They Wanted Us at Disney

When I was a child, sometimes we’d go somewhere- say, a new church, or a restaurant- and parking would be scarce. My mom would say “Obviously, they don’t want us here!” and we’d move on. Alternately, sometimes we’d get a spot by the door and she’d say, “See, they want us here!” Today, the Man and I took Small to Disney World, and I have to say, I think they wanted us there.

We managed to keep the visit a complete secret from Small until we were literally pulling up to the park, and she freaked out in a very satisfying manner when she understood what was happening.  We parked so close that we didn’t need to take the tram to get to the station. We never had to wait in line longer than 30 minutes. The weather was sunny and mild. All in all, it was the perfect day to be there.

Of course, any family outing has its hiccups. Small was very excited to be tall enough to ride the roller coasters for the first time, so of course we took her on Space Mountain. She’d been on roller coasters before, at Six Flags, but Space Mountain was too much for her. Almost from the beginning of the ride, she was yelling, “I don’t like this! I don’t want to do this! DADDY!!!! I wish I hadn’t agreed to this!”

My seven year old often says things like "I wish I hadn't agreed to this." It's part of what charms people about her, because her adult speech, combined with her smaller-than-the-average-7-year-old size makes her a really funny little creature. She does not, however, like it when people exclaim over how cute she is, and God forbid someone laugh. She's not a baby, she's a big girl.

On this trip, she was all about being a big girl, and bragging about how tough she’s gotten. She used to be afraid of Snow White, can you imagine? (Sidebar: that Snow White ride was scary!) Well, she’s seven now, and there’s no way she’s going to be afraid of any silly ride.

Yeah. All that bragging was about how she was going to ride Haunted Mansion, because she IS old enough, and she KNOWS that all that stuff at Disney isn’t real.

Anyone want to guess how the Haunted Mansion went? She got into the first room, started frantically backing out, yelling “I want to quit this! I want to quit this!”  We had to beat a hasty retreat through the back door. Of course, the day was all about her, so we didn’t care. We just laughed and ducked out. Interestingly, she was too consumed with panic to notice that we were laughing.

One really interesting thing we did today is to play one of the new interactive games they have now at the Magic Kingdom. This game was one in which you have to try to defeat a bunch of evil sorcerers, through a series of quests, and it was really fun! I’m impressed with how they’re integrating new technology into the various attractions at the park.

Tomorrow we head home. It was a really good trip, and not quite over yet, as we have one more lunch date to go. I have to say, though, I’m glad to be heading back- there’s no place like home.