarrassing.
If you're paying for tickets, you could argue that the rear orchestra would be the best seating area to full absorb all the stuff happening in the show. Plus you would be able to see all the aerials coming from up top and performers in the aisles where the people right up front would have to turn around to see everything behind them.
I am curious what the reasons were behind LV Sands Corp bringing in this show. They've generally done a good job booking counter entertainment programming over the years like Blue Man, Phantom and Jersey Boys in the past so that tourists could do one Cirque show and then something different the next night. If their plan was to go head to head with that then they missed the mark in that regard. Almost every Cirque du Soleil show is better than this. Maybe they're trying to make all their high roller Chinese baccarat players happy or at the very least their wives and kids as they gambled away without distraction for 2 hours.
I could see this show being a big HIT in Colorado or Washington state for some reason :)