While you're protecting your children, are you also teaching the children how to protect themselves? Are you preparing them for the dangers they will inevitably face in the real world when they finally do go out on their own? Are you building their confidence in their own abilities, or are you building their fears of the unknown into a debilitating paranoia?
Oh, great, now because I don't like to leave my kids alone and unsupervised, I'm a bad parent?
Yes, I do teach my children to protect themselves.
Yes, I prepare my children for the dangers of the "real" world.
Yes, I build my children's confidence, and no, I'm not instilling any "debilitating paranoia".
This is not some binary questions, where if I don't like to leave my young children unsupervised in a public place, I MUST be some sort of smothering father, paranoid and miserable, one step away from locking my family into a subterranian bunker to ride out the upcomming zombie-pedophile invasion.
You seem to have satisfied yourself that there is virtually no danger of someone walking up to a lone child in an otherwise empty restroom and doing something swift and perverted. That's cool, I strongly doubt that will ever happen to my kids either.
But why in the world is it so important to you to convince other people that this never ever happens? Great, it's rare, so are hundreds of other things we take precautions against every day. In this case, it's entirely passive. Not leaving my child alone in a crowd is as natural as breathing. I'm no expert in child development, but I'd be very suprised if a sense of abandonment is positive for a 5yo's mental health.
Some precautions may be zero-effort, but they are not always zero-consequence. Increased safety is not the only consequence of paranoid hyper-vigilance; it's prudent to evaluate ALL consequences of any action before taking the action.
I do consistantly evalute
most of my actions, I'll admit, I fail at hyper-evaluating
ANY action I take. I'm pretty laid back in that respect. And I don't think I'm paranoid, if you don't believe me, you can just ask the secret world government, they have my entire life's brain waves recorded in their hidden base buried under Altlantis.
When I post questions like this, many parents say that I am being ridiculous or stupid, and they either get angry with me for my criticism, or laugh it off as they totally ignore me for being a "fool", or question my own experience with raising children as being inadequate. "You don't understand!" they often say in that angry, condescending manner. "It's not the same world any more! There are sickos everywhere! Everywhere is dangerous! Trust no-one! If it saves even ONE child, isn't it worth ANY effort? MY child's safety is more important than YOUR discomfort! You don't know what you're talking about!"
As I said before, I'm not saying that no parents should ever bring youngsters into opposite-sex public restrooms as a safety precaution. I just think it's important to keep the actual dangers in perspective, and not to over-react to a danger that's serious, but not nearly as prevalent as some people think.
It might be too late for me to tone myself down a bit, Please take this as friendly. I don't take anything said here personally, I don't really know you, and you really don't know me. Who knows, I might not be such a bad guy after all.
Anyway, you are not being ridiculous, or stupid, or any of those other things. I know that real 'stranger abductions' are not common, and none have ever been publicly reported at the four 'main' Disney parks. That doesn't mean that keeping a close eye on your kids is the wrong thing to do, even if it might be for the wrong reason.
The lowlife scumbags who have been caught fondling children in the water parks lately were caught because they were stupidly brazen. Fortunately, most of those pervs are also morons, and eventually get caught because they can't think clearly enough to get away with it.
This is an entirely different subject, but I would not depend on these people being stupid as any kind of defense. I checked my states sex offender registry a while ago, and a former employee of mine, one of the smarter most polite people I've ever known is on there for offenses involving a minor. It shocked me quite a bit, as did the number of offenders living in my area. I don't think these sorts of perversions are only commited by "morons".
I wouldn't want my DH to take dd6 into the mens room - I'd rather she wait outside. I don't understand why people think there are more wackos out there in this day and age than there were in the past. I don't understand why people think they need to be more paranoid 1000 miles from home, than in their local Target. As for the PP and the hairdye, I think your children are going to grow up to be fearfull, paranoid adults, not capable of functioning in society. And forget about the men in the mens room when a 10 year old girl shows up - ds11 would be mortified! 
