An Introvert's Guide to Disney World

I am so excited about this post because I have a lot to share. I want to first set up some ground work to explain my different perspective on Disney theme park-ing. Our family has been to Disneyland/World more than 10 times since Jeremy and I have been married. I have come across people who really don't get why we would continue to go back after having been there so many times already. I mean, it doesn't really change that much, it's super crowded, it's loud, it's geared toward children.... What makes Jeremy and I (mainly me) want to return? I think I have figured it out. What really makes it unusual for me to want to return to Disney is that I am a total introvert and Disney is everything introverts usually try to avoid in life. Okay, so let me break down a couple of things for you first to "get" what I'm going to talk about:

An introvert is NOT a shy person. Some of you who know me on an acquaintance level may not understand how introverted I am. Jeremy laughs at my introversion because he says I am an introvert disguised as an extrovert. Introverts NEED time alone to recharge their batteries and really get worn out by crowds, noisy places, and social situations. Even work wears me out socially. 

Jeremy is an extrovert, but is shy. Well, shy really isn't the right word, but he takes a while to warm up to people. He doesn't do small talk, he has a small group of close friends, and he also hates crowds. This looks like all the makings of an introvert, but he HAS to be with people to feel recharged. He hates being alone and spending time on his own. He just doesn't know what to do. He needs social contact. Want a funny little kicker? Natalia is the perfect introvert mix. She needs time alone, takes a while to warm up to people, and will really get mentally sucked dry if she is in social situations for a long time without a break. She is your cookie cutter introvert. Jeremy is the extroverted odd man out. Everyone say "Awe, poor Jeremy!"

Okay, that has a point for Disney World traveling, I promise. Just tuck that nugget in the back of your mind, or start diagnosing all of your friends as introvert/extroverts as I go on.

Now picture the ski instructor from Southpark. If you've never watched it, don't

worry. You won't miss out on much of a joke. If you are going to Disney solely for the rides "You are going to have a bad time." The lines take longer than the rides, the rides are mostly cheesy, and the roller coasters are pretty slow so they appeal to a broad array of age groups. All the really good rides are dispersed on opposite ends of the park so you have to haul your churro eating butt all the way across the sparkly hot-as-death concrete to get from one headlining ride to the next. Yes, there are "fast passes" and other tricks to get you on to rides faster, but if you want to go to a park for rides alone you are better off going to some place like Six Flags. Oh, if you want to know what the hell a "fast pass" is and all that other Disney lingo, this isn't your blog. There are countless amazing blogs that will explain all of that. Let Pinterest be your guide.

So why do people like us go to Disney? Because we are crazy, of course. Okay, that is partly true, but I actually have a real answer. We go because it is about

the experience, not about the checklist. Let that sink in for a minute. You know those touring plans that will get you on every ride, see every parade, and find every character? We have those too. We look at it at the end of the day and proudly exclaim: "Look at all the stuff we did compared to the list! Let's grab some popcorn on our way out." We agree before we go on vacation that when Disney stops being magical we all tap out. That's it. We just stop what we are doing, quickly take emotional inventory, and just leave. I don't care that the park is open for another four hours. If we are done, we are just done. That right there is the best advice I can give any family. The second best advice is to leave the park in the middle of the day if you are at Disneyland. When you go to Disneyland you can just walk from your hotel into the park, so leaving is easy. You can't do that at Disney World. You are magically trapped. Just leave. 

Okay, so what are we doing at Disney World if we are leaving early and we are

The Queen of Hearts, Alice, & Dad

not in it for the rides? Why are we willing to throw down a small fortune to experience all the magical chaos? The key word is experience. You have to let your guard down and just go with it. Disney is not the place where anyone is looking at you, so girl, you wear that princess shirt. Honey, wear that Star Wars full on nerd reference gear. You will stand out more if you are NOT wearing a little something quirky. Natalia and I dressed in "theme" almost every day. We took characters from movies and wore regular clothes in the character's colors. It's called "Disney bound" styling. We are awesome. Jeremy did not participate. I ran out of time to make our special t-shirts, but his was a storm trooper reference and very cool. His idea because he is awesome.

