This is for all the Disney haters out there, the moms and dads of
\nyoung ones who claim they’ll “never go to Disney.” My wife and I were
\nmore or less in the same Disney-hating boat. Sure both of us had
\nsemi-fond memories of visiting one of the Disney’s in our youths, it
\nwas great, back then. I remember my mom tearing up at the site of
\nMickey in the parade, and all the other feel-good vibes that magical
\nkingdom emits in heaps (the monorail!). But now that we are parents
\nour thoughts for vacationing are along the lines of anything but an
\namusement resort, especially one in tacky Florida and the epicenter of
\nall things overly commercial, crowded, bad food-laden and just
\nunpleasant for people like us: Disney World, or Land. No way. And
\ncertainly not during spring break with the masses. When could there
\nbe a worse time to go to Disney, if you have to go at all, than spring
\nbreak? Not to mention it is not cheap, not by a long shot, any way
\nyou slice it: airfare, hotel, food, tickets… So when our six year
\nold son’s grandfather said he wanted to meet us in Orlando when he’d
\nbe there for a conference, incredibly timed during the week of
\nkindergarten’s spring break, we were less than enthusiastic. In fact
\nI emailed him that we were thinking it wasn’t going to happen and I
\nmentioned the crowds that would be polluting the place, and the costs.
\n His response was to sweeten the offer with some funds and to clarify
\nthat this trip was not for us, but for his grandson.
\nWe spoke to some friends who had visited DW recently, with their kids,
\nduring spring break, like-minded Whole Foods shoppers-types, who
\nreported that it was great and that we had to go, period. We wouldn’t
\nregret it and our son would have a great time.<\/p>\n
So, we booked our five day, three days in the park, trip and started
\nreading up. There are volumes on “doing Disney.” Tons of info out there, special websites
\ndevoted exclusively to getting the best deals, with secret codes for
\nhalf price hotels, free meals, tickets, and etc. If you look hard enough you
\ncan find a review of each and every room in all 300 or whatever it is
\nof Disney’s resorts, no joke. The Unofficial Guide to Disney World
\nwas the book I chose and after thumbing through it, it’s huge, I
\nquickly became overwhelmed, and freaked out. They review every snack
\nstand, ride, hotel, restaurant, nook and cranny of every inch of the
\nMagic Kingdom, complete with step-by-step, minute-by-minute
\nitineraries for what to see and when, and how, and where to stand for
\n“rope drop” (the opening of the parks), etc. etc. I put the book down
\nfor a couple weeks and said that we’d just wing it, wherever our boy
\nwanted to go, we’d go, no planning! Part of the psych-out was advice
\nfrom our friends who said the best way to enjoy it is to get there
\n(the Magic Kingdom, not to be confused with the other parks, Animal
\nKingdom, Epcot and so forth), early, real early, and be first in line
\nfor rope drop (I must say I do love that expression). Hmm, going on
\nvacation to get up early, like a school day, with no breakfast or
\nleisure time, to stand in line at Disney to wait in line for rides.
