Hello all,
This may not be of much help, but its my new favorite Disney story (and I have some great ones). I took my first trip to Disney when I was 22... I had never been on Spring break and a friend convinced me that Disney should be the first... and conned me into joining him on his annual trip. Jump to 5 years later... just this last September, I convinced my mother, father, and sister to join my wife and I on the first family vacation ever (We are solidly working class and the idea of my father not working took some convincing even though he had weeks of built up days off.) We went on my mother's birthday! It was a week before my parent's anniversary as well.
It was the best idea ever! We made reservations at Tony's in Magic Kingdom. We told the waiter it was Mom's birthday and that their anniversary is coming up in a week. The waiter lead the group in a verse of Amore' and we added the birthday cake to our meal and it was great. The 8 inch one ran about 7.95, but fed all 5 of us with cake left (its sweet... good, but mega-sweet). Anyway, when we said that this was a trip we had tried to get them to go on for 5 years, he asked if we would like them to do something special for my parents. They called my parents over to the fountain and had them re-enact the scene from "Lady and the Tramp" featuring the meatball rolling with a nose. I have never seen my father laugh so hard or my mother so happy and both of them were cutting up, a rare thing as both are usually fairly serious.
I know it doesn't seem to relate, but the lengths that the staff went to to make it all about my parents was phenomenal. If you have a chance to do something on park for someone you love, do it! Let the staff know in advance and they'll work hard to make it a memory worth all the money for the trip. It may have took years to convince my family to go on vacation, but the lengths they went to made us want to go back... and we are... my wife has two sisters who are significantly younger than her (15 years to the next oldest one) and we are taking them for their birthdays in March. I may not have went on the trip until I was 22, but I have made it a mission to share the magic I felt... so I took my wife for her first time, then we took my family, and now we are taking hers... and everytime, no matter the event we are celebrating (anniversary, birthday, or anything at all) the park staff in the restaurants makes it awesome....
I'm a 27 year old professional man, but even I have to say do the birthday on park, and let the staff know wherever you are and they will find some way to make it special!
Just my two cents....
Sorry to have blabbed so much... just thinking about how much it meant to my mother and how I can't capture it enough in words... if a birthday on park can reach my parents, then for a child I can only imagine how awesome it would be.