She has spotted her prey

Another Disney thing we do is pin trading. Again, Pinterest will be your reference guide to the rules and how to get started. Once you have your starter set Pin Trading Is Free! Did you read that! Yes! Something to do at Disney that does not bleed your wallet dry. Natalia is the Katniss of pin traders. She will be able to see a Cast Member with pins to trade from 50 yards away and make a B-line to them in a slightly creepy, stalker-like fashion. Her skills are second to none. She trades all pins. She will have a pin theme of "keepers" one day, and the next day she will decide to have a different theme and trade them all. I am a methodical trader. I am very selective over the pins I trade, keep, and who I trade with. This drives Jeremy and Natalia crazy, and they tease me about not being "into" the trading game. We are all very competitive, so the pin trading is entertaining for us. We would go into gift shops and descend on the shop workers like vultures trying to see who could trade for the coolest pin. It beats waiting in line again for 30 minutes. 

Speaking of waiting in line, we have games for that too. I want to say up front that we go to Disney during the off season and NEVER during busy conventions. I am not willing to wait over an hour for a five minute ride. Yes, we pull Natalia out of school and that is frowned upon, but this is our big family vacation and I've never met a homeless drug addict who said their downfall began they day

they missed 6th grade Social Studies.  Okay, back to the games: We do not rely on our smart phones and social media to individually entertain us. Our love language is quality time, so that would defeat the vacation purpose. There is one exception. Our dog's boarding facility has a "doggie cam" and we would watch him run around and act a fool with some doberman that he befriended. Since Ripley (our rottweiler) is so skinny it was hard to tell them apart. A large portion of the game was trying to spot our own dog. One of the best things that happened to me for this trip was running out of data. It forced me to put my phone on airplane mode and be present. We used Jeremy's phone for the Disney app and watching Ripley. The Disney app tells you everything you need to know at the moment. Ride times, fast pass stuff, restaurant reservations. It's awesome and saves a lot of walking. Ain't nobody gonna walk two miles for the Dwarfs Mine Train when the wait is  65 minutes long! Skip!

The second game was for lines and in the whole park. You can judge our family on this one because it is kind of terrible. We set up a point system for other families fighting in public in the happiest place on earth. One point is just loud snarky comments by an adult to another adult or a child. Children fighting with each other do not count. The bigger the scene and the more ridiculous the fight the more points scored. It should be witnessed by another Lacow, but we also use the honor system. Yes, we had a couple times when we cast points on our own family. That was usually right before we decided to call it a day or eat a snack. I really have a hard time in crowds lately and actually had to turn to the people behind me in line a couple of times and physically demonstrate the amount of space I needed in line. Remember, this is Florida at 89 degrees in enough humidity to make you a crazed lunatic (obviously). I think some of it was a cultural thing because by the end of the week I started to see a common denominator. I started putting my hands on my hips and rotating around like a sprinkler while in line. I don't care that I looked like a nut. Don't come in my personal bubble! I'm sure people had the "family game" going on as well and I earned them a lot of points with my line antics. 

Here is another big Disney touring secret: Pack your own food. I'm not even talking about saving money, although you definitely will. When hunger comes up on you it will strike like a cobra. It will take out your children and husband like the zombie virus and turn everyone within minutes! You think I'm exaggerating but it's the gospel truth. Do you really want to spend 15 minutes in line with the angry undead who all of a sudden cannot make a decision between Sprite and Coke? You better have some food on the ready. Don't even think about stowing it in a locker. Those are at the front of the park past Main Street. You won't ever be back there until you are hauling your tired butt out of the park. Let me tell you how it's done. Go to Publix or whatever grocery store has meals on the go and grab meals for the family before you head to the park. Oh, don't forget plastic ware. Our top picks were ready made salads (just shake and eat), sub sandwiches, sushi (um, eat that early in the day), chicken with hummus and crackers, and those laughing cow cheeses. I swear people looked down right jelly as we sat down on a bench and ate real food, people watched, and planned our next area of attack. This is also a good time to check your feet. Jeremy got horrible blisters this time. We did eat at one character breakfast and ate lunch in Germany at Epcot. There is an app for Disney (of course), so don't just show up and wait. Get on that app, make a reservation and eat something for the love of humanity. The beer garten was surprisingly good food, air conditioned, and did not feel rushed. Jeremy and I had a coronary from the sausage and the price tag, but we decided it was worth it. They sit you at community tables with other families and we racked up a lot of points with the family at our table. Bonus. 

