There's something to be said about a Disney vacation in comparison to pretty much every other trip. When you combine the pure magic that is Walt Disney World, or any of the Disney Parks around the world really, with your closest family and friends, favorite characters, and world class attractions, it usually turns out pretty great. Yeah, we definitely all have our meltdown moments, and who wouldn't with the heat and crowds that the parks are so well known for, but somewhere along the line, I've found that I rarely remember those low points.
Something goes wrong on every trip. It doesn't matter where you're going or how many times you've been there - something goes wrong. From there on out, you can try to enjoy the remainder of your trip, and usually that works out rather well, but upon returning home you're left with the bitter distaste of that terrible experience, whatever it may be. For instance, when I went to Colorado years ago, I had the absolute worst day of my life, and it just happened to be my birthday too. I had intense motion sickness on the bus, only made worse by minor altitude sickness, and when we finally got the amusement park we were heading to, security was terrible (we ended up walking back to our bus multiple times) and there wasn't much for me to do in the park anyway. Likewise, when we went to Chicago the following year, the trip was sort of a hot mess, and left most of us feeling like we'd wasted a couple hundred bucks. In either case, I still to this day remember those negative moments of the trip.
With Disney, on the other hand, things are a bit different. My trips sort of start to muddle together, but I certainly don't remember the downsides of most of the trips, other than maybe the more recent ones. And in any case, they don't really define the trip, at least not the way those other memories defined the other trips. Bad things definitely do happen - I've gotten sick at Disney before, had arguments with family members, and so on and so forth - but I just don't seem to recall many of them. So why is it that anytime I travel somewhere else I remember those struggles, but I don't with Disney?
Could it be a subconscious effort to make Disney consistently the ideal vacation destination? Or rather, an effort to make sure Disney is never tarnished in my mind, regardless of the bad things that might happen? Maybe the good moments just outweigh any less than favorable memories? Or maybe, because it is Disney, the magic just turns everything around? It's sort of hard to say, but it is an interesting debate, and no matter what, really we should be focusing on the good moments anyway, like seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time or hanging out in a giant hotel room in Chicago with my friends. Those are the memories worth focusing on anyway.
Have a magical day!
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