Disneyworld Redux

For Hanukah this year, I convinced our mother to take Declan and Ronan to Disneyworld instead of buying them even more crap to clutter the house. So it was that in the middle of January the boys and I boarded a plane for "sunny" Florida. (Note use of air quotes to denote sarcasm. It was not sunny. It was cold. 50 degrees cold. Not lounging by the pool weather, which is really all the kids wanted to do.) Mom wanted the Disney part of the trip to be a surprise, but they were still plenty excited to go to visit Grandma.

In fact, after a week in Florida that included two expensive days in Disney, I can't really say for certain which part they liked more--the Disney part or the South Florida part.

At Disney, the kids were impressed by the majesty of the Magic Kingdom...


...then stood in line for an hour to meet some friends.


But their favorite part, by far? The hotel.


Did the kids have a blast at Disney? Of course. But they also had a blast on the beach... in the cold rain...


At the museum...


And petting an armadillo...


...after riding an airboat in the Everglades.


It's funny, because all the kids in the house talk about Disneyworld like it's some kind of mecca. But once there, the trip becomes like any other outing that requires planning and scheduling and demanding that the kids stop playing with all the toy guns on sale in Adventureland if they want to ride Pirates of the Caribbean five times. As much as Disneyworld is all about the kids, they still need the structure to get through the day.

I did, of course, let the kids sketch out our itinerary and choose which rides to go on, but if I really let them do whatever they wanted we'd never eat something that wasn't at least 50 percent sugar, go on any rides that had lines longer than three people (read: all of them), stray more than two feet from any of the 47 pin vendors strategically placed around the park, or go to the bathroom. In short, being in Disneyworld is pretty much like being any where else: They're whining, I'm nagging, and we're all getting annoyed with each other. We can do that in South Florida for a lot cheaper. We do that all the time at home for free.

So I don't see any further Disney trips in the near future.

(Molly says, "We'll see about that.")