Gene’s “Disney Moment”
I grew up with trips to a Disney park here and there. Never staying on property, and never going to more than one park at a time (aside from a middle school jazz band field trip). Not necessarily a lover of Disney myself, it took some convincing, but I eventually gave in and took the kids to Walt Disney World in 2017. On that trip, things started to change.
The trip was originally supposed to be a part land (Walt Disney World) part sea (Disney cruise on the Disney Dream). Hurricane Irma had different plans though, and a cancellation, followed by a quick scramble to desperately re-book a much needed vacation, lead to a Walt Disney World only trip.
That trip had a few moments of excitement (our daughter meeting all the princesses, especially her favorite one, Snow White). A few moments of chaos (our son throwing up in the middle of the night, screaming and crying for half a day at magic kingdom, and me nearly nearly turning into Anger, when Joy and Sadness decided to “return to headquarters” after meeting two kids). Not to mention that it was our first vacation with kids, and our first vacation at all in four years.
What did we learn? We learned we thought Walt Disney World was stressful, we thought it was too much for our youngest (he turned two the day we left), and that we were in no way “relaxed” at the end of our vacation.
Fast forward six-and-a-half months, and we are going on a 4-night Disney cruise. This is where we both had, as my father-in-law calls it, our “Disney moment.”
Mine is right here:
We drive down to Orlando, and it took forever to get a key to our room (over an hour). Once we were finally checked-in, we decide to walk across the street to Disney Springs. It’s May, it’s warm, and it looks like it might rain. We are staying at a hotel right outside of Disney Springs (on property, but not a Disney resort), so we figure it wouldn’t be too bad if we grab our rain coats and just walk a mile there.
We grab dinner at the Polite Pig, we hit up a few stores, grabbed a dessert, and decide to go back to the room. But…we were too late. As we start to leave, the sky opens up, and a down pour of rain comes over us. There is no way to outrun it. We have no umbrella. Our stroller is soaked. We are soaked. And we have a mile to walk back to our room. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but we all started laughing, and we snapped this soaking wet picture.
When we got back to the room, Jessica took care of getting the kids dry and warm. My job, for the next few hours, was to use the hotel hair dryer to do my best to dry our soaking wet shoes, stroller, and any other clothes we were wearing.
That did it for me. We then proceeded to have an amazing Disney cruise (I highly recommend them…when they come back), and couldn’t wait to go back on another Disney vacation.
