We have been to Disney a few times. I love Disney. Yes there are crowds, and pricey…well everything, but the magic of the place just sort of brushes those things under the rug. In the week leading up to our trip Ben and the girls spent countless hours on our area rug pretending to fly to Disney, then they would continue on and enjoy many rides. It was super fun. The girls giggled with sheer joy through it all. Just like our trip would be, right?!
Disclaimer: No matter what you read next we really did love this trip. It was very magical and everything Disney should be.
Elise and her daddy have this thing where she bosses him around and he (mostly) does what she tells him. It's a really great deal they have going. Ben finally has his child who loves him most and Elise has a man servant. So, our first day was all travel and it turned out way longer than expected but the girls powered through and did great.
Let's fast forward to our first day. We got off the shuttle at the park and the girls ran, skipping and giggling towards the front gates. Until 20 feet into the gig Elise stops, slowly and very dramatically lays on the ground and covers her face. Awe, cute right? We smiled at each other, Ben kindly swooped down and lifted her in his arms snuggling her and doing their thing.
That moment I just described should have been our ultimate warning. We should have known what would come next. I won't bore you with super long stories, here is a bullet form explanation of our trip.
- We have to wait to get into the main part of the park, so Ben stands in the already massive crowd and waits with the girls, I go get coffee. All smiley I return to Ben with our lattes, but wait he has a weird look on his face. This is what he says to me "Soooo…Elise sort of laid on the ground again, I thought she was just doing that thing again. Well she was licking the water out of the tracks in the pavement….."
- After getting off a ride our little family merrily walked towards the next area only to realize a group walking towards us was pointing, smiling and aw'ing. We looked around to realize we left Elise 15 yards behind us crouched down pretending to sob, very dramatically.
- Elise wasn't super fond of lines. I mean if they were 10 minutes or less she was cool with it, but anything longer we would wait on edge for what could come. Countless times she would get this glare on her face, look around the lineup and with lightning speed whip her soother out and throw it into the swarms of people.
- The soother throwing was awesome fun, we did that game lots. On our second last day it was late in the evening and she had done it again. I asked Ben if it was bad that I had gotten to the point that I quickly looked anywhere but near her so that when she whipped it back in her mouth without me cleaning it I wouldn't have to deal with the look of disgust from others. Seriously, we were working on building her immune system!
- Standing in line for the Peter Pan ride we had gotten smart, we took snacks in the lineup. The snack never lasted the entire wait, but she was doing good. Ben finally picked her up at one point (now remember this is generally a massive, tight line) she looked around the crowd, looked at her dad and before we knew what was happening she whipped his glasses off and threw them as far as her spindly arm could into the crowd.
- On our last day we stood waiting in a busy area watching her lie on the ground fake crying again only to have people stop and ask Ben "is she ok?"….
-Towards the end of the big Parade Elise threw her soother into the middle of the parade. Don't worry, a kindly dancer kicked it back to us. No I did not clean it.
Really my stories could go on and on but no one has that much time. Needless to say, we think Elise and Disney should not meet again for a few years.
