So after I posted the photo with Chris and myself at Disney, Abs was disappointed I didn’t talk more about the actual mechanics of doing Disney with children. In all honesty, I was lazy.
A couple of weeks ago, Abs & D, Aims and M and their two children, Princess the Older and Princess the Younger (Not their real names) came to Florida for a week-long adventure at Disney. I only did one day with them (which totally pooped me out, so I don’t know how they managed to do the whole week.) We went to Animal Kingdom.
Tag! You’re it!
When you go to Disney with children, I’d suggest going with three times as many adults as there are children. This way, not any one person has to watch the children the whole time. Now who is in charge of which child? Well, that depends. If the child holds your hand, you are responsible for her until you or she tags someone else. For instance, I had Princess the Younger (who is two years old) as we were walking to the safari ride. She walked away from me, which is fine since I could still see her. But then she took D’s hand, at which point I said, You’re it! It was then his responsibility to watch her. I don’t think any one of us had her for more than twenty minutes at a time, which makes it easier on your energy and you’re sanity.
This also assumes that you have relatively responsible friends.
The Runner
Disney has the fast pass, which pretty much allows you to jump ahead in line. You get a pass for one ride and then you have to wait X amount of hours before you can get a fast pass for another ride. Abs was right on top of getting the tickets. She remembered which rides they were interested in and what time we needed to get the next fast pass at. So I’d suggest designating one person for that. Otherwise, you may end up waiting an hour and a half for a ride.
The Non-Rider
The other thing I’d suggest is to being someone who doesn’t like the rides. Princess the Younger was not tall enough to come with us to certain rides, so someone needed to watch her while we went.
Abs, Aims, M, Princess the Older and I wanted to go on Everest. Luckily for us, we had Chris and D who did not want to go, so we left Princess the Younger with them. Aims strapped her into the stroller because she was already starting to doze. She told them that Princess the Younger could have anything she wanted from the snack bag and also told them to walk her around in the stroller. She falls asleep when you walk her around. They said ok, and the rest of us got in line for the ride.
Then we realized that we left her with two men that don’t have much experience with children. And we had fully expected to return to find Princess the Younger to be covered in empty snack bags since Aims said Princess the Younger could have anything from the bag. She didn’t specify that it had to be one at a time.
Luckily, Princess the Younger fell asleep pretty quickly after Chris and D began walking with the stroller. She actually fell asleep with her hand in her snack bag.
mini games
While we were standing in line, we played mini-games that only required your brain. One game we played was an alphabet game. We would start with a subject (Disney Characters) and take turns going through the alphabet. We started with A for Ariel. Then the next person get B and had to find a character that started with B. Like Belle.
I don’t remember what I got, but I do remember getting P and I couldn’t think of any. I was blanking. Actually, I blanked on all my letters. I apparently M put his arm to his nose and I was like, what elephant started with P? I totally don’t know anything about Disney! But eventually they gave me enough clues so I figured out it was Pinocchio. it seemed like such a duh answer after they helped me. I also got U which was also a totally duh moment. I blame a long day, but I think I just suck at that game. Nevertheless, it helped pass the time.
We didn’t end up seeing everything at Animal Kingdom. We missed the Asian section, which meant no tigers or the tapir, but that’s par for the course when you bring children. It didn’t bother us much since we’ve been there several times, but you may want to move at a slightly faster pace if you want to see the whole park.
And come in February! The weather was pretty awesome.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal