This year my husband had a conference in Orlando during spring break. We jumped at the chance to turn this into a special Disney trip that the boys would cherish forever.
Almost 7, my oldest is onto the fact that there is some poor soul sweating unhappily inside that Mouse costume. But my five-year-old still believes. Or at least, he wants to believe. Ask him if that oversized, awkward-moving Winnie The Pooh is real and he will give you a definitive "yes" with a sad, wistful look in his eyes.
And so we made our plan. (And when I say "we made our plan" I mean, my husband and I agreed we needed a plan. Then he went off to work and I alone sat down and made a plan.) I tackled Disney the way I did any assignment from Ogilvy back in the day. I stockpiled pens and papers and folders and sat around with my feet on a coffee table, computer on my lap, and panicked.
I had forgotten how big Disney was. Or maybe it wasn't that big back then. We didn't have Buzz Lightyear and Monsters Inc. or a thousand of the other rides and parks and places that are there now. Legoland didn't exist three decades ago and therefore didn't present parents with a massive problem: To go to Legoland or not to go and have the boys hear about it at school and forever remind you that their first trip to the Happiest Place on Earth was marred by this blatant oversight.
(We chose not to go. I'm still waiting for that shoe to drop.)
And so. I talked to countless people about the parks, the rides and these fast passes, which also didn't exist the last time I was there. I read books, reviews and websites. I downloaded touring plans and made reservations. I researched. I prepped. I asked pertinent questions. (Should I bring a stroller since my son starts to whine after walking five steps, or will he be so filled with shock and awe by the magical surroundings that he'll just suck it up and joyfully skip through the park?) I whittled my stomach lining down to nothing with anxiety.
And when the day came, I was ready. I had a folder filled with the best rides for kids and the must-eat-at restaurants. My iPhone was loaded with apps that would tell me at any given time exactly how long the line was for the Mad Tea Party.
We were going to take on The Happiest Place On Earth and we were going to have FUN dammit. Easy, relaxed, well-planned and militant-organized FUN.
And we did. Kind of. Actually it depends on who you ask. If you ask my husband, he'll say it went great. Yes, it was busy and non-stop and hectic, (he was after all, there to work). But we did a lot and saw a lot and somehow managed to cram almost everything in. Sure, we had to adjust and adapt our expectations and schedules at the last minute and more or less go with the flow, but it worked.
Sadly, that's where things begin to fall apart for me. Unfortunately, "go with the flow" is something I don't know how to do whatsoever. I was born a planner. I pretty sure I came into the world clutching a to-do list of the things I needed to accomplish on Day 1. My body physically rebels against any attempt to "play things by ear."
Let me be more clear about this. Deviating from plans at all throws me into a tailspin. In public places when this happens, I try and maintain a modicum of composure for appearance's sake, but inside, I actually start to suffer a series of small strokes. What are we going to DO if we're not sticking to The Plan? How will we get everything DONE? How will we have FUN? Because as you can clearly see, FUN is scheduled, right here, in the right-hand margin, between 10-11 AM. I've even highlighted it to emphasize its importance. If we skip that, we're screwed!
Still, thanks to my husband, I am often dragged, kicking and screaming toward a more chill approach to things. I may shrug my shoulders and appear to the outside world to be the poster-child for adaptability, but rest-assured I am internally shutting down and mentally clinging to the lists I've meticulously hand-written on flash cards and then retyped in Word. I simply don't know how to let go of the schedule I've mapped out in my head or the notes I've made and highlighted in the margins of my mind.
But I digress.
If you ask ME how the trip went I'll also say "great." But we've been home for a few weeks now. I have a fantastic prescription for hindsight which usually helps me see that, yes, everything in fact DID go really well. Despite.
In fact, I have completely forgotten how upset I was that we ended up canceling all of our super important Character Dinners that I agonized over FOR WEEKS. What? We're NOT going to stay at the park until midnight and instead come back to the hotel at 2 PM for some fun pool time? I forgot about that seconds ago. I barely remember that we didn't go on Peter Pan on Day One at Magic Kingdom when we were ALREADY ON that side of the park and therefore had to make a mad dash there on Day Two so that we could get it out of the way and return back to the other side of the park and get on Splash Mountain.
