Going to WDW next week and not excited...

[Iggipolka]

I don't know what is wrong with me. We, my spouse and our two daughters, age 3 & 6, are going to be at WDW August 18-28th and I'm not excited for the trip, in fact, I'm almost dreading it. Totally new experience for me as I usually am so excited I'm just giddy about our trips to Disney.

Some of it is because our family has recently been through some horrible and costly legal issues that could have been prevented had a neighbor just talked to us about a property line dispute, rather than suing us, but it's also the thought of the long cross country trip with the kids, the heat, the crowds and the cost of the trip when we still have this lawsuit to pay for.

Part of the reason we're going, is to provide a temporary escape from the stress and reality of life, so I"m trying to focus on that break, but it still sounds like an overwhelming hassle and I almost (not totally) wish we weren't going.

Anyone been on a WDW trip and not been excited to go? How did you change your attitude and have fun on the trip?

 

[Vivianne]

We're going in October At first, I was just dreading the planning, cost, etc. Plus I have medical issues I deal with & sometimes just moving around is an effort. All this planning & trying to save money at the same time has been a drag for me. But things are coming into place. The way I deal with it is remembering my past trips where we've had a great time. I try to remember the good & forget the hassles. I see it as DH's vacation too which he really deserves after taking care of me. Life is short, try to squeeze the happiness out of it.

 

[TwinPrincessMermaids]

OP, I'm so sorry for your family! It sounds like you could really use a fresh start! I just updated my avatar, and I can't help but smile every time I see it. I went back through my Frozen Summer fireworks, and even though hubby and I are both totally sick for a week (ugh!) there is something about Disney that cheers you up that you can't get the same anywhere else. It's not surprising that you are going through a bit of a downer, you have every reason to be, and I think sometimes we set our expectations so high, that we are naturally sure they will never achieve that level of perfection, so we already assign ourselves to the inevitable loss or failure. There is no need to feel this way if you can talk yourself out of it (we can't always.) No matter what, time with family is one of the most precious commodities you will ever have, whether its here at Disney, or somewhere else. Its just that sometimes, we have to get totally away from everything and all our stresses to be able to spend it together that way. I would say just do whatever prep you can, don't worry if the magic isn't already here, to some extent, that's not necessarily a bad thing. (I set myself up for MAJOR depression when I got back for that reason, the 'magic' was over, done, and wala! I was bumming again. Perhaps you know that your stresses will still be there when you get back, so that is part of the reason you can't fully embrace your escape this go around.) No matter what, when you see the castle, (for me, its that big, bright beautiful EPCOT ball that you can't see ANYWHERE ELSE in the world), you will know that you have totally had this break coming. I hope you have a special and wonderful trip, but more than anything, enjoy your family because time never stands still, and sometimes, we just have to embrace the present.

I saw this on a cartoon but I was struck by it's coolness:
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift, that is why it is called the present."

I hope whatever it is that cheers you up (for my friend, it was getting photos with Mickey icecream bars all over all the parks just like she used to, for me its these happy magical sparkly fireworks!!!) is going to help bring you back to at least a temporary bit of enjoyment. Don't feel guilty for enjoying something either, embrace it wholeheartedly.

And don't let yucky neighbors ruin your year, either, if you can help it. Wish you the best!

 

[Maleficent Dragon]

I don't know what is wrong with me. We, my spouse and our two daughters, age 3 & 6, are going to be at WDW August 18-28th and I'm not excited for the trip, in fact, I'm almost dreading it. Totally new experience for me as I usually am so excited I'm just giddy about our trips to Disney.

Some of it is because our family has recently been through some horrible and costly legal issues that could have been prevented had a neighbor just talked to us about a property line dispute, rather than suing us, but it's also the thought of the long cross country trip with the kids, the heat, the crowds and the cost of the trip when we still have this lawsuit to pay for.

Part of the reason we're going, is to provide a temporary escape from the stress and reality of life, so I"m trying to focus on that break, but it still sounds like an overwhelming hassle and I almost (not totally) wish we weren't going.

Anyone been on a WDW trip and not been excited to go? How did you change your attitude and have fun on the trip?

I felt this way before my November 2014 trip. Most of it was due to all of the changes and reductions at WDW and my strong distaste for FP+. Once we got there, we had a great time and I was glad we went. I still didnt care of FP+, but we made the best of it and truly had an enjoyable time.

 

[LSUfan4444]

I'm not sure if not being excited about and not being able to afford is really the same thing. If you can afford it, no reason to worry. If you can't afford it, then thats another issue altogether.

