Don't waste time with them sitting idle, send them for more fastpasses
I think that's probably the best solution. OP I think you guys have been to WDW before, so he should be somewhat familiar with the park. Give him a task or two! FPs, buy popcorn, etc. That way he's in places you both know he'll be, and on the move as well.
That is what I was thinking too! If you feel he is mature enough to handle being alone for the time it takes your to ride HM, give him a bit of money and have him play in the shooting arcade. That should keep him occupied for the 30 minutes or so it will take you to ride. There is seating in that area too, so if he gets bored tell him he is to park it and not move from that area.
I like that idea, too, and it's one my son would LOVE. We are still in the *getting used to single rider lines" stage with him, not quite the "you sit on a bench and wait while I ride something" stage, but once that time comes, the shooting arcade is a really good idea.
You go to WDW for your kids.
You might; I don't. We go to WDW and DLR and Universal for the family. All of us.
After seeing how easy it was for men to snatch 3 innocent girls from a Cleveland street and hide them for a whole decade... no way would I leave my 10 year old alone in a huge theme park.
But that's just me.
Taken, in a car, off a street. Not walked out of a theme park with people all around and employees and CAMERAS everywhere. The difference is so enormous I cannot even make the leap.
But all kids are different. The parent would need to determine the maturity level of their child and how likely they are to do what they have been told.
Absolutely. My kid at 10? Probably. Another specific child I know? Absolutely not. There's no chance he would survive, he would probably be catatonic by the time his parents came back out. But they wouldn't even think about it for him.
That's definitely not a fun experience, but the lesson I would have taken from this isn't that my 9 and 11yo should never be alone again, it's that they didn't know what to do when they got scared. And I need to teach them better!
.....
Your kids should always know exactly what to do if your group gets separated on vacation. And they should know that "running back and forth, scared and frantic" isn't ever the best choice.
Adults should know that, too.
Bad things happen...Bad things have always happened, we just know about them more now - with the information age.
Absolutely. My gosh just reading about Roman History would tell us that there's nothing new except for the instant communication possible now.
When Ms Duggard was found and her captors were arrested, more came out about the man involved. Turned out that his trolling grounds weren't THAT far from where I grew up. One of the women that went to my high school but graduated 5-10 years earlier is convinced that he once tried to convince her to get into his van (she recognized the van when it was shown on TV, and remembered where she was walking at the time). The KEY is *not getting in that van*.
We had a lot of freedom growing up where I grew up, but my mom always taught us how to avoid trouble as much as was humanly possible.
DS has been taught that if he is separated from us at Disney he goes to the nearest *cash register* and the Cast Member behind it. Not just someone wearing a nametag, since as we all know they make, or used to make, ones for guests to buy that looked real. The cash register part is important. He knows that if someone is making him uncomfortable, he is to get away. Doesn't matter if he hurts someone's feelings or appears to be rude, just get away. He's on an elevator and someone gets on that makes him feel weird, get off the elevator. He's about to get onto an elevator and someone's in there that he doesn't want to be in there with? Don't get in. etc. (obviously we have read the Gift of Fear, and all of this is repeated over and over in his Aikido classes) Once we start separating in day to day life more (we homeschool so we don't have the walks to school, etc, to contend with) there will be codewords just like my mom did with us in the 70s and 80s.
Disney has been a wonderful place to have little bits of watched-over freedom, like when he went into the line for Gadget's Go-Coaster at
Disneyland, thinking he was allll alone, when really we could watch him for almost the entire ride. Because it isn't just his safety that's important, but how he behaves when he thinks we're not watching. And we were really proud of how he did in that line.
My only concern would be what if the ride breaks down while your child is waiting for you? You could be stuck in there an extra 10-20 minutes and your child would be sitting outside wondering what happened to you.
I hope that if one is thinking of leaving a child outside to wait, the child knows of the idea of ride stops. My son had experienced two of them by the time he was 4. But a cellphone with a wait-time app might be a good idea, too. Or have him sit in view of the wait time sign for the ride, so he can see if something funky happens with the time.
But I know that he too will grow and mature and need to learn independance. I think Disney is a great place to try things out when the time is right. When DD was younger I'm sure if I had been asked the same question I might have said no like many with younger ones on here have said. Its amazing though how much progress they make toward maturity between 6 and 9 or 10 year olds. You often don't realize it until you go through that change with your own child.
