Surviving Disney

It’s quite possible that we are the only people crazy enough to take 3 children, all under the age of 4, to Disney World on vacation. In fact, I’m quite sure of it, given that we saw very few people with small, small children. There were a fair number of infants (under 12 months of age), and quite a few 5-12 year old, just not much inbetween. Given that information, you’d think the number of strollers would be limited. Well, you’d be wrong. I couldn’t believe how many strollers there were! There was a combination of strollers that people owned as well as a plethora of the rental strollers offerend by Disney. The really surprising thing was the number of big kids that were riding around in the strollers. When I say big, I don’t mean 4 to 6 year olds. In a place like Disney, little legs can get quite tired. I’m talking kids that were 8, 9, 10, sometimes older. It was pretty silly seeing these kids smooshed into the strollers, and even sillier to see their parents struggling to push the heavy load! Ha!

Anyway, we were not among the masses that had a stroller. I suppose there were times when it might have come in handy, as in, it might have been nice to have a place to set out stuff. But most of the time, it was so much easier to not have to keep track of a stroller, especially having to park it and retrieve it before and after every attraction. I just don’t have the patience for that.

So, I bet you are wondering how we managed to transport all three children (yes, all three got transported as the 4 year old suddenly decided that it was “too faaaaarr!” to walk even 10 feet) plus a diaper bag and water, etc. I bet some of you have already guess it . . . . . . .. baby carriers. We took a little stash. DH took his favorite preschool-sized mei tai (MT) for the older two and the infant-sized MT for the 12 month old. I had more, I don’t like to be limited to just one or two, what can I say. I took along a soft structured carrier (SSC), two wraps and then two water wraps. Let me tell you, all of the carriers got a workout. At any given time, I had at least one babe on me, and DH was almost always wearing one babe on his back and carrying the other babe in arms in the front. We got a good workout that week, especially DH!

“But wait!” you say. “What about your stuff? Where did that go?”

Well, the first day, since we weren’t sure how it was going to go, we had wayy too much stuff. We had the two toddler backpacks, which seemed like a great idea, until the 2 and 4 year olds decided that walking was overrated. So then DH was stuck carrying their backpacks, PLUS his own backpack which was filled with books, water and other entertainment for the babes in case they got bored. So yeah, the first day wasn’t so good. Thereafter, we just stuffed what we needed for the older two into one of the toddler backpacks, and DH would carry that. I carried the stuff for myself and for the infant in my tricked out babywearing diaper bag. I stayed up until 4am the night before leaving on vacation making it. My mom, being the rockstar that she is, stayed up with me. (Thanks, mom!) It was totally worth it, though. It was really nice to be able to have a diaper bag that didn’t get in the way of wearing the babes.

Sooo, there you have it, that’s how we survived Disney: a small stash of baby carriers, a toddler backpack, and a tricked out diaper bag. Would I do it again? Hmmmmm . . . the jury is still out on that one!