Regarding crowds...they shoudl be very manageable next week so spend some extra time and energy now into making sure you've got a plan (arrive early or stay late). Also, by arriving early or staying late you can get some relief during the hottest hours of the day. Can't do anything about the long drive, it is what it is.

 

[PSUGuy]

Almost every WDW trip, and we average 1 per year, the week before the thought will cross my mind, 'Well I guess we'll have to start packing this weekend, let's get this thing over with', like the whole thing is a chore. Even the drive to PHL the day before to catch an early flight has no joy for us as it did back in the 90's when we started the Disney thing. Once we're through airport security the mood changes, the flight is the first Disney 'ride' in our minds and we're officially on vacation once our butts hit the plane seat.

The OP has some special stresses to put aside but back in the day I went through some severe job disruptions and some health scares involving Wifey. Everything came out well in those areas but WDW definitely took us out of the 'real' world without any effort on our part, I suspect the same will be the case here. If a drive is how you get there, passing through the Disney Arch will probably settle your mind.

Bill From PA

 

[Accident]

I don't know what is wrong with me. We, my spouse and our two daughters, age 3 & 6, are going to be at WDW August 18-28th and I'm not excited for the trip, in fact, I'm almost dreading it. Totally new experience for me as I usually am so excited I'm just giddy about our trips to Disney.

My daughter is like this, It's not real for her until she is standing there and unpack her suitcase. There is also a point where there is too much planning for her and that might be what your facing. For me, i'm so exhausted and ready to just not be working that I'm dreading the travel time. I always warm up when we do our first couple slow lazy days once there.

 

[TwinPrincessMermaids]

I love to put on Disney Pandora for the long 13 hr drives we used to have. My honey, to save his sanity I guess, would give me an earbud, set Pandora on "Lion King" and plug in his TV on his tablet. I would drive merrily along the way with my gals Rapunzel and Tatiana. (note: this only works IF you actually LIKE Disney music, which I do...)

 

[tjone8]

I'm kind of feeling the same way. My trip is planned for 9/13-9/19 and this will be our third time as a family. Our last trip was November 2014 and it was great! Afterwards I couldn't wait to plan our next trip. My DH is not sold on Disney and thinks it is way too expensive (which it is!). Now that I am actually planning our trip, I'm totally over all the pre-planning of FP+ and stalking the ADRs, I really find the whole concept to be ridulous. We're doing the MNSSHP which should be fun, but I'm having a hard time justifying the added expense when paying so much for the vacation itself.

Initially I booked the package with free dinning and park hoppers. Then when the 30% off room offer came out, I had a CM do a price comparison and the new offer saved me a couple of hundred bucks. Then I applied for the Disney Visa card to get the $200 back for more savings. While surfing Chase's site, I found a limited-time offer of 35% off rooms at the Poly where we are staying which saved me an additional $125. I love a deal, and you'd think that finding these discounts would make me feel better, but instead it only makes think that there are even better deals available that I'm missing out on, and I am overpaying for my stay.

We also just moved and need to do pricey renovations that I hope to also begin this fall. I keep thinking that there will be some additional costs, about $5K to be exact, that we'd be able to afford "If only we hadn't taken that Disney vacation..."

I'm not sure if the trips are too close together, or the fact that I can't get my coveted ressie AGAIN, so my park days won't line up how I want to tour, or what, but I am really not feeling Disney right now.

 

[alicat8]

I've actually gotten paranoid about money before our last 2 trips. It's really the only time we spend a lot of money (we are REALLY cheap), so when I'm planning, I go all out (or "all out" relatively, for us as cheapskates) and then the closer the trip gets, the more nervous I get. Will we have enough fun? Will it be too hot? Stressful? Should I have put that money into something we need to do in the house? It always happens for about the month leading up to the trip. Once I'm there, it all goes away. (except the heat and some stress/exhaustion-but it's obviously worth it) I think a lot of it is how much I build it up in my mind-it makes me worry that I'll be disappointed, and that's never the case. Hopefully once you get there, you'll get the escape you're looking for!!

 

[ArmyVet80]

Our trip in Dec. 2010 thru part of Jan 2011 was the trip I dreaded the most. When I was younger I had been to WDW with the family and it was crowded to the point it wasn't enjoyable.
Fast forward 15 years and you have the 2010-2011 trip. We flew out of a smaller airport to Detroit and our flight was cancelled because of a snow storm in Atlanta and the pilots for our flight to Orlando were stuck in Atl. We ended up paying an extra $600 (per person) to get on a different flight 7 hours after our original flight was supposed to arrive in Orlando.

