Disney Deep Dive, Part 2

We last left off at the trip I took to Disney (minus my protesting father) when I was nine years old.  I don't know when I figured I'd make it back--we were not big fancy trip people, at least until my parents discovered cruises, when they became big fancy trip people--but I still don't think I expected it to take as long as it did.  In the end I had a 20-year gap, and it was a super significant 20-year gap.  There were two new parks, lots of new or changed rides, and an explosion in re-theming to incorporate all of the super blockbuster animated movies Disney had put out since shortly after my last visit.  Ponder this--on my last trip in 1987, The Little Mermaid, the first of a long line of movies that launched the new era of Disney princesses, was still two years away.  The Disney World I experienced was a much more classic place, where the time-tested, part-of-American-history movies were at the forefront.  But once the princess train came busting through, nothing was stopping it.  It's shocking to realize how much happened to movies and merchandising in the interim, and in turn how much it impacted the parks themselves.  

Twenty years after that second trip, Craig and I had already been married more than four years.  We wanted to have a baby but things weren't going according to plan as that summer came to a close.  Usually we took one significant vacation per year, but Craig's schedule was crazy even in summer by that point so our options were limited.  A couple years earlier Craig won a week's accommodations in Orlando through a golf tournament and we had long thought about using it for a trip to Disney.  Miraculously, we found a rare week in December where Craig was free, which would allow us to go outside of the brutal summer heat.  We weren't even sure that the prize was still valid after a couple years, but we confirmed it was and eagerly booked it a couple months ahead.  I can only think we booked it at a time where we had basically given up hope a bit on the pregnancy front.  Well...in mid-November we were shocked to discover I was pregnant, and now our trip was only a month away!  I panicked a little bit because I was already super nervous about having a miscarriage.  I did some research on rides and realized that I really should forego any of the exciting ones--including Space Mountain, which I spent the past 20 years regretting not riding, and two new coasters at the newer parks.  Of all the rides not recommended for pregnant women, the only one I made an exception for was the safari at Animal Kingdom, as I felt like the bigger risk was for someone with a visible, bump-able belly.  I was sad, of course, but Craig wasn't into those rides anyway, so at least we'd be doing the same activities throughout the trip.  My challenge, however, was that my family knew how excited I was to ride those rides, and since we hadn't announced the pregnancy prior to leaving (we ended up having to leave it for Christmas due to our schedules), I needed to either lie or come up with an excuse for not riding them!  In the end I told my parents on the phone when they asked about Space Mountain that "it was a long story", which bought me enough time to wait until we saw them in-person and they could understand the real reason why!

Our trip ended up being really amazing despite my limitations.  My nausea and tiredness went away almost immediately upon arrival, and somehow my body held up despite the long days.  We got to enjoy all of the Christmas decorations and did a pretty great job of working through parks at a good but reasonable pace.  The "winterized" castle was incredible!

One of my favorite things was the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights.  It was an awesome display of buildings in MGM Studios (now Hollywood Studios) draped in lights that "danced" with the music.  It even snowed!  It's too bad it was discontinued a few years later.

I was so excited to get my picture taken with Figment, who was one of my favorites 20 years earlier.  I think I still have my little vinyl figure of him from my previous trip floating around somewhere in a memory box.  On our most recent trip I bought a stuffed version of him as Carter's souvenir, since he was too young to pick anything himself.  It felt appropriate...and Carter did like chewing on the horns!

I still look at pictures of me from this trip and marvel that I was pregnant at the time.  Definitely not showing but maybe looking a little chubby after meals?  Once you're so ingrained in the "mom" version of yourself, the old version is hard to wrap your head around.

And here we have one more sombrero photo for good measure!  I think they may be getting smaller, at least!  In lieu of a sibling partner in the picture, Craig found me a parrot.

Canada was one of our favorite souvenir spots on the trip, and it was apparently the only picture of us together.

I could post a ton of pics from that trip.  Digital photography was still relatively new and I loved being able to document everything!  It was like a dream to be there in warm weather in December (it was basically perfect until our departure day, which had a tornado watch!) and explore together, all with the knowledge that the next time we went back we'd hopefully be parents.  There was so much to see and do, and I look back on that trip fondly, especially since everything changed six months later!

The history of our last trip is well-documented in this blog, probably back around November 2012 when it got postponed, and then again leading up to the actual trip itself in August and September 2013.  It was supposed to be a group trip, first with Craig's whole family and then with just his parents, but emergency surgeries changed things both times and in the end there was some relief going alone because Jacob's behavior was so challenging at the time.  I think his grandparents might have been a bit offended at his perceived lack of gratitude.  It was a very hard trip and while I guess "hard in the most magical place on earth" was better than "normal hard", it holds a lot of mixed emotions from me.  I take it as a good sign that we came out of it with lots of fun memories despite the challenging stuff, and it gives me hope for this upcoming trip that even if some of our issues follow us there, we'll still make some life-long positive memories as a family.