\nIt did not sound good, or doable, to me or my wife, no way. But for a
\nminute I thought yeah, we’ll get the most out of our trip if we are up
\nat dawn and right there for rope drop. I actually conveyed to Grandpa
\nwhat our plan was, to do it the early way, for rope drop, and as I was
\nsaying it I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Back to the let’s not
\nplan it and just see what happens mode. And everyone else I spoke
\nwith had their own perfectly legitimate opinions of how to “do
\nDisney.” We’ll put our fate in Mickey’s hands and see what happens.<\/p>\n
Good omen: no glitches with the flights and a smooth ride on the
\nMagical Express (Disney bus) to our hotel\/resort. We, well, I,
\nsemi-randomly chose the place we stayed at, the Coronado Springs, a
\nhuge place with a lake in the middle, and a large pool complete with a
\nwater slide, and a massive Aztec-like pyramid. Not sure why I chose
\nthat one, possibly because of availability; we were only booking a
\nmonth or so ahead and of course the Disney aficionados book the good
\nstuff as far in advance as they can, more on that later. And
\naccording to the map it looked to be situated right across the street
\nfrom where Grandpa, and now Auntie (who can resist Disney?!) were
\nstaying. And it had that pool with the waterslide and pyramid thing,
\nit looked like fun in the web shots. The charts in the Unofficial Guide
\nstated that it is a six minute bus ride to the Magic Kingdom, on
\naverage, and heck, that didn’t seem too bad. I had convinced myself,
\nno thanks to the multiple pros and cons from the guide books, that we
\ndid not need a rental car, what with all the parking hassles and
\nexpensive gas. Turns out their hotel “across the street” was a ten
\ndollar cab ride and just about impossible to walk to.<\/p>\n
The Not-Early Plan: the first morning dawned and we barely made it
\nacross the expanse of the Coronado Springs to one of their breakfast
\nplaces by 9:30, maybe 10, much less rope drop at 8am. It was
\nliterally a ten minute walk from our room to the main area of the
\nhotel. Food snobs, we were expecting the worst but were pleasantly
\nsurprised to find plenty of good things to eat, all of them huge, some
\nof them healthy. Not including the “raspberry latte” someone in front of me ordered
\nat the coffee bar.<\/p>\n
And then it was on to the main event: The Magic Kingdom. We jumped on
\nthe bus and in a few minutes were within site of the iconic Disney
\ncastle. After some minutes of driving past the very large parking
\nlot (our driver proudly informed us that all of Anaheim’s Disneyland
\nfits within the DW parking lot), we were dropped off at the gate and
\nsped through the turnstiles.
\nBeautiful sunny Florida morning, crystal clear, and lots of people.
\nWe’d read enough about FastPasses to know we’d want to get some
\nfor the rides we knew we were too late to get on without waiting an
\nhour, since we weren’t there at rope drop, not even close! Turns out
\non busy days even FastPasses can be hard to come by. Well, it was fun
\njust being there, we rode some rides, walked around and enjoyed it.
\nGrandpa and Auntie were not arriving until the next day so this was a
\nchance to figure out what we wanted to do. Like where to have lunch.
\nAccording to the books, one must reserve their meals months in advance
\nwhen choosing the park’s popular restaurants. Indeed.
\nWe tried the Crystal Palace and although it was 1pm, peak lunchtime and
\nwe were reservationless, we were seated within minutes and informed
\nthat none other than Winnie the Pooh and his mates would be out soon
\nto greet the guests. If our son hadn’t expressed extreme kid glee up
\nto that point just being at Disney, W the P did it. Never had we seen
\nhim smile like that, hugging Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger and Pooh. It was
\nwonderful, and so was the food. Really, very good for a resort buffet
\nwith excellent vegetarian options, fish dishes and etc., and oh yes,
\nit was all you can eat.<\/p>\n
So the next day we did get there earlier, alas, not at rope drop, but
\nclose enough to 9am to waltz on over to TomorrowLand and walk right on
\nBuzz Lightyear’s Space Ride, and then the Lilo and Stich attraction,
\nboth of which were top notch Disney entertainment, our boy loved them.
\n And met Grandpa and Auntie after their leisurely arrival sometime after noon
\nwhen we strolled about and soaked it in. When the lines were too
\nlong, we’d just head someplace else and found it easy enough to find
\nan attraction with a mangageable line. At snacktime, we passed up the Fred
\nFlinstone-esque smoked turkey legs and grabbed a bite at one of the
\ncafes, no problem.<\/p>\n
We ended up enjoying the trip to DW and were not put off by the huge
\nnumbers of people, mostly fellow Americans sporting their local team’s
\ncolors, lots of grown men with NFL and MLB garb, why?, nor were we put
\noff by the scale of Disney. They pull it off somehow and all seem to
\nget along and make it work. Would we have had more fun if we’d
\nplanned it better? I doubt it, but when we go back, we’ll be that
\nmuch Disney-savvier. And who knows, we might even make it to rope
\ndrop one sunny day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is for all the Disney haters out there, the moms and dads of young ones who claim they’ll “never go to Disney.” My wife and I were more or less in the same Disney-hating boat. Sure both of us had semi-fond memories of visiting one of the Disney’s in our youths, it was great, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1414,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lanebum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lanebum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lanebum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lanebum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lanebum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lanebum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lanebum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lanebum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lanebum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}