Family Vacation: to Disney or Not to Disney?

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Disney or not Providence Moms Blog

I’m ten days out from a Disney World vacation with my husband and two little ones and frankly, I’m terrified. Who thinks it’s a good idea to take a seven month old and a three year old to Disney with only two adults? The exhaustion, the heat, the sensory overload… and these are just the things I’m worried about for myself. Taking kids to Target is a risk. Taking kids on a major vacation is like trying out for American Idol: you can have some major talent and still fail miserably. 

Let me backtrack a bit and explain why, if I’m so terrified, I’m taking this trip. My husband and I are huge Disney World fans. For all you cynics out there, no, it’s not just for kids. There’s amazing entertainment, world class food (if you know where to look), and top notch customer service. Throw in a few gorgeous pools and I’m not sure what else you could ask for in a vacation. We love it so much that we bought into the Disney Vacation Club, Disney’s version of a time share. Since we’ve been a bit busy the past few years having babies, we had some timeshare points that were going to expire if we didn’t take advantage of them like, yesterday. I had a milestone birthday at the end of the summer, so put the two together and the trip seemed pretty serendipitous.

On our first (and so far only) trip with a child in tow, my in-laws came along and it was an amazing help. Carting our toddler around the park, letting us have a date night, extra set of hands at restaurants — their presence was pretty indispensable. Unfortunately, at this time of year they couldn’t join us, so it was go alone or lose out on our timeshare points.

My plan is to get in whatever park time we can and head back to the hotel at the first sign of toddler exhaustion. Hopefully we can get in lots of pool time, try some yummy treats, and if all else fails, I can always hand my toddler my iPhone as a desperate bribe? If the plane takes off on time, the baby doesn’t get too distracted to eat in public, everyone gets adequate sleep, and the weather is perfect, then we should have a great time. Of course, there’s about a one percent chance of all those things happening. How do you decide what makes sense to try with the kids and what’s just not even worth the trouble? Whether you’re deciding about something small, like taking them to an appointment or to running an errand, or something bigger, like a vacation, you can’t just sit home your whole life! (Or at least I can’t!)

When we were trying to make up our minds about going, one of my friends said to me, “years from now when you look back at this trip, you won’t remember any of the tough stuff; you’ll just remember the happy memories.” We decided to go with that theory. Everything is harder when you add two little kids to the mix, but most things are more joyous too. And the happiest place on earth? We know it won’t be perfect, but hopefully it will be worth it. Wish us luck!