The Instagram-friendly Disneyland family portrait, which came neither easily nor naturally
Last year we went to Disneyland as a family for the very first time, and we completely fell in love with the place. Having gone in with expectations of total madness and three-hour-long lines and oversugared, undernapped, hysterical children, we were happily shocked when we emerged from our two days of Disney with oversugared, undernapped, hysterical children who were nevertheless in a state of total nirvana – as were we – and immediately decided that an annual trip was in order.
So I’m not going to say that today took us entirely by surprise. Best laid plans, et cetera.
Remember how, when you were a kid, you’d get so excited about Christmas (or whatever your favorite holiday was) that you’d practically vibrate until the day actually came? And then all of a sudden it’d arrive, and you’d be so worked up that you’d end up eating too much chocolate pudding, and throwing up? (Just me?)
Today was like that.
The actual Disneyland family portrait
We were all SO RIDICULOUSLY EXCITED that we collectively imploded. Or rather, sort of…leaked. Sorry, that’s gross, but I think we have now scientifically proven that there is a direct (and dramatic) connection between bathroom accidents and Mickey-related hysteria.
The chaos started approximately ten minutes after we woke up to the sound of children trying to figure out who would choose the first ride via face-kicks. Kendrick went out “to grab a coffee real quick,” and it was only an hour later that I realized that my phone was on silent. All frantic and oh-my-god-he’s-going-to-kill-me, I flew over to the phone, and discovered that yes: Kendrick was going to kill me. It turned out that he’d called me sixteen times (and emailed and texted me about twice that – including, for emphasis, despondent photographs of him sitting on the ground outside our AirBnb, where he had locked himself out in 100-degree heat with virtually no recourse or nearby air-conditioned Starbucks whatsoever).
So we were off to a smashing start. Then the Grand Emergency Tour of Disneyland Bathrooms began.
See, our son had reacted to the excitement the way I recall reacting to The Christmas Panics: by developing some “tummy troubles” (to put it mildly). Three clothing changes later, I decided to sit down with a Disneyland map and physically circle each and every restroom in the park so that we’d be able to access one immediately whenever necessary (and oh, it was necessary). Our daughter, however, completely charmed by princesses and various castles rising out of the distance, just straight up abandoned the concept of going to the bathroom.
All I’m going to say is this: FOUR CHANGES OF CLOTHING.
Did I have four changes of clothing right there in my purse? Nope. Did I use a bathroom Dyson dryer to dry out outfit 1 while outfit 2 was getting washed in the bathroom sink, and my daughter was standing without pants on that same sink?
Why yes.
Disneyland, however, has a mind of its own, and it’s not going to let some bathroom troubles define a trip to the best place on Earth. Belle picked our daughter out of the crowd during the parade, looked straight at her, and waved (she gasped and smiled from ear to ear, then peed). Our son lost his brand-new Space Mountain baseball hat, and Kendrick and I both winced at our respective memories of similar losses (oh god, the tiny stuffed Thumper that I left in a food court when I was four, oh god)…and then, when we returned to the spot where we’d left it – a full hour later – we found it sitting there on top of a post, where someone had put it in case its owner came back.
In Disneyland, nobody steals a kid’s hat.
So when we had just gone through our second rotation of outfit 1 and outfit 2 (which were both now soggy from bathroom sinks), we gave up. Everyone was too tired, things were just not working as planned, and we gave up. And gave in to The Disney.
Instead of deciding to go home, or buy her a $40 pair of shorts with a picture of Mickey on them, we told both of our kids to pick out any costume they wanted, and changed our daughter into Snow White in the store bathroom. Alas, we didn’t realize that there were massive security tags attached to the dress, and so here are photographs of me paying for my child.
Then the store managers gave us a discount on the costumes because they thought we were funny.
For the final round, Disney scooped us up and delivered us to a restaurant where Goofy sat down with us for a chat before dinner, and where dessert was every single thing you ever dreamed of (and as much of it as you want). When we were full of butterscotch pudding and pie, we wandered out to the parking lot with our tiny traveling companions, and sat down right there on the pavement, all of us smiling, soggy, and exhausted, and mostly enchanted by it all.
