House of Mouse

We live in Orlando. So it should come as no surprise that one of these days we were going to visit Mickey Mouse and all the wonders of Disney World. We had been putting this off for some reason. Disney is EXPENSIVE! We are blessed to have passes to Sea World, Busch Gardens, Aquatica and Universal thanks to my brother and his girlfriend. These passes that we have were free so we are not complaining nor depriving our children of theme park fun in the theme park capital of the world. Though even if we didn’t have Sea World connections, we would have bought passes. I am a Sea World addict. I did also price out the theme park tickets for Disney. The lowest option for us would be $250 per ticket for an annual pass with blackout dates. Hmm. Let me see. $250 PER PASS or free…I will let that soak in for a moment. We would just have to be happy with what we have.

Then about two months ago, Josh came home and a coworker of his had two FREE passes to Disney. We were so excited that we could finally take the girls. With free passes, we picked a date and set everything up. One thing that I was very adamant about was that I wanted to company to come with us. I wanted to be selfish and go on the rides with Abby instead. We could take turns between Josh and I but I really wanted it to just be our family of four for the first time to Disney. Not to mention, when you go with a big group of people to a theme park, you have to accommodate everyone. Get the consensus on where we should eat, stop because someone needed a bathroom break because they didn’t need to go when we made a group stop or even have to skip a ride because someone doesn’t want to go on it. Nope. I try to make my weekends Mommy and Daddy time with the kids. I don’t mind sharing once in awhile but not when it comes to the first time at Disney. Second time to Disney, no problem. We even like to go to Sea World or Busch Gardens with friends because we can be leisurely in our explorations. But with one day free passes to Disney, we had no time to be leisurely! We had rides to go on!

Now here are the weird twists…We had planned to go to Disney on June 11. I was going to take off work and we figured the crowds would be at a minimum on a Friday before schools got out for the summer and people are more inclined to go to Disney during a weekend rather than a weekday. Thankfully friends of ours told us to make sure that the passes we had don’t expire. I didn’t even realize the passes had expiration dates but THANK GOODNESS we did look because the passes expired on June 10. (Thank you again Aaron and Karla!!!). We would have been screwed and I am pretty sure I would have just sat down and cried on the front steps of Magic Kingdom. So we changed our plans last minute and decided to go June 5. Yes, it was a Saturday but again it is still before the summer kicks in. What I didn’t realize (I don’t realize a lot sometimes) was that it was Gay Days at Magic Kingdom. This is the annual get together of the homosexual community. While I am very supportive of having Gay Days events, I am not supportive of it at Magic Kingdom the first day we are taking the kids to Disney. They can come the second day we are at Disney. I was just so worried about the wait for rides. Thankfully, everyone was on the big rides like Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain, neither of which we could (I wouldn’t have gone anyways) ride because Abby wasn’t tall enough. Not to mention, everyone was just so nice and happy there that even waiting in the lines we did were made better by the groups there for Gay Days. One group of guys gave Abby a magic wand and a wishing star from their Cinderella breakfast. I would totally go back to Disney on Gay Days. Now for the best twist, our friends and fellow theme park buddies, the Keepers of Sprite, decided on June 4, that on June 5, they would go to Disney. It was unbelievable because I had not told a lot of people that we were going to Disney because I didn’t want company. But how could I be in the same park at Jen and not see her? We chatted on the phone on Friday night and decided we would meet up in the afternoon because she too understood my request for no one accompanying us to Disney.

The best part was that we did not tell Abigail where we were going. This was because for one, she has no concept of time. We would have been asked if we were going to Disney today endlessly. No thank you. Second, we really wanted her reaction. Unfortunately it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. If you want to see a good reaction, go here! (Jen also mentioned how she called me but left out the jaw dropping part of We were all going to be in Disney together!) We were met with a more skeptical reaction. “Mickey Mouse? Mickey? Donald?” and then a smile as if to say “I will believe it when I see it.” Which I can’t say I blame her because after paying the parking fee, driving and then unloading the two tons of stuff you need into the stroller, taking the tram to the monorail, loading like sardines into the monorail car, getting to the gate, you then finally get to see a Disney character.

I am going to have to write a few entries in this blog to fully document what we did. If I did it just here, then this would take you days to read.