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A few years ago, the requests started pouring in from every member of my household. The children had spoken. They wanted to go to Disney World. My husband had also spoken. He, too, wanted to go to Disney World. He’s not one of those grown-ups who is obsessed with Disney. He’s one of those parents who feels true unadulterated happiness by watching his children experience joy, so much so that he’s willing to do something unpleasant like pay gobs of money to stand in very hot lines for many hours just to watch them “feel the magic.”
I, however, am neither a Disney adult nor someone who is super interested in doing things I don’t like just for the sake of my children’s joy. I do those things, like spend a rainy Saturday afternoon at the trampoline park and go to bad restaurants, but I’m grumpy about it, and certainly don’t want to spend an entire vacation doing it. It’s not my fault, it is part of my genetic lineage to be a Disney curmudgeon. My brother, upon taking his children to Disney World and being offered a “First Visit” pin, famously asked if they had a “Last Visit” pin he could don instead.
Eventually, my family members wore me down. At 5, 9, and 12 years old, they are in the Disney sweet spot, age-wise—no toddlers and no teenagers. All primed for rides, funnel cake, and magic. (I’ll note that in the writing of this article, I did witness tens of thousands of people at Disney World with babies and toddlers, which seems to me both superhuman and completely insane.)
There were many aspects of this trip to Orlando, Florida, that filled my soul with dread—the unrelenting crowds and heat, the long lines, the existentially upsetting consumerism, the pervasive artificiality, the excessive whining and meltdowns. However, there was one thing that I dreaded above all else: that moment in the modern co-parent’s life when there is a decision to be made, and you and your partner lock eyes about it, and then have either a silent or verbal negotiation over something as trivial as whether the kids can have an extra cookie or watch another Bluey episode. I pictured 5,000 of these interactions every day as we were asked for cotton candy or a pair of Star Wars–themed Mickey ears or another ride on Space Mountain. So in planning this trip, I had one condition. We would not co-parent. My husband would make every single decision, from the big to the small.
This is not the normal mode of our marriage. I tend to be pickier about many things than my husband, so often I make the decisions when it comes to travel or where we’re going to have dinner. When I’m not unilaterally in charge of decisionmaking, we are co-parents, to a fault. Every decision is navigated and negotiated, decided upon by committee rather than by fiat. Generally, this works well for us. Our parenting styles and values are aligned, and if all decisions are made together, then the steady creep of resentments that can pile up in the course of a day or a lifetime of raising children don’t tend to accumulate.
However, it’s also an exhausting and inefficient way to run a life. And picturing trying to lock eyes and have a meaningful discussion of pros and cons of doing another trip on Tron versus seeing the Frozen show, or whether or not the kids could have lemonade for the 18th time that day, all while standing in blazing hot sun in a sea of Disney enthusiasts in customized Mickey T-shirts, seemed like it would be intolerably annoying.
So for the first time in our marriage, we embarked on an experiment in which I would make no decisions. I would show up at Disney World like a good foot soldier. I would push the stroller, carry bags, take children to the bathroom, divide and conquer the Dumbo Flyers ride and the Barnstormer, but I would do all of these things as instructed. I would experience Disney World as a 1950s father experienced child-rearing—completely outsourcing all decisionmaking and carrying no mental load.
My husband was understandably anxious about this dynamic, because when I’m dissatisfied with a situation I can be a real bitch about it. And since he was planning everything, that didn’t bode well for him. But I promised I’d try my best.
The first morning, we pre-ordered Starbucks sandwiches and were on the earliest monorail to the Magic Kingdom. Waiting in line to enter the park, I reached into my fanny pack and found my non-drowsy Dramamine. “Here we go,” I thought as I popped the tiny yellow pill. It was like I was in my 20s entering a music festival, but different.
And just like that, we were swept up in the tide of humans. My husband checked the app for our first move. We booked it to It’s a Small World. The Dramamine wasn’t working. I was already nauseated.
There was no line, because it turns out that nobody cares about It’s a Small World. We climbed in the boat and entered the first of our immersive Disney experiences. The song started, and I admit it tickled something deep in my childhood soul. The animatronics, retaining their 1960s aesthetics and technology, were so analog and handcrafted that you could really see how impressive they were. The kids shouted out different countries and cultures they identified. The song looped 3,000 times. I loved it.
As we emerged into the blazing sun, I fully surrendered to the experience. Being told where to go allowed me the childlike wonder of being surprised by everything we were doing, rather than being the one staring at my phone trying to book the Lightning Lanes. As the days went on and we visited different parks, suddenly I found myself in Paris. Then I walked a few more yards and the ambient music changed and I was in Tokyo. I was chatting with Mary Poppins one minute, and taking a water journey with Moana the next. Having agency is probably the most important and also most annoying thing about adulthood. Giving mine over was like a Zen Buddhist ride down a lazy river surrounded by extremely expensive special effects.
And the rides! The rides were incredible! Not just because they were thrilling and terrifying, but because they represented a truly astonishing feat of human imagination, artistry, and engineering. The oversize Uno cards on the Toy Story ride, the gorgeously realized sets of Pirates of the Caribbean and Arrendale and Avatar. I really felt like I was inside another world, immersed and transported. I felt a presence that Andy from Headspace has been trying to get me to achieve for years. What I hadn’t anticipated in all my curmudgeonliness was that Disney was, well, magical.
Mostly, there was a supreme freedom in these two words, which somehow I don’t think I had ever uttered before in 12 years of parenting: “Ask Dad.”
“Can we get our picture taken pulling the sword from the stone?”
“Ask Dad!”
“Can we buy this oversize Buzz Lightyear?”
“Ask Dad!”
“Can we have a 12th dessert?”
“Ask Dad!”
Suddenly my children weren’t annoying, because disappointing them wasn’t my responsibility.
At one point, while waiting in an interminable line for the Star Wars ride, my 5-year-old made a friend with another little girl. I heard my daughter explaining to her new companion, “My mom is working on not being in charge.”
On the final night at Epcot, my husband took the big kids for a final go on the Guardians of the Galaxy ride, so I was instructed to take our youngest in the stroller to get a good view of the fireworks, somewhere between Germany and Italy. The lights dimmed, the music swelled, and gorgeous fireworks exploded into the air while extremely pleasant voices sang vaguely familiar and generic lyrics about the beating of our hearts and how love brings us all together. Am I a little ashamed that I sobbed during this completely artificial simulacrum of beauty? Perhaps. But I will not deny it. Because what is the difference between a simulacrum of beauty and magic, and actual beauty and magic? Looking down at my daughter wide-eyed and covering her ears in the stroller, I felt sad that I couldn’t live in this moment forever. And what is more indicative of being in a moment of beauty than that feeling?
Ultimately, I am still not a Disney person. Perhaps I will accompany my grandchildren there one day, particularly if I can score one of those electric scooters I saw everywhere. The artificial nature of the pristine streets and the omnipresent friendliness are neither authentic nor sustainable, much like my experiment in not making any parenting decisions for five days. My husband carrying the mental load of the entire trip was as much of a gift to me as the entire experience was to the children. Both were freeing and magical, and I planned to carry those feelings with me forever. They lasted all the way until we got to the gate at the airport and the kids asked for money to buy candy at Hudson News. My husband smiled, looked straight at me, and said, “Ask Mom.”
