Holographic circus animals? I'd say that's a big improvement.

As a child, I was an avid Mickey Mouse Club fan. Each afternoon, I watched the show, crushing on cutie pie Mouseketeer Cubbie O'Brien and Tim Considine of "Spin and Marty" fame. When I grew up, I wanted to be as perky and glamorous as Annette Funicello. 

The Mickey Mouse Club show was on daily, and each day had a theme - and a song to go with it. "Today is Tuesday, you know what that means? There's going to be a special guest." Friday was the Talent Rodeo, which was introduced by the lilting tune:

Saddle your pony, here we go

Down to the Talent Rodeo

Bring along Susie, Jack and Joe

Join the Talent Roundup

Round 'em up. Bring 'em in.
Everybody's sure to win.
Step right up, here we go.
Oh, what a rodeo!

(Sadly, my only talent is the ability to recall lyrics and tune I last heard in 1959.)

Thursday was Circus Day, and the song included the lines: 

Here comes the circus
Everyone loves the circus

Emphasis mine!

Even at the age of five, when I first began watching the Mickey Mouse Club, I knew that I was always going to be an oddball, an outsider. Everyone loves the circus? Not I! I'd never been to one, yet still I knew that the circus was not for me. I'd seen Toby Tyler on Disney. I'd watched Circus Boy. I was a regular viewer of Bozo, even though I despised clowns. But the circus? Hella no!

In the early 1960's, there was a show on Friday nights, International Showtime, that each week featured highlights from a different European circus. I watched it with my father, the two of us sitting there making fun of it. How, my father would ask, does someone learn that they have a talent for spinning plates? Why, he would ask, are they forcing those poor animals to act so unnaturally?

I finally saw a circus in person when I was a senior in high school.

During April vacation that year, my friend Kathy and I took the bus to NYC and spent the week on the pullout couch in the Queens living room of her career gal Aunt Mary, who worked for PanAm. Mary took us to the circus at Madison Square Garden. Between fear that the clown marauding around the stands was going to approach me, and loathing of the sideshow (still a thing, back in the day - this was 1967) which showcased "freaks", I did not enjoy myself in the least. The folks on exhibit - bearded fat lady, giant - all seemed so depressed and miserable. And the animal acts? Those poor, beautiful creatures. I pretty much vowed then and there that this would be my first, last, and one and only trip to the circus.

And it was, until I took my nieces to the Big Apple Circus when they were little. The Big Apple was quite a nice little circus. The aerialists were amazing, and Bello Nock, who was a highwire performer, was the only clown I have ever enjoyed. He was brilliant. The Big Apple didn't have any traditional circus animals. No lions, no tigers, no bears. Oh my! No elephants. Just rescue dogs, horses and ponies. The circus was actually lovely. 

We did make the mistake of taking the girls to the big kahuna, Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey. Too loud! Too much going on! Too many clowns. (Since one is one too many clowns, I was really out of my element.) Lots of wild animals that didn't look like they were loving the circus, that's for sure. 

The circuses have a controversial history due to circus animals being one of the most abused and mistreated animals in the world. Many circuses have had to shut down their operations in these last decades after rising voices of the animal activists brought the reality of circus life for animals into the spotlight. (Source: Interesting Engineering)

Well, there's some good news here, and technology's bringing it.

Circus Roncalli, a Germany-based circus troupe, became the first in the world to replace circus animals with holograms when it announced the change in 2019, becoming the pioneer of the futuristic hologram approach.

Circus Roncalli - wonder if they're any relation to Pope John XXIII, who's "civilian name" was Angelo Roncalli - stopped putting real live animals out there, and instead installed laser projectors. 

The high-tech projectors are circularly arranged around the ring and produce life-sized, partly oversized animal holograms on a specially developed, transparent, and circular projection surface.

Thanks to the 360° 3D stunning holographic images of the animals such as horses, elephants, and fish, the Circus has not had live animals in its ring for years.

Bravo, Circus Roncalli!

Not only are they not putting poor wild animals through cruel and unusual paces, they're also helping the environment by not lugging the animals around, feeding them, etc. 

And the audiences are loving it. 

I'm not the world's foremost virtual reality enthusiast, but I might even go to a circus that had holographic animal acts. And it'd be even better if the clowns were holographic, too!