Letting Go Of My Disney Dream

If you have to rely on the rose-tinted glasses of memory to make a trip good, you’re doing it wrong.

by Justin Rosario

Family trips are a staple of raising children. Packing up the car, tossing the kids into the backseat, and heading off to the Great Beyond is such a stereotype that there’s an entire genre of movies about it — 1983’s “National Lampoon’s Vacation” possibly being the most well-known, even 40 years later. The hope is that the trip is fun and exciting, creating fond lifelong memories. Sometimes, family trips are messy but at least end up being something you can look back at and laugh over. The worst possible trip, though, is one in which you know no one is going to have fun and you do it anyway.

With this in mind, my wife Deb and I have officially given up on the idea of taking our kids Jordan and Anastasia (and surrogate daughter Lila) to Disneyworld.

It’s a hard pill to swallow, but letting go of your dream vacation may be for the best. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting. I really wanted to have a good Disney trip. I needed to have a good Disney trip. 

My (not so) fond Disney memories

I have been to Disney three times. The first trip was fine. The trips after that? Not so much. 

My first time to the Magic Kingdom was with my father, my brother Matthew, and my father’s 3rd wife Kim. I was 12 or 13 and Matthew 14 or 15. It wasn’t a bad trip and we had fun. I was still young enough to be “Wow! Disney!” and not yet old enough to be too cool for it. Matthew, at this point, has discovered girls and smoking pot so he was less enthralled. Kim and I had long established that we did not like each other and my father had checked out on raising me some time ago. We weren’t exactly a tight-knit family unit. Still, it was Disney and I was a kid so most of that didn’t really matter. I had fun. Except on Space Mountain which we shall never speak of again.

I do not recall asking to go when I was younger, almost certainly because I understood that we couldn’t afford it. Once we were more financially secure, though, I guess my father felt that we should do the things we couldn’t do when Matthew and I were younger. A motivation I am keenly aware of these days.  

My second trip to Disney came a few years later, after my father had moved to Florida and I had left to go live with my mother in Long Island. There was significant acrimony over this and my father made sure to make my first and only visit as unpleasant as possible. I was maybe 17 when I went and it was decided we would take a trip to Disney. I didn’t see any reason not to because, hey, it’s Disney, right? I went with Matthew, my Uncle Rene, and my father. When we got to Disney, however, my father loudly announced that he wasn’t going to pay for my ticket because I was a man now. He paid, went in, and left me at the entrance. Matthew, having no ability to stand up to my father whatsoever, spinelessly followed.