With a venue switch two days prior, a group of long-rehearsed, young students and their music teacher pull off a show to their families’ and school’s cheers. A Disney script? Not May 11. This was real.

“I’m so, so proud of them. They’ve worked really hard on all this music,” Wiscasset Elementary School music teacher Carole Drury told a crowd of hundreds behind WES. She was talking about the kindergarten and first, second and third graders who had, in mouse ears, just delivered nearly an hour of Disney hits, with dancing kicks, arms reaching toward the evening sky and, when advising against smiling at a crocodile, head-shaking.

They made the crocodile’s snapping mouth by stretching their open arms and clapping them closed. It all would have happened in the gym, if not for a regional uptick in COVID. The show was moving outside, Drury announced in a letter May 9. “We want all families to feel comfortable attending,” she wrote.

Parents interviewed were, with some noting, with the temperatures still near 70F, it was probably nicer to be outside anyway. “As long as the midges don’t carry us away,” third grader Willow Orr’s mother Michelle Coleson-Orr said, laughing. Parents said they and their children in the show were excited. “Oh, she’s pumped,” Heather Gustafson said of daughter Aubree, 5. The kindergartener’s brother Tim, in fourth grade, is in a show May 25. Drury said the fourth through 12th grade chorus and band concert is at 6:30 p.m. at Wiscasset Middle High School.

Kindergarten and first grade sang “Never smile at a crocodile” and “You can fly ...,” both from “Peter Pan”; “A spoonful of sugar,” from “Mary Poppins”; “Mickey Mouse March,” from “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Theme”; and, sung loudly after being announced as one of their favorites, “The Bare Necessities,” from “Jungle Book.”

Second and third graders sang “Be our guest,” from “Beauty and the Beast”; “You’ve got a friend in me,” from “Toy Story”; “Try everything,” from “Zootopia”; “Under the sea,” from “The Little Mermaid”; and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” from “Mary Poppins.”

All the participating classes joined at the end for “I just can’t wait to be king,” from “Lion King.”

“This is our magic kingdom this evening, in back of Wiscasset Elementary,” Principal Kathleen Pastore said. She also told families to save the date of Sunday, Aug. 14 for an in-person Set for Success event from 1 to 3 p.m. to get backpacks and more.