We missed out christmas dinner ADR at Brown Derby (special menu) and they ended up "misplacing" one of our bags so when we got back to the room my DW had all of her luggage and all I had was my carry on which didn't have any jeans or warm clothes in it. Did I mention it was the coldest December in like 30 years with the high temps reaching the mid 30's and lows mid 20's the first 4 days we were at WDW. Top that off with both of us getting severe colds and hurting/aching for most of the trip. We ended up living off dayquil and nyquil (if you could find any on property) the entire trip.

Needless to say that was the most miserable WDW trip we have ever been on. Even with all of that, we had a blast because it was WDW and that is our "happy place".

 

[Maxpowers]

My wife and I had kind of the same issue (our kids were 3 and 1 at the time) and the thoughts about packing and getting all the logistics together were overwhelming. Thinking about scheduling naps and dealing with strollers, snacks, bedtimes, the heat and on and on gave us anxiety. We were also going with a larger group (14 people) and the idea of trying to coordinate with everyone just added to it. Some things that helped us are:

1 - remember where you are going! it does seem like a hassle, but once you're there it's all worth it
2 - thinking about how our kids were going to react to WDW really helped. My son meeting Buzz was pretty much everything you'd ever want it to be.
3 - oddly enough, watching other people's youtube videos of their WDW trips (there is still one my kids watch almost daily)
4 - having a plan to deal with each of the anxiety inducing factors (ie stroller naps in the monorail or having a mid day pool break for the heat). We didn't end up sticking to a lot of those plans, but just having them added a level of comfort.

 

[rwdavis2]

If you are that worried about money then cancel the trip.

 

[Masonmj84]

I wasn't that excited about my first trip back to WDW as an adult.

Growing up, I have memories of going with my family and staying off site. My parents couldn't afford to buy food in the parks so we mostly brown bagged. This was also before the days of FP. I can remember standing in line for over 90 minutes to ride Space Mountain. And, outside of Space and Big Thunder Mountain, there weren't a lot of other headliners that I found to be all that exciting (back then, Magic Kingdom and Epcot were the only two parks).

I have good but not great memories of those trips. So I didn't expect much more when I returned as an adult with my family. We booked a trip on-site (at CSR) with free dining, which we upgraded to deluxe. This trip ended up being way more fun and exciting than I how I remembered WDW growing up. As an adult, I learned that half the fun of WDW is the resorts and restaurants.

Now, I'm always excited about our WDW trips, but I wouldn't be if I were limited to doing them the way we did growing up (if I couldn't afford to stay and eat on site, I just wouldn't want to go at all).

 

[Mamato2cutekiddos]

I'm so sorry to hear you've had a stressful year. It's so difficult when life blows up in our faces like that, despite doing everything "right" in life.

I'm with you... kind of. We leave in just over a month and it feels like nothing about this trip has come easily. We are meeting family and staying off resort and we all agreed to it but as time went on no one was really willing to admit they didn't want to and/or can't afford to do it. So now everyone in the party is just going through the motions.

We've been saving (and will continue to do so over the next month) but 2 weeks ago my husbands car died. It was either spend 5k to fix it or get a new car (loan). Neither of which I wanted to do. His car was/is 13 years old and there was no way I was willing to put 5k into it, when we had figured it would need to be replaced within the next 6-12 months. Thankfully we had an emergency savings but we still had to dip into our vacation fund to help pay for the downpayment on the car. And of course our first car payment is due (you guessed it...) just 4 days before we leave. It's not a make or break it amount but frustrating.

We too have had a very difficult year- much change and transition for our family (including, but not limited to: Mama going from a SAHM to a working Mama, emergency surgery and 2 weeks later a blood infection and additional week in the hospital, over the course of a year 3 nannies have moved away/quit, resulting in our kiddos being put into daycare, my husband moving to a much higher paying but demanding job, etc). We needed to get away and escape the stress, much like yourself. Also, I'm an accountant and I can't do another tax season without a bit of a rest before gearing up for a stressful, and long time of year. We get busy starting in October so I don't feel we can push it back any further.

Taking some money out of our vacation fund means we've had to cancel some character dinings we had planned. We've also had to cancel our plans to do 2 days at Universal Studios. Le sigh.

Beyond that, the most frustrating thing for me has been this whole FP+ ordeal. I had NO idea when we decided to book off resort we wouldn't be able to make our reservations until 30 days out. Given that people can't get resservations at the 60 day mark, leaves me utterly hopeless.

