The Happiest Place on Earth

I loved the family roadtrips to Disneyland. As a kid I didn't realize that for the parents, driving from Utah to Southern California with all of their 6 or 7 children (whatever it was at the time) crammed into one car, and then navigate that herd of children through a crowded amusement park was not an action packed adventure...or maybe they just wish that it hadn't been so action packed.


I don't remember being particularly concerned the time that only minutes into the trip John and Devon had to be separated because John was touching Devon and Devon was screaming, mechanical failures, and roadside repairs created some level of concern, but as a kid I firmly believed that my dad could fix anything, and the car breaking down was only a temporary setback. The night we rolled into St. George only to discover it was the same weekend as the St. George marathon and there wasn't a campsite or hotel room to be found...anywhere, not St. George, Mesquite, or Vegas (we wound up sleeping on blankets in the middle of the Nevada desert) was just all part of the adventure. Once we arrived at the destination I could never figure out why the parents were always so uptight about the noise level in the hotel room. Getting separated from the family and lost at Disneyland was just something that happened, and not something that could have been prevented. I really thought the parents were just being crabby when I got a stern little speech about paying attention and keeping up. It did not seem at all ungrateful at the time to openly whine to the parents about the quality of the lunch my mother had prepared that morning and brought with us. It did seem totally unreasonable that the parents demanded that we take a break mid-day for a two or three hour nap before heading back to the park and riding everything we could until closing. On the whole I thought it was an amazingly good time, and I really believed that the parents were just crabby adults on a mission to limit our fun. When I got older I just started wondering what the parents were thinking to willingly subject themselves to such a nightmare.


I got a new perspective on those trips this weekend. Glen and Jeannette came to town with their three kids to visit Disneyland. I left work mid-day to join them. For the most part I was in charge of Ella, Glen supervised Isaac, and Jeannete kept track of Ammon. Nothing catastrophic happened all day, although I was told that Ammon got car sick and ralphed on the way there. Isaac suffered a meltdown shortly after my arrival, but it was brief, lunch was a bit of a fiasco with a spilled drink, and Ammon screaming and foaming at the mouth while Ella and Isaac played with their food, but as far as I could tell did very little actual eating. We wound up going up the exit ramp to the little train and had the castmember had to come ask us why we were in the handicap line. A little breakdown in communication resulted in us splitting into two parties for souvenir shopping and then waiting to regroup on opposite sides of the castle...and of course the cellphones weren't working. Around 5 or 6 all three children had a simultaneous meltdown, and their parents looked like they weren't far behind. It took a while to recover from that one, especially with Ammon screaming and clinging to Isaac's toy souvenir sword. Everyone did eventually sort of calm down, the sword was safely hidden from Ammon's view and we were able to make our way over to Buzz Lightyear. Here's Ella and I...although you can't really see Ella:
They bought the boys Buzz Lightyear guns which they loved, although when Ammon tired of his he just tossed it out of the stroller, in much the same fashion as the little litterbug had discarded his candy wrappers. We continued over to California Adventure. By this time the kids were too tired to walk, and most of the time two were in the stroller while Glen carried Ammon, or I carried Ella, and Jeannette pushed the stroller. Isaac went into full-blown whiner mode when he spotted a cart with cotton candy, and Jeannette buckled and bought him some, the sugar seemed to revive him a bit. We took them on Monsters Inc., and by this point there was a constant bit of sniffling and eye rubbing going on with Ammon. So they decided to call it a day. We met up with the rest of the group (Uncle Jack & Aunt Nancy, Bill & Jenny) for dinner. Again the kids seemed to do a lot of playing with their food, and very little eating. It had been a hot and humid day, and I still feel sweaty just thinking about it. I got home and my roommate looked at me and asked where I had been all day. I took one look in the mirror and I could see why she asked. I looked horrible, when I started to tell her about the day I realized how nightmarish it sounded, but really it was pretty great. Although I realize that still as a cousin, it was a whole lot easier experience for me than their parents, and I only dealt with one day. How my parents managed twice that many kids for three days at a time on multiple occasions, I may never know, but I do kind of get why they did it. Despite the whining, the meltdowns, and the general crabbiness that ensued towards the end of the day, it was pretty worth it to grab Ella off the ride (I discovered pretty quickly that she does not disembark in a timely fashion at all, and needs to be snatched off the ride before the ride operator gets annoyed) and listen to her say "Julie! That ride was so fun!" It's like watching little kids on Christmas morning, when they're so excited that they look like they're going to explode. Although Glen and Jeannette were saying "never again with kids this young" as they were leaving, my parents said the same thing, and we always came back. It just took a couple of years for the memory of the experience to dim a little in their minds.