Disney After 50
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How I Became A Disney Person
I wasn’t always a Disney Person. I can remember when Disney stores started popping up at local malls in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. My friends and I were in our 20’s and I was a smidgen appalled when they wanted to shop there. At a kid’s store. For themselves. The idea of a grown adult wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt seemed like an arrested development, living in your parent’s basement in your 30’s kind of thing. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t down on Disney. My childhood self had an age appropriate fascination with Disney movies. My blonde Barbie often cosplayed as Aurora. I sang along to my Sleeping…
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Who is Disney World For?
There are more and more blog posts and articles out there on “how to do Disney” as an adult. Adults honeymoon at Disney World. They drink around the world at Epcot, propose at Magic Kingdom, and celebrate birthdays and anniversaries in the parks. There is even a Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings television show. Many Disney-centric YouTube vlogs are hosted by adult Disney fans who don’t have children. Instagram is littered with single millennials who document their visits to the parks. Having been to Disney world only once as a child, my point of reference is taking trips there as an adult. While I travel there with my son, my adult…
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Walking the World in Comfort
My past searches for the perfect shoes to wear at Disney World always yielded mixed results. Turns out that people have different feet and shoe needs when they are walking a gazillion miles on concrete in the heat. Who knew! My favorite shoes and foot care tips for the parks may not work for everyone, but I KNOW they will help out some folks. I have super high arches and wide feet. There. I said it. I also have feet that tend to sweat a lot. This is not a point of pride but I have to be honest about it. Walking many, many miles a day in the parks…
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Visiting Disney World as a Nervous Rider
I have tried many, many times over the years to conquer my fear of thrill rides. When I was a little kid, my poor mother had to stop several carnival rides so that she could rescue me, pale and terrified, from the clutches of some spinny tilty whirly contraption. Wikipedia defines this as, “an extreme over-reaction to normal self-preservation instincts.” How can one over-react in the name of self-preservation? Certainly that is exactly the time for extreme reaction, right? Perhaps I should first define what I mean by “thrill” ride. You know that whooshing feeling that you get when a Ferris Wheel carries you up over the top? Yes, Ferris…
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Handling Character Meet & Greets
My sister and I both refused to sit on Santa’s lap at the mall when we were kids. Neither of us are big fans of people in costumes and we aren’t particularly touchy-feely. We knew that this might be a problem when we booked a Rivers of Light Dinner package. It was a character dinner (shudder) at Tiffin’s in Animal Kindom. The show was new so convenience and guaranteed seats won out over feeling a little weird about having to take pictures mid-meal with a stranger in a costume when you are over 10 years old. My son was with us and he was tween age at the time so…
