For Mia and Kathleen and a Bunch of Other People

Apparently if you take your kid to Disney World four times in five years (Which, OMG. Spoiled much?) (YES.), people get the impression that you maybe know a thing or two about planning a Disney vacation.

Um, no.

Each time we go, I find a dozen things I didn't know, come across ideas for the future, and change my opinion on stuff that I thought I had all figured out. It's kind of funny because Disney World is full of "experts" who are more than willing to do things like argue with you that the 3:00 parade starts at 2:00, are animate that they rode the monorail to Downtown Disney, and are all too willing to tell you that they saw a Tweety Bird t-shirt in the store that morning and where did it go? (All actual "discussions" I had with guests when I worked at Walt Disney World in college.) (People are stupid.)

Anyway, while I'm no expert, a few people have asked me to post some Disney tips. I'm going to do exactly that in the next few days. Which, if you find it boring and annoying, BLAME THEM. It wasn't my idea. I'm just too lazy to write the same email more than twice, so posting it is.

Tip #1: Remind yourself frequently why you're going, and then remind yourself why you're there constantly.

Are you going to have fun? Are you going because you want your kid to have fun? Are you going just to get a break from the every day? It doesn't matter what your why is, you just need to keep it in mind.

For example, there is this thing that I saw when I worked there that used to drive me absolutely crazy. People feel like they have to squeeze every possible second out of Disney World. It costs a crap-ton of money to be there, so they make sure they are there when the first park opens in the morning, drag their kid to another park until late into the night, and then head over to Downtown Disney until it closes at midnight or later. If you think about it, dragging a kid around anywhere (even the happiest place on earth) 16-18 hours in a day is a recipe for disaster. I saw way more disasters than I could ever begin to count. Tired, exhausted kids would get drug all through the store, screaming and crying. The parents would be annoyed and yelling at the kids for being crabby. Then the parent would complain that they were spending all that money so the kids could have a good time, but look at all that sobbing!

The thing is, you're there for the experience. You want to remember that experience as a good thing.

Set yourself up for a good experience (read: RELAXING!) and then be willing to change your plans if you find things going downhill. If you start seeing faces like this:

 

It is time to regroup. Go back to the hotel (you are paying for it, after all--why not make use of it?), sit down for a meal, do something. Just don't jump in a long line thinking that riding Space Mountain is going to fix it all. Misery multiplies when it's waiting in a line.

(Side track: the story behind the teary photo is that She Who Wouldn't Stop Running once again decided to find out the hard way that I was giving good advice when I told her it wasn't safe to run in the park. She crashed into an older boy at full speed, knocking both herself and him over. He was totally fine, as was she, except that she was horribly embarrassed. Also, she HATES it when I'm right. Thus, sob city for about half an hour.)

So. Relax. Enjoy yourself. Don't stress out. Don't be afraid to change plans if the situation warrants. Know why you're there and remind yourself of it often.

And just have fun.

More tips to come, but if you have a specific question, ask it in comments or on Facebook please and thank you and y'all are the bestest.

I Should Have Told Her They Are Called Thunderwagons

One of these days I'll stop talking about our trip to Orlando, but today is not that day. Today is the day that I bring up that day a year ago in which it became amazingly clear that Alexis had a major hole in her vocabulary. She who started talking long before she walked, she with the colossal vocabulary, she of far too many words 24/7, she did not know the word "stroller."

Really.

We were standing in Disney Studios when it became clear. A then 4-year old Alexis kept saying, "I want one of those," and after much pointing and debate, we finally realized that she wanted one of those seats with wheels and she was all, "YEAH! I WANT ONE!"

And we were all, "Are you kidding us? SERIOUSLY?" It wasn't all that surprising that the kid didn't know the word "stroller" because she probably always thought of them as "Stupid" or "Evil" or "Things That Will Cause Me to Scream My Head Off So Don't Even Think About It." We had given up on trying to force the kid to sit in a stroller a few weeks after she learned to walk. It was either let her roam or be Those Parent, Those Parents whose kid doesn't stop screaming the entire time you're in Kohls and just trying to buy a lousy pair of shoes.

Not that anything like that happened.

