Awesome Fluttershy! How was it? I've never been to Disney on Ice.
And the death or absence of one or both parents, is, at least I think just a theme in storytelling. All the movies in which a parent dies or is dead/gone done by Disney already have the death/absence of one or both parents in the orginial source material, like 'Snow White', 'Cinderella', 'Beauty and the Beast', 'Bambi' etc. You could argue Walt picked some of the stories because there are no mothers, but who knows?
And it's certainly prevalent outside of Disney movies, like 'How to Train Your Dragon', 'Harry Potter', and older stories like 'Hansel and Gretel' or 'Tom Sawyer'.
I never even thought about that with Penny and her mom and dad. That's interesting. I always wanted to see more of Penny's stage dad. I don't know why, he just seemed cool. It would be awesome if Disney did another Bolt movie that was the show they were filming in the movie, you know with the lasers, and the green-eyed man, and actiony shots and stuff. I always wanted to find out what happened in that. (I mean without the alien of course;)) Or even if they made it into a TV show - the same show in the movie. That would be cool.