For the vacationally challenged.

I remember going to The Magic Kingdom as a child. After 6 hours of driving down the highway in our station wagon I saw it, the green and reflective white sign, "Disneyland." Soon the Matterhorn came into view. Tears filled my eyes in response to the joy and anticipation of being at the happiest place on earth. My dad seemed willing to take us there, but didn't act as if he was in the happiest place on earth. When I questioned him on his lack of bliss he started talking to me about "opportunity costs blah, blah, blah. Dentists don't get paid vacation blah, blah blah." I thought this was lame. When I grew up I would take my children to Disneyland (if my plan A didn't turn out which included me living there) and be the happiest person in the happiest place on earth. Fast forward to now. I haven't been to Disney in 19 years. Being within driving distance from Orlando has not tipped the scales into action with the thoughts of hotel costs, food costs, travel costs, let alone park costs. Luckily for him, my number 7 child was in band in middle school, and managed to make the trip without us. That let us off the hook for awhile, but I still felt I needed to get these last 2 kids to Disney and time was running out. Number 8 child leaves for college in August. This needed to be the summer. As luck would have it, one of my friends who is very good at vacations, had some days at an Orlando time share for sale. The price was right so I committed. When it came time to actually go, it was my daughter who started back-pedaling with talk of opportunity costs, "I have a lot of music students on those days, blah, blah, blah" (third generation lame vacationer.) After being told by everyone we know that we wouldn't regret it, we bit the bullet and loaded the car.

The car ride gave me time to try and work out in my mind if I could feel good about spending money on an event with no altruistic motives other than having family fun. I mean if the park tickets were 75% off then yeah, in a heartbeat, but no discounts? Could I live with that? Besides, we like home. Our beds are at home. Our musical instruments are at home. Our stores are at home. Our routine is at home. Was this temporary relocation really necessary? We can be together as a family weeding the garden, right? But as we drove, it occurred to me that road trips are very good at making us available to each other. There we were in a 6x6 space for 7 hours, not counting the little stopover in Tifton, GA to make sure the air conditioner was going to behave itself as we got closer to the equator.

Soon we encountered the palm trees which are always a good sign that we're not in Kansas or anywhere north of zone 8 anymore. Although I've been to the FL panhandle, I started getting pretty excited to see signs like "Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach" and when I saw the sign saying, "Orlando 51 miles" I became giddy. My first trip to Orlando :) We checked into our hotel and scoped out the joint. Being the cheap people we are, we wanted to make sure we knew which amenities were free and which would be charged to our room. I think we got it figured out. And not gonna lie, I felt pretty good when I was reimbursed $10.00 because I had to wait so long for a pizza.  That's the kind of news that makes a cheapskate's heart sing.

How do you know when the buzzer is buzzing? Oh, you'll know.

Sunday, was really a dream day. We went to church with our good friends from WV who now live in Orlando. We were assured that going to high school next to Universal Studios has it's drawbacks, like trying to take a test while the tourists outside the window are screaming, and rides are exploding. I almost felt sorry for him until he started telling us about getting info for a research project by taking a quick after school trip to Epcot. They shared some Disney insider tips, One of which I will now share with you, "There is affordable, palatable food just to the left of Star Tours." That was true and valuable information. We loved spending the afternoon with these friends. Later, we skyped with kids (my favorite Sunday activity) worked in some naps and got psyched for our Monday Disney Day.

This glorious place is right across the street from church.
I love to see the temple.

These great friends welcomed us to Florida with key lime pie. Oxoxox

Everyone told us if we were only going to one park to make it Magic Kingdom. Upon further research, however, we discovered that Magic Kingdom is similar to Disneyland which my SoCal husband has been to numerous times. I had even gotten to the point at the end of college that I had ridden "Small World" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" sufficient amount of times as to never need to ride them again, ever. With that in mind, we chose something radical. We bought tickets for "Disney World  Hollywood Studios." We would see new shows, go on new rides, and save $40.00, woot. Our friend confirmed our decision by sharing that it was his favorite park. We were feeling good. We had our fast-passes, we were wearing our tennis shoes and carrying our water-bottles. We applied sun screen, slipped a couple of sandwiches and carrots into my draw-string bag, and my husband and I took my sister's advice and wore fanny packs. The teenagers were not that desperate and would rather carry their water and live without any other belongings. One of the great things about being old is being able to disregard conventional wisdom and wear that fanny pack if you want to.

Doesn't this make you want to cry with happiness?

We had a great day. It was hot as blazes and there was a tremor of dissatisfaction when the kids perceived that Paul and I didn't know where we were going a couple of times, But we stopped, regrouped, got our plan on and accomplished all we came to do. Our ride back to the hotel was a bit tricky as we encountered black smoke and fire trucks on the road we were traveling and traffic was stopped. We followed the example of the locals and drove on the grass median to get turned around then drove around stressed and disoriented with our GPS that couldn't figure out why we wouldn't follow instructions. Only a few people driving the streets of Orlando are mad at us, but eventually we made it back to the hotel, Day 1-a win.

Celebrities all over the place

Paul refining his animation skills

"This is for you, Mom." Frozen sing-along

Elsa, just as beautiful as you would expect.

The roller coaster riders

I took this picture because when I was little I longed for a balloon like this. It was the only thing standing
between me and happiness. I guess I've grown up, because I see that it might not have brought the happiness I imagined
Just in case, I have the picture to look at whenever I want.

Day 2 we decided on Sea World. When the vacation planner who called us that morning to schmooze us into going to a time-share presentation learned of our choice and that I had a 17 and 15 year old, he commented that I must have calm children. I laughed then realized that these last 2 are kind of calm and we were going to the right park. It's also the cheapest park. 17 year old weighed in heavily because she's the one who is leaving us and it was perfect for her. Everywhere we looked was her favorite color, water blue. The background music was inspirational instrumental, a perfect match. We thoroughly enjoyed the dolphin, seal and orca shows. We went on some animal encounters and everyone but me rode the roller coasters.  That's another great thing about being old. I've already ridden a lot of roller coasters so I can sit out now if I want and hold people's stuff.

Flamingos

Walrus. "He looks like Jabba the Hut." Gabe

If you want your picture taken, hand your phone to a random teenager. They totally know what they're doing.

Aggressive squirrel. 

 The end of a long day, Our hero went for the car while we sat in the shade:)

We stopped by Panera on the way home and everyone was happy. Well, 15 yr. old had his doubts, but he made do with his chicken tortellini. The kids swam, played Foosball and we finished up the most awesome movie in the world, Anne of Green Gables baby. Okay, Gabe watched "Lord of the Rings."

Then we drove home. On the drive I finished my library book, Paul listened to his book on tape. 17 year old practiced the ukelele and 15 yr. old watched "LOTR." I recognize that this does not exactly sound like unity, but there was companionship in our individual activities. Besides, we'd been together for 4 glorious days, making great memories, it was okay to have a little space. We'll have to do this again sometime...maybe.