Three Decades of Disney, Before Any of This Was a "Thing"
My first trip to Walt Disney World was in 1992, with my parents. We stayed at a hotel off property and only made it to Magic Kingdom for the day. What I remember most isn't the rides, it's my dad singing "it's a small world after all" for the entire day. To this day, that ride is still always the first one we ride.
We went back in 1994, this time with my parents, my older siblings, and my nephew. We stayed at Fort Wilderness for four days. My sister and I rode horses at the resort, rode every ride in the parks, and had the best time. And yes, my dad was singing "It's a Small World" the whole day at Magic Kingdom again.
My honeymoon brought me back in 2001. Then in 2007, my parents, my husband, our two kids, my brother, my sister, her husband, and their two kids all went together, the biggest Disney trip I have ever been on. We stayed at the Contemporary and used the Disney Dining Plan for the first time. In 2010 it was just my husband, my girls, and me at the Polynesian. We ate in Cinderella's castle, walked through what was then Tom Sawyer Island, and my oldest daughter rode Rock 'n' Roller Coaster exactly once. Never again.
The Trip That Started All of This
In 2018, my husband and I took our four kids to Disneyland. Our youngest, our son, had just been diagnosed with Autism at three years old. That trip taught me more than any trip before it, how to actually read the parks differently, what helped him, what didn't, what I wish someone had told me before we left.
I came home and started telling every friend I had with a child on the spectrum everything I had learned. That was the beginning, even though I didn't know it yet.
In 2019 we went back to Disneyland, our first trip there after moving to Arizona, with my husband and our four kids. For the first time in my life, I was standing in a Disney park and didn't know my way around. It humbled me a little, and it taught me even more.
Since Then
In June 2021 we squeezed in a day at Epcot while vacationing in Sarasota. In January 2024 we went back to Disney World, and since then we've been back to Disneyland twice more and Disney World five more times. Somewhere in there, a friend finally told me I needed to stop just texting people my tips and funny stories and actually make a page for it. So @mom.mouse.tips was born.
These days I'm not just planning trips for my own kids, I'm planning them around a grandson too, which is a whole different kind of Disney trip (you can read about that one in the Grandparent's Guide). Between the early years, the teenage years, the "we're doing this with a toddler now" years, and everything in between, I've pretty much seen every version of a Disney trip there is.