See? Under the bridge.
And the boys? Well, they loved it. Especially the unscheduled pool time. And I don't know for sure, but I'm not sure they even realized that the Starbucks bagel we shoved down their throats Friday morning so we could get to The Magic Kindgom before the rest of America was NOT even on my PhDisney schedule.
Still. Despite the trip's success, I don't know that we'll be racing back next year. Or the year after.
It's not that I don't get Disney, because I do. Much to my embarrassment, I actually stood in line alone to ride It's A Small World because I had to relive the memory. My three boys bailed on me and so I, for nostalgia's sake, sat through what felt like three hours of spinning dolls and that song. (I actually do like the song, it would be inhumane not to like it, BUT perhaps a short 25-second snipped on iTunes would have sufficed.) I also insisted on the Peter Pan and Snow White rides. Simply because somewhere deep down inside of me I have never forgotten how exhilarating it felt to lift off over London Bridge or how scared I was of the Evil Queen and her botched manicure.
But the next time I go, (down the road, with my grandchildren) I'm going to plan a little differently. In fact, I've already started my list:
BRING THE STROLLER: Unless your child is pushing 80 and wheelchair bound, bring the damn stroller. In fact, make it a double.
PLAN AHEAD: There is A LOT of ground to cover there and the park charges about $10,000 per step. If you want to get your money's worth, you're going to want to do a fair number of things each day. Go online. Research. Talk to people. Make a plan. Then be prepared to have all these plans unmaliciously yet, most definitely, tossed out the window by the people you loving created them for.
PUT A CHIP IN YOUR CHILD: I realize this isn't legal, or maybe even humane, and I really don't understand why the hell not. We ID our pets. We don't want to risk losing our pets. But our children? We'll take the chance. And the parks are SO crowded. Miserably crowded. Especially around 2 PM. If your child is too old for one of those kiddie leashes, (i.e., over 30) then I recommend writing their names, hotel info and you and your spouses' cell phone numbers on a piece of paper and putting it in their shoe. Don't forget to tell your kids it's in there. Make sure they know that if they get lost, they need to take out this piece of paper and to give it to an adult, preferably someone holding a magic wand, who has been screened and found to NOT be a known child molester. I'm assuming that somewhere in all those layers of tulle they have a pocket with a cell-phone in case of emergency.
TALK ABOUT SEX: If you plan to have more than one child, make sure that they are the same sex. Otherwise you will be forced to separate from your spouse and their same-sex child most of the time you are at the park. You will not see them again until you are checking in at the airport gate. Because one will want to go plunging down the five-story vertical Splash Mountain drop while the other will want to spend THREE HOURS IN LINE waiting to meet Rapunzel.
RAPUNZEL: I so badly wanted to talk to the poor girl beneath the hair and make-up and just ask her how she was really doing. But I wasn't willing to stand in that damn line.
FAST PASSES: Besides your health, these are the most important things on earth. Be aware that they can sell-out by mid-day and then you are really and truly screwed.
GO ON THE RIDES WITH YOUR KIDS: Don't wimp out. Even if you know they will make you sick. Remarkably, there will be a grown-up in the bathroom who handled the Star Tours simulator ride worse than you. I promise.
COMMUNICATE: Talk to your spouse about WHICH of the six million nearby stroller parking lots you're parking your stroller in. Or make a note in your iPhone. This helps if you have an iPhone.
DON'T LOSE YOUR iPHONE: God, whatever you do -- do not let it out of your sight when your plane touches down in Orlando, OR when you're using the restroom after the flight OR in the rental car line. Chain it to your body, glue it to the palm of your hand, but just DO NOT LOSE IT.
HAVE FUN AND ENJOY THE RIDE: Don't worry if it doesn't all go according to plan. Because it won't. And it will still be fine - and fun. And if you figure out how to do this, please let me know.
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