When my daughter was not quite 2 1/2 and my son the "easy" age of 5 months I received free passes to Disney. The only catch? They had to be used within the next few weeks. I'm no dummy, we were going!
More excited than I should have been for what was sure to be certain chaos, I immediately jumped online to research hotels so we could spend a FULL day at the park. So many thrilling plans I have for my children that they won't even remember...
I find the Nickelodeon Hotel has a 2-bedroom suite for just $99! And the bonus? I discover we can reserve a Breakfast with Dora the Explorer! Clearly my kid needs to eat pancakes with Dora. We've been traversing volcanoes, crocodile lakes, and following that despised map everywhere it told us to go in that incredibly annoying voice for over a year. Booked.
We make it to the Magic Kingdom by 10:30am. Having grown up in WI, we are complete Disney morons and have no idea where we're going. We wander the park aimlessly searching for Princesses and by some miracle we eventually find them. We do our time in the excessively long lines but eventually make it to Princess paradise. No surprise these events are a bit of a challenge with a baby but we power through. We got free tickets and a Dora breakfast in the morning, and damn it, my kids will like it!
Needless to say this is truly a mind-blowing experience for my daughter. We foolishly thought it would be fine and they would nap in the stroller so we would stay late for the electric light parade, oooh, ahhh... Unfortunately the nap never happened, nor did the light parade. Again, being Disney mega-morons we had no idea (until they were ushering us out of the park) that it was Mickey's Very Merry Christmas and we had to be out by 6pm. SOB. Probably didn't need that hotel room after all.
Our free tickets to torture town happened to be park hoppers so we head to Epcot. Wow. We ARE clueless. It's the final night of the Food and Wine festival and the park is packed. We drag our overly-tired children all over the park searching for a food line that doesn't come with a 30 minute wait. We find a table and the hunter went to find food alone. He finally returns after 20 minutes with 3 shrimp in some kind of sauce. Yes, that was clearly the food solution... We give up and head back to the hotel where the torture truly begins.
The baby got his own room and slept, well, like a baby. On the other hand my husband and I decide to share our bed with the rolling, kicking, 22lb terror too excited to sleep. In fact, no one slept. My child morphed into a whining, crying, melt-down monster by morning. The husband is also on the edge of monster town. At this point we should have cut our losses, but I had booked pancakes with Dora and I'm no quitter.
And the bright side is, it's possible the outburst of uncontrollable laughter added years to my life. Years! Thank you Giant Dora Head.
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