Man I'm such a debbie downer haha. But all that to say is that I totally get where you are coming from. I'm sure once we get there the Disney magic will hit us and melt all this worry away and anxiety away. Until then though...

 

[ArwenMarie]

Sounds like the stress of this lawsuit is bringing you down.

Hopefully once you are all packed and driving you will feel excited. Sometimes I find the week or two before to be a drag (packing, ugh) and I wish I hadn't booked it at all but then once we are FINALLY in the car I feel my mood lift.

 

[Iggipolka]

I'm so sorry to hear you've had a stressful year. It's so difficult when life blows up in our faces like that, despite doing everything "right" in life.

*snip*

Man I'm such a debbie downer haha. But all that to say is that I totally get where you are coming from. I'm sure once we get there the Disney magic will hit us and melt all this worry away and anxiety away. Until then though...

Thank you all for your (mostly) kind replies. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one with this unexcited feeling. My hope it that once we get there, it will all feel better. We can't just cancel the trip as was suggested due to non-refundable airfare, DVC reservations and park tickets. The trip was booked prior to all this legal crap. We certainly need something good right now, so I'm holding out hope that watching the joy on the kid's faces will balance out the stress and strife of all the planning and FP+ hassles etc etc.

Thanks again and Mammato2cutekiddos - hang in there. You've certainly had a Very rough time.

 

[YawningDodo]

I don't have that kind of at-home stress bringing me down, but over the last year of planning for this trip my interest in actually going has waxed and waned -- some weeks all I want to think/talk about is WDW, some weeks I feel like I've made a terrible mistake and I'm blowing a bunch of money on revisiting something I've already done before. I always get into an anti-travel mood for about a week before a big trip (or one or two days before a weekend trip) where the very concept of disrupting my normal schedule and leaving home seems like an obnoxious hassle no matter where I'm actually going. It's something that's developed in the last few years, so I haven't experienced it with a Disney trip yet, but I'm expecting to get in a real downer mood the week before going to WDW next month. I usually perk up at some point during the flight to wherever I'm going, so I'm not too worried about it. I love to travel, period...once I get going.

It might be something like that. I think the reason I get so irritated at leaving home is that I get really, really bogged down in unfinished business around the house. Can't take a break until you get XYZ done! Thing is, I always have unfinished work, and I always will because new stuff is constantly coming up. That's life. A lawsuit seems to me like a bigger version of that -- you've gotten caught up in your troubles and it feels like you can't set them aside and the vacation is actually disrupting your ability to deal with it.

Just understand that the things you leave at home are still going to be there when you get back and you can just pick right back up where you left off. And if that doesn't make you feel better, just force yourself out the door and fake it 'til you make it. You just might find that you'll be excited for your vacation again by the last leg of that long drive.

 

[jtowntoflorida]

We had a major stressful event happen just weeks before our trip in October 2012. It was a life-changing event that will affect everyone in our family forever. We still went on the trip and honestly it was great to get away from this huge, looming problem for awhile. One thing that Disney does well is escapism, and we definitely escaped that week. I will say the trip wasn't as happy-go-lucky as our prior trip, and I actually had a couple of meltdowns during the trip that probably wouldn't have happened had everything in our world been normal, but it was still nice to get away and pretend like this horrible issue wasn't going on.

That being said...I can definitely relate to the not being excited aspect of what you posted about. We have a trip upcoming in October and my excitement decreases by the day. We just got home from an amazing non-Disney vacation and after the week we had, I know that Disney isn't going to be able to hold a candle to it, yet it's going to be about 10 times as expensive as the trip we just took. That's a hard pill to swallow, and I'm tempted to just suggest we cancel and just eat the cost of the APs we purchased in December.

 

[TwinPrincessMermaids]

I think some may be drowning in the complexity (not necessarily the OP). I might suggest just enjoying the park experiences, which is all we do, and VERY OCCASIONALLY do we get a dining reservation (pretty much only when company comes in). The resorts, the ADRs, the staying up til midnight. I wish all of you could experience what it is like to live offsite and go as if we are going to a movie. What time is it 'playing?' Is there a 7pm? Not tonight? How about in a day or two? Ok, we got it. That sounds good...and we go to EP or HS and walk around for a bit, and visit with each other and guests. Its STILL special (we have time to stop and listen to a band at EP for once), and I would encourage everyone (especially the present APs!) to book a few FPs and not sweat a whole lot. The more pressure you add, the more of a burden the experience feels. I got 4 TSMM and 7D in less than two weeks. I browse like I'm checking the news or weather. The entire process is very relaxing.