It seems like you just need to spend a few minutes on social media and one picture you will see is someone at Disney World standing in front of Cinderella Castle. In just about every photo, you will see smiling, happy people enjoying the most magical perfect day ever. Our castle photo from our family trip back in 2021 isn’t one that you would see many people proudly post on Facebook, but it does make me laugh when I see it.
It’s no wonder that when planning a Disney World trip, we all spend months making sure we have all the details spot-on from rides, dining, and experiences. We also have probably been saving money all year to have the flawless trip and the photo at the castle photo is the visual proof to everyone that we accomplished our goal and joined the millions of people each year to have the photo to show our friends.
When we were getting ready for our photo, I was hoping to have the same experience as well. It was me, Sarah, her mom, and the triplets, who were celebrating their seventh birthday and I figured who wouldn’t want to celebrate the big day at Disney World?
For good or bad, our kids are good at expressing themselves and are very genuine in their feelings and they aren’t going to act happy just for some photos. I’m not quite sure what was happening in their heads at that moment, but they were undoubtedly being themselves.
As grown-ups, how often do we change our moods to be socially acceptable? We can be mad as a hornet one minute but if we get a phone call from a good friend, we can suddenly be calm. Even if we are having the worst day ever, we can always smile for the camera.
Of the three photos we got, in all of them our son, Rhys was curled up in a ball, our daughter Pippa had her arms folded looking away from the camera and only our son Xander seemed to be having a good time right at that moment.
When I look back on that trip, I think that photo does a good job of summing up our trip. It was far from the perfect vacation. Many problems came out of the blue, and many times I wanted to pull out whatever hair I had left but there was plenty of fun and good times.
We knew that this trip could be challenging so we tried to do what we could to make it successful. We visited a local amusement park with the kids, we took photos of every part of the flying experience, and we even did a couple’s trip, so we knew how everything worked at the parks firsthand.
I never would have expected that our daughter would end up going on one ride the whole trip and wouldn’t even go on It’s a Small Word since she didn’t like the clock face. I never thought that there would be times the kids would rather play Minecraft on their iPads than go to the parks or even the pool and I didn’t expect as many meltdowns as we experienced.
I just remember sitting at the airport on our way home and I was just done with traveling, and I was ready to stay at home until the kids were 18 but as time passed and I looked back at the trip my thoughts changed. Sarah and I have not gone back to Disney with all the kids since and even now when I think of doing that, I have thoughts of joy and terror at the same but even though it was a difficult trip, I’m glad that we went.
When planning a trip, most of what happens is out of control like the weather, delays, and what our spouse or kids do. The main thing that is in our control is how we respond to what is going on around us and sometimes I did well and other times I was off the mark. I guess it’s no surprise that one of my favorite parts of the trip was walking around our resort by myself a few mornings enjoying the tranquility,
Sometimes it doesn’t take much to go wrong for us to get in a bad mood and sometimes it’s hard to get out of our funk. On this trip, I did have a lot of fun, but I spent most of the time on guard hoping to avoid any meltdowns or just thinking about all the money we were spending just sitting in the room when we could be doing something.
When I see that photo, I try to remember all the good things that happened on the trip. The kids all flew in a plane for the first time, they got to enjoy a week-long trip with their grandmother, and the boys got to go on a lot of fun rides. Sarah got to have much of the day alone with her mom at the Magic Kingdom and all of us got some one-on-one time with an adult and a kid, which happens too infrequently.
The people in that Castle photo are not perfect so It’s no surprise that we did not have the perfect trip. I must admit that I do wish some things had been different and I did spend much of the trip wondering if it was worth all the time and hassle to make it down there. What I always come back to in the end is the kids are going to be grown up in just a blink of an eye and there are years that I can barely remember what happened, but this is one trip that I will never forget well even if it was far from picture perfect.