We’ll never be a “Disney Family”
TLDR: the world is big and wide, and I could literally take a trip from Atlanta to Europe for the same price that I could take a trip from Atlanta to see fake Europe in Epcot.
With Disney, just like any other saccharine filled fake food in your life, the poison is in the dose. I’m not saying that we’ve never been to Disney or we hate Disney. Every time we go we have an absolute blast! Just like every time I pop the top on an ice-cold Diet Coke (AKA fridge cigarette), I love it. But I know there is more to life than only drinking Diet Coke. There is more to travel than only going to Disney parks.
In the 13 years since we’ve been parents, we have taken our children to Disney twice. The last time we went, we blew it out with seven days, including Magic Kingdom, Disney Hollywood Studios, Universal, Disney Springs, and Animal Kingdom. Our family still talks about Mickey and Minnie Runaway Train the Avatar Ride. Watching my youngest go on her first roller coaster and seeing her face in the photo at the end when she was in the very first seat of Space Mountain was one of the funniest pictures I've ever seen. My husband, Sam, is a fabricator, and watching Sam and our oldest nerd out on "how did they make this mech work on this ride" was magical. Drinking Duff "beer" with the Simpsons at Springfield at Universal was hysterical. But at the end of trip when our girl started planning, “next year when we come back, we can…” my husband, and I quickly shut that talk down.
For about the same amount of money to see plastic mountains and sanitized streets, been able to take our kids on:
Big Trip 1: Denver, Colorado Springs, Santa Fe, and Moab
Big Trip 2: San Fransisco, Amtrack ride to Seattle, and Vancouver
Europe Trip: Munich, Berlin, Prauge, and Budapest
All of these trips open our children’s eyes to the world in a way that we never dreamed of. Little moments like watching them actually use their knowledge to convert temps to Celsius or teaching them about money conversion. Big moments like when they learned how to read train schedules and navigate the streets of Prague to get to our hotel. And the countless hours of WAR! that we played on the train.
We will go back to Disney one day. But first, we will see a ton of the real world.