One of our first memories from that trip was our welcoming committee--a giant frog on our patio chair!

Jacob has always been obsessed with sports and I didn't realize until I read my blog back that he started a basketball obsession shortly before that trip after seeing Space Jam.  It took a break for a few years before coming back strong in 2019, but it was enough back then that I was excited to find him basketball sneakers on Walmart clearance right before we left (as seen in this photo) and he spent most days begging to go play basketball at the resort's court.  We have been saying we should try to recreate this photo when we go--he'll be as tall as Craig now and have no trouble hitting the net!

And speaking of little, look at Carter!  Gosh, he was adorable.  He was at such a great stage when we went--super smiley, very laid back--although we were dealing with him projectile vomiting after trying rice cereal in the prior couple weeks.  We took a break from food for the trip and tried to figure things out back at home later.  He may have had a rice intolerance but we're still not entirely sure.  That, along with Jacob's probable Celiac diagnosis that we received on the first full day of our trip, as well as the behavior problems we were already managing, made this trip a short oasis in the middle of a very difficult period.  Like I said, it was far from perfect, but even just a few good memories were more than we probably would have had at home.

When we were at Hollywood Studios on our first day, we met a bunch of characters...and I was able to be reunited with Minnie almost 26 years after we first "met"!

For some reason Jacob had a random crush on Cinderella at the time (ironically the complete opposite of his tastes in girls now--haha), and while we never met the real one, we did find this one at Downtown Disney (now Disney Springs) and he eagerly posed for a photo!

I couldn't resist this photo op with Carter!  Maybe this trip they'll actually fit him!

The pool at our hotel was pretty cool as it had a sandcastle waterslide.  Every morning the kids would battle the (life)guards and "conquer" them to open the slide for the day.  Jacob got in on it one day and loved his bandana and balloon sword.  

This was our only family photo from our last trip, or really even the only picture with both kids together...and of course I'm making a face because I was trying to talk the cast member through using my camera.  It's for that reason I keep thinking we should bite the bullet and get the absurdly expensive Memory Maker package, but I know I could also find moms taking pictures of their family and offer to trade taking each others' family photos, and that is much cheaper.  Will the kids be willing to pose or wait?  I have no idea.  

This was one of the better pictures I got at Animal Kingdom - check out that tongue!

I think this one should be recreated when we're there this time!

This was one of my favorite photos from our last trip, and it was also the last one I took!  We'd had a bit of a rough day at EPCOT.  It rained a lot.  We had to poncho up (stroller included) and dash across the park to find any place we still needed to visit that was indoors.  It was pretty miserable.  We had already done part of EPCOT earlier in the trip but we definitely didn't do most of it justice because of the rain.  There were a bunch of rides that we missed out on entirely.  The rain had stopped by this point but I'm guessing I felt a bit defeated that we didn't make the most of our day and sad that the trip was over...and yet maybe a tiny bit relieved as well.  But what a lovely way to leave.

The good news from this trip is that I was finally able to ride Space Mountain, Expedition Everest, and the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster that I had to skip previously.  And I got to relive the joy of my first coaster ever in Big Thunder Mountain.  This time I get to share that joy with my coaster buddy and hopefully add a few more to the list.  But knowing we missed a bunch last time makes me nervous for this time.  I know Genie+ should help, and if I give myself permission to buy Lightning Lane passes, it will help even more, but I am going into this trip with a brain full of what ifs.  What if our flights get screwed up?  What if something happens with our luggage?  What if the weather stinks?  What if we tire out too soon, and what if I turn into a raging you-know-what trying to keep everyone moving because we paid too much money to crap out halfway through a park?  What if transportation is as bad as people have been reporting, or we get stuck trying to find good gluten-free food?  What if the motion sickness patches don't work and someone doesn't want to ride all day and wastes the whole experience?  After two major problems during last year's vacation, it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that something might go wrong this time, and the stakes are even higher.  I keep hoping the excitement and adrenaline will get us through, but I also know my family.  We're not exactly resilient.  I will basically push myself to illness to make the most of an experience, but Craig is definitely not like that and the kids generally aren't either.  But we're not going through all this trouble to miss everything because we're tired or hot.  I mean, it might be the case where Carter and I push through with rides and let the big boys go back to the resort for a bit, but I hope not because I want to make family memories.  I should lower my expectations--and I'm trying--but it's hard with a trip of this magnitude.  If these pictures are any indication, these memories stick with you and I want them to be good ones--for all of us.