Reaction Stories to Rides for 2 1/2 year old?

[Hisgirl]

What were the reactions to specific rides from your very young toddler (2-3 years old).

The good ones, the scary ones, the flat out bad ones and the over the top fantastic ones!
Please share!

 

[Hubalorian]

My almost three year old son (when we went for his first time) was tall for his age. He rode 7 dwarfs, slinky dog, Big Thunder and all the other rides in that height category. He loved them all! His favorite was slinky dog and big Thunder. He did not want to ride tower of terror, but loved haunted mansion!

 

[LuvOrlando]

My children were absolutely fine and loved everything until this one year when my son was around 3 when fear kicked in, it only lasted the one year but it was sudden and a bit of a shock. We used to do other parks including Dorney Park and Hershey so he was familiar with amusement parks and we were all usually relaxed when traveling. Imagine happy family time, all is well so we went into The Tree of Life and watched the show like every year since his birth. Then, right when we were about to get sprayed our little boy freaked out screaming, crying and then was swatting the glasses off everyone's face. He thought that we were going to get sprayed with real acid, we had to leave. This kid never cried or had tantrums so it was alarming. Also same year, wouldn't go on Haunted Mansion. Same year he was having nightmares about Crocodiles eating us from the plane, was suddenly fearful of flying, it took nearly the whole flight back to Newark for me to realize it was from Peter Pan's Flight, a little talking calmed him down. It never happened again and now it is a very cute story, we have lots of cute stories.

They LOVED picking an image for the flattened pennies, I would take a roll of quarters and collect pennies just for tis reason - alas the penny is gone so maybe dimes will work???

 

[Hisgirl]

@LuvOrlando, oh MY!
What a change indeed!
I'm definitely concerned about the haunted mansion. I mean, the whole purpose of the place is to cause fun fear, but toddlers can't really differentiate that, right?
I'm curious about pirates of the caribbean?

 

[Mle8308]

One nephew absolutely hated the Haunted Mansion, the other one (who was 2) loved it. The 31/2 year old was terrified by the shark "sculpture" outside of the Seas/Finding Nemo - I think it might be gone now. He would scream when we would try to walk in. He'd been on it before and loved it, we don't think he noticed the shark on the outside the first time. So, we had to really distract him and once we were in the building, all was good! And we did have to tell him about the part on the ride where Bruce kind of glares at you but for whatever reason, he was okay with that, too! He did love staring at the real sharks in the viewing area. One thing neither of them liked were the characters (at 2 and 3 1/2). We went to Chef Mickey's and thought they would love it! WRONG! They hid under the table any time a character came close. Finally, they did come out to see Minnie, but a big no on any other character.

 

[sponica]

My first born tried to climb out of Dumbo at 20 months old....midair. My husband and I spent the whole flight using all our strength to keep her in the elephant.

 

[Rory607]

@LuvOrlando, oh MY!
What a change indeed!
I'm definitely concerned about the haunted mansion. I mean, the whole purpose of the place is to cause fun fear, but toddlers can't really differentiate that, right?
I'm curious about pirates of the caribbean?

It’s all so dependent on the kid. I remember being terrified of Haunted Mansion as a kid, but my kids love it. The stretching room can be scary for little kids.

My kids started riding Pirates as babies and it was fine. Then, I made a large error when we did Disneyland. Our youngest was about 3 or 4. He didn’t remember WDW Pirates, but I tried to prep him and told him there was one drop at the beginning and then no more. He was fine with that and ready…except the Disneyland version has two drops I felt terrible and it scared him off rides for a while.

 

[liamthompson]

My then-3yo favorite ride at animal kingdom was the wildlife express train. Before the train was even in view of the station, he started dancing in excitement and the mother/daughter party next to us looked at him in askance and I had to explain that the show they were getting was merely in ANTICIPATION of the train.

We returned a few months later and did magic kingdom...he made it his life mission to wave at every single animatronic. I thought he would like it's a small world but it aggravated him because there were too many things to wave at. I thought he would be scared on haunted mansion but I looked over in the dark and his little hand was poised to wave at anything that looked remotely like it needed a wave.

 

[Rory607]

My then-3yo favorite ride at animal kingdom was the wildlife express train. Before the train was even in view of the station, he started dancing in excitement and the mother/daughter party next to us looked at him in askance and I had to explain that the show they were getting was merely in ANTICIPATION of the train.

We returned a few months later and did magic kingdom...he made it his life mission to wave at every single animatronic. I thought he would like it's a small world but it aggravated him because there were too many things to wave at. I thought he would be scared on haunted mansion but I looked over in the dark and his little hand was poised to wave at anything that looked remotely like it needed a wave.

This is adorable. You know he thought those ghosts were real and he just wanted to say hi.

 

[disneycat321]

We are west coasters, so we’ve only taken her to DLR so far. But we took our daughter to Disneyland for her second birthday last summer and OH MY…she absolutely fell head over heels in love with the carousel. We rode King Arthur’s 16 times and Jessie’s at DCA 9x over the course of 3 days. That carousel love has NOT faded. She adores horses and constantly plays “carousel” with her toy horses and other toys, wants me to draw carousels, wants to watch videos of the carousel, wants to listen to the King Arthur’s carousel song in the car, etc. We’ve taken her to all the non-Disney carousels we can find, but obviously none are as good. We’re going back for her third birthday this June and I anticipate LOTS more carousel rides. I don’t think anyone’s ever loved carousels as much as my daughter does!

Other hits for her were Winnie the Pooh (because she LOVES Pooh), Small World (yay because that’s a favorite of mine), and the Casey Jr train. But nothing can match the carousel in her eyes!!

She has developed more fears as she gets older - says “NO” and wants to fast forward through certain things like the sharks scene in Finding Nemo - so I’m anticipating there may be some fears of certain parts of rides as well this time. We’ll probably try showing her ride-on YouTube videos of some of them and seeing if she’s ok with them in advance. I don’t know that we’ll try Pirates or HM; we didn’t last time.

I’d say expect the unexpected with 2-3 year olds! We could NEVER have guessed how much she’d love and adore the carousel or that it would remain her favorite thing for months and months afterwards!

 

[Rogue1677x]

On my daughter's first trip to Disney at 4, we convinced her that she would like Splash Mountain because it had a bunny in it (she loved anything with bunnies in them). Well, she was scowling when we got off the ride. We thought maybe the drop scared her, but no, it was the storyline. She said something along the lines about "why would I like a story about bullying?"

 

[Hisgirl]

My first born tried to climb out of Dumbo at 20 months old....midair. My husband and I spent the whole flight using all our strength to keep her in the elephant.

I literally haven't stopped thinking about this.