EVERETT – Mishayla Yost met a monster on Thursday.
The 5-year-old didn’t even flinch when the furry 7-foot-tall monster drew near.
Instead, Mishayla – only about thigh-high to the turquoise and purple mass – rushed into his fuzzy belly with her arms wide for a hug.
Mishayla and almost 20 other children from Tomorrow’s Hope, a day care center for homeless and at-risk children, were invited to ice skate Friday with performers from the “Disney on Ice Monsters Inc.” show playing at the Everett Events Center this weekend.
The kids got skating tips with most of the monsters out of costume and got to mingle with the show’s star monsters, which are based on characters from the popular Disney/Pixar movie.
James P. Sullivan, or Sulley, the giant blue hairy guy who got the hug from Mishayla, greeted children along with his much smaller cohort, the green, spindly legged, one-eyed Mike Wazowski.
The kids skated for about 20 minutes with cast members dressed in black “Monsters Inc.” T-shirts, met Sully and Mike, and then posed for a group photo.
Max Liu of Taiwan, who plays a “big monster” in the show, said he loves interacting with kids.
“We see kids in the seats all the time, but I like skating with them,” Liu said.
For many of the children, it was their first time on ice skates.
Devin Delaney, 5, was a little down, not because he was scared of monsters but because he wasn’t as good at skating as he had hoped.
“Well, when I fell down, I didn’t feel like I did very good,” Devin said, crossing his arms.
“I was spinning around,” Mishayla told him.
“Yeah, well, I just walked,” Devin said. “Why wasn’t there a bunch of monsters? I wanted to meet more.”
Tomorrow’s Hope development director Deborah Harris Bolton said Disney donated 50 tickets for kids and their parents to attend Thursday night’s opening show.
“This is like every little kids’ dream,” Harris Bolton said, wobbling on her ice skates.
The Tomorrow’s Hope child care center, a program of Housing Hope, serves more than 100 children, including those from low-income and homeless families. The center has two 15-passenger vans that pick up kids from homeless shelters in the morning and drop them off at night.
“The effects of homelessness on children are much larger than people put any thought into,” Bolton said. “Children don’t ask to be homeless or low-income. Children are children, and (at Tomorrow’s Hope), they’re all treated the same.”
Meeting monsters is the experience of a lifetime for some of the kids, Harris Bolton said.
“This was something special nobody else got to do. They were singled out and told, ‘This is a gift to you.’ And it truly was a gift.”
Disney is a big corporation, but did its research, she said.
“Disney on Ice Monsters Inc.” continues through Sunday.
Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.
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