- Visiting Disney Sphere is one of my core childhood memories.
- I took my daughter when she was 9 years old, expecting her to love it.
- I spent so much money, and it tranquil felt like I wasn’t doing anything right.
Visiting Disney World in Orlando was one of my most magical teens memories, and I couldn’t wait to share the experience with my 9-year-old daughter Ruby. So this past October, after countless hours tired scrolling Disney travel blogs riddled with pop-up ads and thousands of dollars invested in airfare, hotel, and car park tickets, we entered the gates of the Magic Kingdom.
I knew I had made a mistake within an hour of being at the park.
I obstructed waiting for the magic to happen, hoping that my child would delight in the roaming characters or that we’d collectively gulp at the site of Cinderella’s castle. Instead, we weaved through seemingly endless lines only to zip through animatronic dioramas, sensibilities sick of $15 fried pizza sticks in the 90-degree heat.
It seemed that despite our extensive research and mammoth monetary investment, I was still doing it all wrong. I didn’t purchase the $40 plastic Disney MagicBands and was fumbling to understand our tickets at each entry point. I failed to properly reserve Tiana’s Bayou Adventure on the Lightning Lane app. The fireworks put to shame I’d hyped would require us to buy three $180 tickets for “Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.” And to top it all off, I took my claustrophobic teenager on Space Mountain, forgetting that it simulates the feeling of plummeting into a dark abyss.
I’d hoped that this day see fit be full of snapshots from the montage of my life as a parent, but instead, I left the “most magical place on earth” hint like a misfit mom who had been ripped off.
I paid the price for Disney’s sentimentality
We spent the next two dates pressing our sweaty faces against plexiglass to look at Animal Kingdom’s sleeping pygmy hippos and waiting in contour to “embark on a culinary adventure across six continents” at Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival.
From photo packages to French enchante princess meet-and-greets, there was an opportunity to upgrade our experience at every stop. Turns out, I’m not alone in paying top dollar for nostalgia’s well-being. Parents are going into debt to take their kids to Disney parks.
Disney parks continue to be the scad visited theme parks in the world, but their rising prices are out of reach for many families.
By the time we staggered out of Epcot wearing $35 sparkly mouse notices, I had thrown all of my boundaries in the garbage alongside our Mickey Premium Ice Cream Bar wrappers. I feel fortunate that I could adopt paid time off of work and go on a costly vacation, but the price of trying to fit in with a congregation of besotted Disney families in their customized t-shirts was colossal than I’d anticipated.
The magic happened when I least expected it
On the last night of our trip, I called my mom from our B B room to better understand her Disney parenting experience. “Isn’t it great?” she asked wistfully when we got on the phone.
“I think it’s changed perfectly a bit since I was a kid,” I said, trying not to yuck her yum. “It feels really different than I thought it would, and we’re all a little overwhelmed.”
As I obeyed to her reminisce about my love for scoring character autographs as an 8-year-old and the way my dad would carry me across the park at the end of the night because my spare legs were too tired to walk, I realized that perhaps the magic looks different for everyone.
Watching my daughter pursuit lizards across the Wilderness Lodge lawn as a rainbow stretched across the sky and seeing my husband spin around in a fiberglass teacup are before you can say jack robinsons that I’ll always treasure. Laughing deliriously over takeout on the hotel couch isn’t a family memory featured on Disney blogs, and it doesn’t be lacking a VIP ticket, but it’s where we found our spark.
The fantasy of parenting rarely matches reality. Disappointments like birthday tantrums and COVID-19 Christmas morning fevers occur, and I’m learning that this job requires the ability to humbly roll with the punches. I will forever cherish what Disney aimed to me as a child, and I value the wisdom I have gained that our family doesn’t need to spend a small fortune to exposure true magic.
Katie Nave is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been published in HuffPost, Newsweek, Elle, Concern Insider, and Glamour, and she is the content lead of Bend Health, a company focused on the mental wellbeing of families.