Disneyworld- Friend or Foe?

E and I have a love/hate relationship with Disneyworld.

We love what the kids love about it. It's an amusement park. What do we dislike? I mean, what's wrong with us? Isn't it un-American to not "do Disney?"

(The first and last time I ever stood in line to meet Mickey & Minnie, in 2004.)


Well, for one thing, E and I dislike crowds. And waiting in line. So just to enter the park you have to wait: for a parking pass, for a parking spot, for a parking tram, for the ticket line, for the monorail, for the bag inspection, and finally, for the actual admission to the park.

("Cha-CHING!")



Another major problem with DisneyWhurled is that we aren't HUGELY into the Disney Dream. We do watch Disney movies, especially if they are by Pixar, but we don't buy into the whole "Dress up your kids as Disney characters and go take them to meet their matching character at the park and take them to see the shows," etc. We go, and all the kids want to do is ride roller coasters and THAT IS JUST FINE WITH US. On our recent trip they spent quite a little while running around in Pooh's Playground, and I thought to myself, "There are parks as nice as this we can go to for FREE."


We made several visits to Busch Gardens Williamsburg that showed us how an amusement park could be: beautiful, efficient, spacious, and more child-friendly than DW! Here we are at one of our visits to BG in 2008:






Don't they look peaceful?

Busch Gardens offered a free day of admission for all active duty military and their family members, so we tried it out and loved it, bought season passes (and supported beer!) But for some reason, the lure of the mouse remained. We should have never bought those Disney passes seven years ago.

Here we are on our latest trip, the one in which we had been excitedly planning to ride Space Mountain, but found out when we arrived in Tomorrowland that the ride is "shut down for maintenance to reopen Winter 2009." Thanks, Mickey! ("Cha-CHING!")

E likes to say that we're making Walt's dreams come true. Disney is certainly a money-making machine! Which makes me instantly suspicious.

So that's what we dislike. Just a part of the American Dream that we are dissatisfied with, that we find it difficult to buy into. We aren't against families taking vacations. We are questioning what to use our vacations for, and what our money is going toward. Next time, maybe we'll skip the mouse and take the kids to the beach.