So I promised the kids that when we sold the condo, we'd go to Disney. They, of course, had no idea what I was talking about. I could have taken them to the Disney Store and they would have been delighted. I decided to do them one better and actually go to Florida for a Griswold-style vacation, the kind that scar children for life. All in all, we had a pretty good time.
If you are planning a trip to Disney, my first piece of advice is not to take a sip of any sort of beverage before you add up the cost of your tickets, because you will promptly spit it all over your computer when you read, with shock and disbelief, how much this little boondoggle will cost you.
The rest of my advice follows. I hope you will find it helpful.
-PDM
1.) The more things change, the more they stay the same
The last time I was at Disney was in 2002. I was in Orlando for a work convention, and with Scott no less. This was, of course, long before we had children. We rode Pirates of the Caribbean and tried on some funny hats before absconding to Epcot where they serve alcohol.
That trip required exactly zero planning, and while I remember being surprised by the cost of a ticket, I didn’t think about it again once I was inside the park.
This time, though, I had palpitations trying to plan a trip to Disney, and specifically trying to understand the “FastPass.”
Apparently, now when you buy a ticket to a Disney Park, you get three "FastPasses" that you can set up online. These are sort of appointments that you can make with the rides that allow you to jump the line. You can change them once you set them up, but they also sell out (I'm looking at you, Elsa, and you Splash Mountain, and you, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train), so it's hard to get them for the most popular rides.
Not helping was the fact that we planned this trip only weeks in advance, or that I kept logging onto the Disney Web site only to get overwhelmed and open up Facebook instead, or that Scott had advised me to, and I quote, make it awesome. No pressure there.
In the end, I persuaded a friend who had done this all before to come over to my house and plan the whole thing. We bought the tickets after she did some math about the best value, she set up my FastPasses for me, and even coached me through a conversation with the dining reservations people about booking a dinner with Cinderella, like some kind of modern day Cyranno de Bergerac.
Friend: Ask her what characters are going to be there.
Me to lady on phone: Yes, and who’s going to be there?
That’s how debilitating the experience was. I couldn’t even handle a dinner reservation.
The rest of the experience was pretty much the one you remember. The lines are crazy long and the rides are exactly the same. In fact, some of them are probably too much the same. The Carousel of Progress announces at the start of the ride that it “begins at the turn of the century”—by which they do not mean the one 14 years ago, but the one 114 years ago. The ride ends with a scene involving laser disks (!) and a vague notion about voice-activated appliances, only they mean your crappy 1980s oven and not your internet-enabled computer phone.
Disney did update Pirates of the Caribbean complete with no fewer than three—three!—anamotronic Johnny Depps (sadly not available in the gift shop). You'll be happy to know they replaced the pirate rape scene with a "wench auction," where pirates bid on women to marry, which in no way reminded me of Boko Haram. Gah.
But even though Small World takes a lot of abuse for being corny (which it is) and culturally insensive (which it is) when the boat went around the corner Kai said, “It’s so beautiful,” and at the same time Ryan said, “I’m so happy,” and we were all together and no one was on their iPad, I was so glad we’d set up that damned FastPass.
2.) Take the family you have, not the family you want
Is everyone tall enough to ride everything at Universal? Do they care about Harry Potter? Do they love 3D movies starring Michael Jackson and some space puppets? If the answer is “no,” do something else. Go to a different park, and go back to Universal in a few years. It will still be there.
Also, think about how you want to schedule your time.
I realized at 7 am on the first day that I'd planned out this whole trip not for my family, but for some other, different family—a family more like the one I'd grown up in, where everyone was awake at 6 am, dressed in matching outfits and ready to go to the Magic Kingdom to have some fun, goddammit, because we didn't come all this way and pay all this money just to lay around.
Scott and I had agreed that we'd try to be on the 8 am shuttle to the park, but when 7:45 rolled around and everyone but me was still sound asleep, I realized I had a choice to make. Could I have gotten everyone up and out the door? Probably. Would they have hated me? Absolutely. The amount of cajoling, nagging, yelling and physical prodding that it would take to get everyone on the early shuttle would 86 our entire vacation.