We chose October for our visit because of the lower crowds and the Halloween Party. Yes, you pay extra to go to the party. Yes, it sells out so you better plan ahead. People really dress up (adults go all out) and EVERYONE gets to trick or treat through the park. They have little trick or treat stations dispersed throughout and you wait in  quick lines for big handfuls of good candy. We were hoping to go on one of the rides that had a consistent hour wait during the Halloween party, but no dice. Still an hour long. We just skipped it. There were fireworks, parades, candy, and lots of people. Oh, lots of people. I guess that is to be expected when the event is sold out. It was fun, but I don't feel the need to ever do it again. I like Christmas at Disney better. I did have fun passing out glow sticks to little kids just for fun. I felt like the Oprah of glow sticks. "You get a glow stick! You get a glow stick! You get a glow stick!" It helps me hate the crowds less. Naughty children who don't know how to behave in line do not get glow sticks. Jerk parents' kids don't get glow sticks either. It is my passive aggressive way of "getting back" at jerky parents in line. I'm so immature. 

My final advice is to leave. When it isn't fun just leave. This is going back to my snippet on personality styles and really knowing yourself before you go to

Disney. It seems awfully deep for a Disney vacation, but Disney is expensive and physically taxing. You need to know what you are getting into and what you can handle before you go. If you have unrealistic expectations (like getting to the parks at opening every day and staying until closing every night for a whole week) you are going to be miserable and have miserable memories. We had the option to visit one more park on our last day and we chose to not do anything. Yep. We slept most of the morning and then went to Downtown Disney (now called Disney Springs) for a couple hours that evening. We didn't even last very long at Downtown Disney. The night before we did a bunch of research regarding the best park to see one last time and had decided on Animal Kingdom. We had this big plan and set up our fast passes for the day. Our outfits were picked out. We woke up the next morning and all agreed that if we had gone we would have been miserable and it just wasn't worth it. Bam! Tapped out right then and there as a family. Our goals for this vacation were not to cross off items on a checklist. Our goals were to spend time together, be silly, escape from the normal routine, and get our Disney fill. Once we felt like we got our Disney fill, we were just done. That's it. Done. I didn't even take a whole lot of pictures this time because I was too busy just being "in" it. It was nice. 

I know Disney is not for everyone. I think it is something that should be seen at least once in a lifetime just because of all the details and genius that go into everything in the parks. It's pretty astounding. It is a place where you will have more fun if you let your guard down and give into the silliness for a while. Grown women wearing crowns (me), kids wearing pink and purple cat tails (Natalia), and a man with a resting serial killer face wandering the park in normal clothes and a pirate hat (Jeremy) looking for pins. No one is looking at anyone but their own families, really, and no one cares. Disney smells good (some of the people don't, but Disney does) and it is all about families. I have watched Natalia experience Disney in a whole new way each time we have gone as she has grown up. She has gone from coloring at the table with princesses to

master pin trader/roller coaster enthusiast. Every time we go to Disney with Natalia the experience is a little different. I wondered about her this time since she is a "tween". I was relieved when she bought the cat tail and wore it everywhere. Still my girl. 

So there it is. The reasons we go to Disney and why we go back. It's not the rides, it's not the food, it's not the weather. It is our family place. I know our family has fun anywhere, but Disney is a special place for us. It isn't the usual vacation spot of choice for introverts or people who abhor crowds, but it is our place. I love Disney and I know we will do it again. Not in Florida, but Disneyland, California; but that is a whole other post.