OK, it did happen. Several times. Any time I put Alexis in a stroller, she would turn into a boiling tea kettle, screeching at the top of her lungs and with steam coming out of her ears. There are no words that can adequately describe how much she hated to sit in a stroller other than to say you know how much you hate to be wrong? And how much you hate when people block the grid and cause traffic jams? And how much you hate when stink bugs land in the skillet when you're trying to cook eggs? Add those all together and multiply that hate by infinity and you might start to get close to how much Alexis hated to be in a stroller.

So you can imagine how hard we laughed when Alexis asked us to rent a stroller for her to use at Disney Studios. Heck, I chuckle just thinking about it. It's probably the funniest joke she's ever told.

And, yet, when it came time to travel to Orlando again this year, I looked at Mr. Husband and uttered the words I never thought would ever come out of my mouth. "We should probably take a stroller," I said. He looked at me with a stunned expression, but then nodded and went to hunt for one. It took him HOURS to figure out where we had hidden the stroller in the garage because, you know, we haven't used it since long before we moved here. Still, he found it.

I fully expected to get absolutely no use out of the stroller, other than the planned use as a mode of transportation for our cooler. You see, we try very hard not to buy snacks and drinks when we're at Disney World. Instead, we fill a little cooler with bottles of water and a few packaged snacks. I figured we'd loop that cooler on the back of the stroller, park the whole thing, and just go back when we needed drinks or whatever. We'd be saving money AND sparing our backs from the major torture of hauling around ten pounds worth of water.

That part of the plan mostly worked. The only thing was that we never parked the stroller, except to ride rides.

Hold on a second, I need to compose myself.

We never parked the stroller.

*WOOOWSERS.*

Anyway.

My kid. MY KID. She sat in a stroller pretty much the entire time we were at Disney World. In that one week, she probably spent more time in a stroller than she did the past four years combined.

It was all very confusing.

Especially when She Who Doesn't Sleep decided to take a nap in that stroller.

The apocalypse. It's coming.

A Cultural Shift

I was chasing envy when I jumped aboard the monorail. Mr. Husband had been making memories with Alexis all over Disney World while I worked, and I was ready to get in on some that memory-making myself. Just as the ever present voice began to belt out, "por favor manténgase alejado de las puertas," a herd of teenage girls boarded the monorail.

As I squished into a corner to make room for the herd, I instinctively rolled my eyes. I had just heard an interesting-to-me statistic during the closing keynote of my conference, and there it was live and in person. In the 1960s 10-12% of people said they were "significant people" when polled. Now that statistic is closer to 90%. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, there's no denying that the quarterlife crisis is a real thing. Those girls are on the brink of discovering that they aren't as important as they believe. I hope somebody give them some floaties and helmets so that they survive the fall mostly intact.

I clutched the pole as the monorail began to move, not so much as to keep my balance but because I had just had the thought that some day I'm going to have one of those creatures of my own. A teenage girl. In my house. You all weren't there to hold me, so I had to depend on the pole to keep me from falling over dead with dread. Not helping: my eventual teenage girl creature will have friends like those teenage girl creatures.

ACK. ACK. ACK.

One of the girls, a tall brunette wearing shorts that would make Daisy Duke blush and a t-shirt that loudly proclaimed the name of her high school, started to tell her friends a story. She told them about how the previous night she and another group had been on the monorail leaving the Magic Kingdom when they had noticed a man. And "OMG, he was all by himself. How weird is that?"

I stood there on the monorail all alone. I guess I'm weird, too.

She continued on with her story, adding in the detail that the man was sitting on the monorail eating popcorn. Oh, and he was "Soooo creepy."

By that point in the story I felt like I was on a first name basis with Britney as she continued telling her tale. She had been using the pole like a stripper pole, dancing and generally having a great time, as another of her friends (Mandy, in case you were curious) took pictures with her phone. She described a raucous good time, a little bit of flirtatious crazy in the midst of the Rat's favorite mode of transportation.

I smiled a bit at the image because, really, who hasn't looked at those monorail poles and pictured Demi Moore swinging around with Def Leppard blaring in the background? But then she added in that Creepy Popcorn Guy just sat in that seat and kept eating his popcorn as she danced and her friend took pictures. A hefty dose of Judgy McJudgerton Speak dropped out of her mouth as she proclaimed him creepy and odd and generally a giant loser.

And I thought, when exactly did this happen? When did a guy sitting alone on a monorail eating popcorn become unacceptable while a teenage girl pole-dancing and letting a friend take her picture became The Norm?

Just get off my lawn, whippersnappers.