We counted the weeks, days, hours, and minutes and it finally got here. This week our family traveled to film the Season Finale of America's Funniest Home Videos - in Disney World! Flying with three small kids is always a scary proposition, and this time was no different. I was extremely relieved to learn that our flight to Orlando would take approximately half as long as the previous ones to Los Angeles. After waking the kids up at 4:30 AM so we could leave home by 5:00, we drove the two hours to the Memphis airport and arrived yawning and bleary eyed just in time to board our flight.
The people on our flight and I are happy to report that the trip to Florida was pretty uneventful. The big girls didn't make a sound, which prompted me to check on them several times, and Sheridan slept most of the way.
Once we arrived at our fabulous hotel, the Animal Kingdom Lodge, our children suddenly lost the ability to walk. I don't mean that they couldn't transport themselves from place to place, I mean that they could no longer do so at a walk. Moving from one place to another began to require running, skipping, twirling, or some other visual manifestation of pure joy. At first, we assumed that our kids were weird. (Don't we always?) However, as we began to watch other people and their kids, we began to understand that it was a population wide condition. Simply being on a Disney property causes kids to lose the ability to hide their joy. And you want to know something else? It pretty much has that effect on their parents, too.
Our vacation was absolutely one of the most wonderful weeks of my life. Was it hot and humid? Yes. Give me a break. It's in central Florida, people. Was it crowded? Sure. It's a huge park in the number one vacation destination in the world. But we went there fully intending to have a wonderful time with our kids watching them experience the magic of childhood, and that's exactly what happened.
Walt Disney called his parks the "Happiest Place on Earth." I tend to agree with him, but I know there are people out there who may not. My husband and I had a ball watching some woman waiting on a bus from the hotel to the park. We had been sitting there about half an hour, just enjoying the breeze, mild weather, and soft music. She on the other hand, was getting angrier with each passing minute. You could almost feel her blood pressure going up. She huffed, she sighed, she crossed her arms, she strained her neck trying to look up the road.
I admit, we had been waiting for the bus for nearly half an hour, but we were rather enjoying being able to have a conversation without being interrupted every 30 seconds. (Our kids were on an adventure with our friend and their fairy godmother.) I thought perhaps we weren't as annoyed because we were child free, but rather than getting upset, we finally just agreed to get on the next bus that showed up, whether it was headed to Magic Kingdom or not. As if by magic, the next bus appeared and was going where we wanted to go.
Sitting there on the bench, it occurred to me that in Disney World, as in life, whether you enjoy it or not is completely dependent on your attitude. You can let every little thing upset and annoy you and have a perfectly miserable time in the Happiest Place on Earth. You can also make up your mind that you are going to have a blast and ignore the minor annoyances and inconveniences that come with being in a crowded amusement park. For the record, we decided to enjoy ourselves!
This trip was full of many, many "teachable moments." We had everything from sunburned skin to lost luggage, and it's going to take way more than one post to fill you in on our adventure. The past few days have been frantic, and we came home from Disney World with supernatural levels of exhaustion. I still haven't completely recovered from my trip, which is why I haven't updated my blog lately. I am catching up, slowly but surely. I can sleep when I'm dead, right?
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