I sat down that morning and changed all of our FastPasses so that nothing started before 11:30. Did we miss Rapunzel? Yes. Did we miss Jedi training? Yes. Did we miss every (free) shuttle and instead took (very expensive) cabs to the park? Yes.
And was it totally worth it? Oh, yes.
We really did want to get to the parks early and milk every second of our time at Disney. But that is not the kind of family we are.
3.) You don’t have to bring cash
Me to popcorn lady: Do you take credit cards?
Popcorn lady to me: Ma’am, the mouse accepts all forms of payment.
4.) I hope you like nuggets and fries
It is incredibly hard to eat at Disney. Or maybe I should say that it was incredibly hard for us.
"I think it's not bad if you plan," Scott said at one point, apparently forgetting that I had put a lot of time into planning this trip. Never once did it occur to me to think about food.
I figured we'd eat at the parks. I also thought, stupidly, I guess, that the food would be easy to get.
The first place we tried was closed, even though my Disney app said it was open. After much debate, we ended up at some quick-serve place in Tomorrowland, where the options included chicken in Bay 1, burgers in Bay 2 and salads in Bay 3. We waited in a ridiculous line to get the kids chicken nuggets and fries in Bay 1. After we got the kids seated, I went after a salad in Bay 3, only to discover that I could have gotten the nuggets in the salad bay, that "salad" meant iceberg and giardiniera. I was, however, able to use my new knowledge to get Scott a hamburger even though I was NOT in Bay 2. Oh, and lunch was $50.
My family is really picky when it comes to food. Ryan eats pasta for every meal. Kai eats nuggets, but will ask for the occasional vegetable. They both like pizza, but only the kind I make. Scott's just as picky in his own way—he won't eat anything with mayonnaise or ketchup or pickles on it, nothing with any sort of sauce or clouded in any kind of mystery.
The food was slow, expensive and hard to find, which is the golden triangle of bad food decisions. You couldn't get a quick bite between FastPasses because there is no quick bite, and the nearest restaurant might only serve pot roast macaroni and cheese, which I swear to you is an actual restaurant and that is all they serve. At Hollywood Studios, I gave up and everyone just ate ice cream for lunch, because wtf.
5.) Bring sanitizing hand wipes
I am currently suffering from some form of dread disease, complete with a cough and an angry red rash, that I can only assume I got by touching seats and handlebars and railings that have been touched my millions of people, most of them children, since 1971 and then sitting down to lunch realizing I hadn’t washed my hands and the nearest bathroom was just too damn far away.
At the end of the first day, Ryan and I went to the Grand Floridian Hotel for dinner with Cinderella. I lingered in the restroom, washing my hands with almond-scented soap, letting them get extra-foamy, scrubbing between my fingers and up my wrists. I told Scott about how good it felt to wash my hands and he agreed, saying that he’d stood at the faucet for a lot longer than normal.
Anyway. Bring wipes. You’re welcome. Oh, and wash your hands after you see me this week.
6.) Keep an open mind with the princesses
I know, I know. Cinderella married a guy only to get away from her family, Belle could fix her guy if she loved him enough, Ariel gave up her voice for her man.
But THIS lovely princess got down on one knee and explained to Ryan that to figure out how many bows are on your t-shirt, you count the number of bows across, then the number of bows down and multiply them together. And that, my friends, is how a princess uses her brain.
7.) You might cry for no reason you can discern during the entire Frozen Sing-a-Long (and I totally did), which you can just chalk up to the magic of Disney
There was a moment when I stopped taking posed pictures of the kids and just tried to capture their faces—on Small World, on Dumbo, during the Beauty and the Beast show, during the Frozen Sing-a-Long.
Because this is why you go to Disney, why you pay the money and eat crappy food and stand in the crazy lines, why you brave the tantrums, including the one where your daughter punches you for not buying her a cookie.
Actual cookie-related tantrum.
It’s to see the wonder on their little faces:
And, anyway, it really is kind of a magical place.
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