Disney is not the happiest place on earth.
It’s hot. It’s expensive. It’s crowded.
Even in February.
Most adults hate Disney World. To be fair, I do know a few adults who love Disney — Dana G., Amy M. and Marilou N., your objections to this post are duly noted here at the outset — but for the most part, adults hate Disney World. We only go there because those stupid commercials have convinced us that it is the pinnacle of a child’s happiness to have their picture taken with Mickey.
So we take our children to Disney, take a lot of pictures of them smiling at the main gate, and then spend the rest of the day standing in line.
I believe that the magic of Disney is a little like the childbirth fairy dust the doctor sprinkles on you while you are delivering your first child so that you’ll be willing to do it again. But the magic of Disney is actually somehow woven into the pictures you take. You take a ton of pictures and then you quickly sift through them after you get home, in a hurry to get them posted to Facebook, so that you can convince your friends that yes, your visit to Disney was worth every penny. You sift so quickly that you post only the happiest pictures and pass over any picture where people aren’t smiling, possibly even deleting those on your initial perusal.
Let me show you how it works.
Example No. 1 — Here is a typical Disney picture that you would keep:
And here is the picture you would have discarded if you had not forced yourself to keep it so that you could make fun of your friend who got seasick on the Disney Ferry that moves 2 miles an hour over a perfectly calm man-made lake:
Example No. 2 — Happy mother and daughter on the Jungle Cruise.
If the picture below had been discarded during the first picture sorting, the beginnings of the panic attack creeping across Kate’s face in the photo above would have been chalked up to catching Kate right before she smiled.
But no, it was actual panic. Kate thought she was going to die on the Jungle Cruise. Panic attacks are not rational and are definitely not funny, but we were at a complete loss to help Kate because our boat captain was just too much.
So consider yourself equipped — next time you visit Disney, take lots of pictures and delete the troubling ones at your peril.
As for me, I still have two days left on those three-day passes I purchased that I have to use by June 6th. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to delete all the unhappy pictures from our February Disney trip to make some room on my camera’s SD card.
HAHA! Hilarious! I am dreading do Disney with mine (ages 9 and 7), but I was talking to a mom who told me I “have to pay Mickey his dues.” It is almost like a rite of passage for American children. I know for me, I’ve been asked numerous times, “When was the last time you were at Disney?” Like it was a requirement or milestone I had to pass. Thanks for the post!
It’s a good thing that the nearest Disneyland is in Paris, and we don’t get on with the French (nothing personal, just some historical precedence set by William the Conqueror in 1066) so it’s not a high priority for us. LOL.
Not sure how or why I’ve been given a new identity that I don’t even know about…. Just to clarify who’s REALLY leaving a comment here.
Bravo for your honesty even if it was bordering on treason.:) My parents gave me the wonderful gift of sheltering me from amusement parks until I was a teenager and old enough to develop my own aversion to them. Now I’m doing the same to my kids. They’ve been to every national park in the west but wouldn’t know what Disney was if you asked them. By the way, we do the same kind of picture “editing” for all our trips. I think for once I’m going to try your more honest approach. It was far more entertaining and memorable.