Over reading week my best friend and her mom took me to Disney World for the first time (at least that I can remember… when I was tiny I went to Hollywood Studios back when it was MGM Studios). As expected, it was full of small children and strollers and people riding around on scooters. There were tired adults everywhere, cries of excitement and lines that could drive you crazy if you weren’t as strategic as my friend and her mom.
My friend Sydney and her mom were no doubt the best people to take me on this trip; they have annual passes and have been going wild since 2005. They know the parks in and out: the best places to eat, the quickest routes, and the most important rides. It made the trip far less stressful than I would imagine it would have been without them; they helped me suppress the unbearable anti-capitalist thoughts that run rampant through my mind because of FIMS.
Their Disney veteran status meant that they were also used to everything and were unfazed by meeting princesses and going on certain rides. Anyone who knows me would also think I would be that way because I’m sweet and all — but I am far from feminine or ‘the princess loving’ type. However, during this trip I reverted into a five year old. It didn’t take long for them to realize that me meeting princesses was simultaneously hilarious and adorable, and it was how we were going to spend a large part of our trip.
During our first night at Magic Kingdom we saw that the line to meet Anna and Elsa was only 20 minutes, which is extremely rare. I was completely unprepared to meet Elsa; she is my favourite princess/queen and I did not feel adequately dressed. My eyeliner was coming off, I hadn’t worn a dress, and I had nothing planned to say to her to express how much she meant to me.
After feeling my heart racing for twenty minutes I saw her, and was instantly breathless. I completely lost my cool — I just hugged her and tried my best not to cry and squeal from delight and awe. She was so beautiful and well spoken and told me that I was “such a beautiful snowflake.” Safe to say, I was 1000x more excited than I should have been and 500x more excited than the little kids who were there to meet her. Three hours later my heart was still going and I thought I would undoubtedly faint.
Over the duration of our trip I also met Tinkerbell, Anna, Mulan, Snow White, Belle, Ariel, and Alice in Wonderland. They evoked similar reactions to Elsa, but as I got more used to it and was dressed in better outfits it was less terrifying. I even managed to actually speak to some of them!
When you get older, you can appreciate more than a kid can. You can see the fireworks and shows easier and you know how mind-blowing the technology is (like how the show Phantasma had scenes projected onto spraying water). The little kids were also adorable, and were a whole other part of the Disney experience that you miss when you are one of the kids themselves. You see their faces lighting up with excitement and their cute outfits and you instantly feel young again. Of course, some were a little troublesome and navigating a crowd of small children and strollers is not exactly soothing. But that excitement and those smiles makes up for all of the hard parts.
All in all, I’m so glad that my first proper Disney experience was when I was 19 instead of when I was a kid. It brought me back to childhood and proved to me that the magic of Disney never fades away.