My family loves Disney World. Wait, maybe “love” will give you the wrong idea because there are folks who rotate a sizable chuck of their lives around this famous amusement park. Before you start checking my tush for Tinkerbell tattoos and my china cabinet for Mickey Mouse stemware, I should explain that it’s more like a strong attraction that keeps drawing us back every three years . . . until this vacation. This year we cut our intermediary time down to two years. Why? Because next fall our oldest daughter will be a freshman in college.

See, we didn’t plan on being habitual visitors so we didn’t do the math. When our oldest was almost six and our youngest was almost four–and most importantly, potty-trained–we thought “Disney, why not?” I really considered it to be a one and done kind of thing. I had not grown up visiting The Mouse. My first visit was as an adult with my future husband, Frank, when I was twenty-one years old. I thought this trip with our kids would be such an special and singular event that we brought my mother, too, so she could experience the magic.

And that 2004 vacation was special and magical:

Meeting Aurora was a dream come true.

I loved finally going to Disney World with my mom.

And we had such a great time that we did it again in 2007:

The Carpets of Aladin.

2007 plus three years gives you 2010:

We always end up at Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe.

2013 meant they were both teenagers, but they were still up for a good time:

Rafiki’s Planet Watch in Animal Kingdom. Read all about it here.

And that brings us to 2015, when even at seventeen and fourteen, they’re not too cool for fun:

Animal Kingdom has lots of good photo ops.

At this point, I must share a little secret: I barely kept baby books and there are no marks commemorating inches grown on any of my door frames. I don’t like to stroll down memory lane because it makes my heart ache with longing, so I just try to stay in the now and grab the joy in parenting as I see it. But in a way, through no conscious planning, Disney World has become our growth chart, a very expensive and inconveniently located growth chart. But at least we’re getting a little more bang for our buck because this is a childhood record sprinkled with fairy dust.

Disney is not so much a destination to be toured, but an immersion experience. When friends scoff that going to the same place so many times is a waste of money, I can only answer that the focus is not on the things you see, but seeing your family in a place where the only focus is fun. Every time we go it’s like I can see the happy ghosts of their childhood overlaying the current moments, and it doesn’t cause me longing because “the now” is wonderful, too. The kids also experience a sort of childhood muscle memory because they grew up going here. There is nothing like catching that first glimpse of Cinderella’s Castle to wake up the child in a teen on the brink of adulthood.

Disney might in fact be the closest thing to time travel we have: you can revisit the past while being fully attuned to the present. It was honoring the present that spurred us–almost in a panic–to book a trip before high school graduation. Our daughter plans on attending college, and while that is all good, once she takes that first step to leave, our family as we know it will be changed. She will always be our child, but her childhood will be past tense. It’s about her sister, too. We wanted our youngest to have one more dose of Disney before she learns what being left behind in the nest means; before shared experiences become fewer and far between.

So, we took one more trip while our family is still under one roof, while our oldest can only imagine where her future is going to take her. We’ve banked one last entry on her growth chart before the adventure changes.

-Ellen

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