I have seen a lot of Broadway musicals, and I believe this is the most visually appealing, colorful, sparkly, and magical one yet! The sets were fantastic and captured the spirit of Agrabah as imagined by the creators of the movie. The most spectacular number is the showstopping "Friend Like Me" (and it did stop the show--for several minutes--while the audience loudly whooped and applauded). There are also a number of visual tricks that will leave many wondering, "How did they do that?". Particularly worth mentioning is the magic carpet ride, which was executed brilliantly (I was on the seventh row orchestra and I couldn't figure out the mechanics of it). Several additional songs made for a more full-fledged musical than the movie version, and they were enjoyable! I especially liked "A Million Miles Away" and "Proud of Your Boy."
As far as the cast, I am at a disadvantage, because BOTH the Genie and Aladdin (Argh, I SO wanted to see Adam Jacobs) were played by understudies. Standby Genie, Michael James Scott, was very good (although I have no basis for comparison to Iglehart), and I didn't feel cheated in that regard. But I am sorry to say that Aladdin's understudy, Joshua Dela Cruz, seemed rather overwhelmed by this vocally and physically demanding role. He seemed out of breath and a bit pitchy during the more active songs (particularly "One Jump Ahead") and his voice was not "Disney" enough for my taste (that is, he had a rather pronounced vibrato). He had zero chemistry with Courtney Reed (who otherwise gave a quite capable performance as Jasmine) and I think dragged her performance down a bit when they were on stage together. There were also some wardrobe malfunctions with Aladdin's turban, which kept getting caught on the microphone; this is easily forgivable, considering it is so early in the run AND Dela Cruz was clearly not used to playing this role. Jonathan Freeman was fantastic; as many probably know, he was the voice of Jafar in the movie, and his stage presence as the villain did not disappoint.
My only criticism of the Broadway version is the choice to replace Aladdin's monkey Abu and Jasmine's tiger Rajah with a set of three friends for Aladdin and three handmaidens for Jasmine. I realize the challenges of taking an animal from the animated feature to the stage (although DIsney has succeeded in this regard before), and it is true that Abu and Rajah, unlike Iago (who is cleverly cast as a crony of Jafar), don't have integral speaking roles, but function more as an audience for Jasmine and Aladdin to share their thoughts with. Still, I'm not sure that the solution was optimal. All six of these characters are extraneous to the plot, despite the attempt to give Aladdin's friends some purpose by involving them in freeing Aladdin from prison.
But still, on the whole, it was a terrific musical, and well worth the money!