Fortunately, Tom Dickson and Catarina Lindgren had their own homegrown research and development department.

The couple, married since 1986, began choreographing “Disney on Ice: Princess Classics” eight years ago.

“We hadn’t done anything like that before and weren’t fully involved in all things Disney, but we happened to have 4-year-old twins at the time,” Dickson said.

In separate telephone interviews from the skating rink where they teach in Colorado Springs, the couple said the input of their children — one boy, one girl — came in handy.

“They were there the whole time,” Lindgren said. “They traveled with us to Florida and stayed with us and came to the rink. They thought the fireworks were too loud — they got scared. They got so into it.”

The skating tour, which comes to the i wireless Center in Moline for eight performances next week, gives the spotlight to the Disney princesses: Cinderella, Jasmine (from “Aladdin”), Ariel (“The Little Mermaid”), Belle (“Beauty and the Beast”), Sleeping Beauty, Mulan and Snow White.

The couple knows all about skating shows, having toured together in the Ice Capades, the predecessor to Disney on Ice, but “Princess Classics” is their first and, so far, only, endeavor for the Mouse House.

“They told us they wanted to inject the show with some really good skating,” said Dickson, a four-time winner of choreographer of the year by the Professional Skaters Association and U.S. Figure Skating Association. “They gave us a wide parameter to work with.”

Both got to be involved in the show from the ground up, including suggesting variations on Disney music for the skaters, advising on costumes that would be more skater-friendly and scenes that included putting Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs in a game of musical chairs for one scene.

“We learned to be entertainers,” said Lindgren, an Olympic Games skater for her home country of Sweden. “It’s really what the crowd’s into.”

Working together was beneficial for the couple, who staged some numbers on their dining room table and their chess board.

“We know each other so well to know what to expect and what we can get out of each other,” Dickson said.

They had to choreograph solo numbers for each princess, couples numbers for each princess with her prince and group numbers.

Dickson said the experience allowed him and his wife to try something different from training Olympic-level skaters as they currently do.

“There’s a difference in their focus,” he said. “When you’re working with competitive skaters who try to make the Olympic team, their focus is ... technical. When you work for someone like Disney, it’s the theatrical impact of the character you want to come across.”

Both said they would be willing to choreograph for Disney again, but their twins — now 12 — are involved in school and extracurricular activities that would make it difficult to travel.

“We loved the experience,” Lindgren said.