What do you want your kids to remember about your Disney vacations?

[Ladcassidy]

The magic.

 

[KJMAX1]

I want my kids to remember the fun we had together. The feeling of being loved, cherished, and enjoyed. I want them to remember our smiles on our faces, and the excitement. The stuffed animals will go away, or the tshirts, but once they walk into WDW as an adult, I hope they remember that happy feeling they had when we all went together.

 

[Pesky]

I want them to remember the fun we had as a family. I love planning our vacations because I've found it can make it easier to relax on the back end. Of course, part of my planning is limiting ourselves to certain ADRs and not scheduling the heck out of our time. Having time to go with the flow is a lot of the fun!

 

[DGoofy]

Fun with the family is very important in this hectic world. I love the family focus when we are at Disney!!

 

[andiraye]

This is a great question and made me think back to when I was a kid and went to WDW with my parents and brother. I remember the excitement of the thrill rides, the feeling of surprise and discovery on the dark rides and the magic of the whole environment. I remember how my parents turned into great big kids -- I have a specific memory of my mom, who is usually immaculately put together, running through the rain getting absolutely soaked and laughing about it -- and feeling like the "real" them had come out. I remember just generally feeling joyful.

That's what I want my kids to remember. And that's what I want all of us to experience on our upcoming trip. We are going on a three generation at the end of the month and not only am I looking forward to being there with my kids (which is a given) but I'm also looking forward to hopefully seeing that side of my parents once again!

 

[katyjeka]

andiraye- I wanted to comment on your post. We took our father, brother, and mother in law with us a couple years ago. It was a trip of a lifetime, as dad as since passed. My mother in law behaved like a child!! Between her and our girls we never had a dull moment. Our first night at Epcot she actually cried when Illuminations went off. It was soooo nice to see them relaxed and acting "young" again. My dh is the youngest of 10 so life for them as not always been easy. My husband laughed at us on our last day as we were all crying. We did promise to take her back so we are in the early planning stages for that trip. Have a great time

 

[andiraye]

andiraye- I wanted to comment on your post. We took our father, brother, and mother in law with us a couple years ago. It was a trip of a lifetime, as dad as since passed. My mother in law behaved like a child!! Between her and our girls we never had a dull moment. Our first night at Epcot she actually cried when Illuminations went off. It was soooo nice to see them relaxed and acting "young" again. My dh is the youngest of 10 so life for them as not always been easy. My husband laughed at us on our last day as we were all crying. We did promise to take her back so we are in the early planning stages for that trip. Have a great time

That is SO GREAT. I've had a really rough week at work and was feeling pretty down and your post genuinely made me smile. Thank you for sharing!

 

[mwmom]

My brother asked me why I was taking my 3-year-old to Disney (this was 7 years ago) because she wouldn't remember any of it. My response was, "She won't, but I will!" That trip wasn't about the memories she made, but I still remember her smile meeting the characters, how excited she was walking out of BBB, the wonder in her eyes when she met Cinderella in the castle. I remember riding Peter Pan as many times as we could. It was so magical for both of us, but I am the one with the memories of it. Surprisingly, we stayed off site and I did very little planning that trip as it was our first and I didn't know any better. It was absolutely wonderful as we just walked around and took it all in rather than rushing from ride to ride.

We ended up going 3 out of the next 4 years and this will be our first time back in 3 years this Thanksgiving. Yes, I am planning (as I did in our subsequent trips), but I still have a very relaxed attitude about it. I am not stressing about not getting some of the dining reservations and I have never done the FP+ as that was still in development during our last trip. What we get, we get. What we don't, we don't. It will be magical all the same because it is DISNEY!