Making Disney Memories, for Better or Worse

When I was 10 years old, my parents won a sweepstakes from a furniture store for a three night stay in an Orlando, Florida hotel. I can only imagine how excited they must have been by their luck as they made the nine hour drive from Marshville, NC with me and my younger brother in the backseat. They had planned this rare vacation around Mother’s Day and my brother’s third birthday, and they took us to the Magic Kingdom. It was all of our first (and to date, only) trip to Disney’s mecca in Florida.

I remember waiting in lines and hearing people speaking foreign languages. I didn’t understand anything they were saying except “Mickey Mouse.” It was my first encounter with so many different cultures and it was both strange and fascinating. My own kids live this every day.  To them, it is ordinary.

I also remember riding 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with my brother screaming, “I don’t want to die!” through the whole ride. When the voice had announced “Prepare to dive,” he thought they’d said “prepare to die,” and my poor mother had spent the entire submarine ride trying desperately to calm him down.

And on the Haunted Mansion ride, he’d cried because a “hitchhiking ghost” had sat on his lap.

I remember it being hot and crowded and the lines being way too long. I don’t remember it being very magical.

I told my mom all this in the days leading up to our vacation to Disneyland, telling her that I was anxious about taking the boys to the park. Expectations were high, and I wasn’t sure that the cost would be worth it. Could it possibly be as great as the price they charged for admission?

“I feel like we wasted our money,” my mom told me. That’s when I felt like a spoiled brat. My parents didn’t have a lot of money to spend on vacations back then, and I know that she and my dad must have made a lot of sacrifices to take us on what they hoped would be a wonderful trip, making for happy memories.

I wonder what my own kids will remember from their first trip to Disneyland. Will the sparkle be preserved with the wear of time?

Will they remember the hotel we picked with a mini-water park and how much they loved going down those water slides time and time again, or will they only remember shivering in the cool afternoon breeze?

 

Will they remember their excitement as we walked through the turnstiles for the first time and beheld a beautiful flower garden of Mickey’s face, or will they only remember that mom kept making them pose for photos and yelling at them to look at the camera?

  
Will Jacob remember riding the rapids with me and squealing as the cold water splashed us? Will he remember the exhilaration of Space Mountain and his animated retelling of the dark roller coaster ride that both scared and excited him? Will he remember soaring over Disney’s California Adventure in the swings? Or will he only remember sitting in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle for “hours” only to have the firework show canceled?

Will Benjy remember how much he loved every ride in Fantasyland? Will he remember driving in Autopia and seeing Mickey for the first time? Or will he only remember how we forced him to ride The Twilight Zone’s Tower of Terror or, as he calls it, “the haunted house mansion number two,” and that it was “scary”? It seems to be his most vivid memory of the park a week later, as he tells me at least 25 times a day ever since then that he doesn’t like that ride.

Will Andrew remember anything?

I know that I will remember this trip to Disney more fondly than the last, as if each day was sprinkled with fairy dust and painted with rainbows. It was a happy time for us as a family, and it exceeded expectations.

As for my first trip to Disney, I also remember riding Space Mountain for the first time with my dad while my mom waiting outside with my little brother asleep in a stroller. I remember it being the best roller coaster I’d ever ridden. My mom didn’t get to ride it that day, but she made sure that I did, because that is what moms do. We try our best to give each of our children magical memories.