Operation Secret Mouse

One of the greatest joys of retirement is spending more time with your adult children and their families. After hanging up the shingle and leaving behind the demands of work life, you are blessed with oodles of time to spend at your discretion, and, if you are fortunate, some extra resources to spend in ways that bring the family together to create fond memories backed up by gigabytes of digital photos and videos. Many of these will end up on digital picture frames like the one we purchased for my mother. With the accompanying app, anyone with an invitation can send photographic memories to the frame at any time. The display on my mother’s end is a non-stop, revolving slideshow. Situated on her dining room table, the frame doesn’t require the use of a phone or social media app to see the content. You just watch it! Even easier than Facebook! It’s amazing to me how confusing and frustrating any interaction involving technology becomes for people as they age, but, I digress, and that’s for another post.

Secret Mouse Pre-Op:

Taking the grand kids to Disneyland has been on the wish list for a number of years. We tested the waters last year with a trip to Aulani on the island of Oahu. The tropical-themed resort with a distinctive Disney presence was a big hit, and it was clear that the time was right to begin planning a Disneyland visit. Deciding to surprise the kids, the adults agreed to spend Christmas in the Magical Kingdom this year. Everyone will fly down to Anaheim on Christmas Day, and the group will spend three full days hopping between the two parks. To facilitate logistics, we also agreed to stay at the Disneyland Hotel. As fortune would have it, Sammi had a good friend in Virginia who uses a Disney planner to put family vacations together. It turned out that Heather (i.e., the planner) was willing to assist with our arrangements, including lodging, tickets, reservations, dining, etc. Next week, Heather (our planner) will be sending a final itinerary for us to look at and, we will conduct a conference call to go over any questions we might have. I couldn’t be more pleased with how everything is working out! Navigating the parks may prove to be a breeze once we get there, but it all seems to depend on how well you can master and utilize the Disneyland app. You need to link your tickets/reservations to the app so you can see your itinerary, check the wait times for attractions, and see everything that’s going on in the parks. We added the Genie+ feature that allows you reserve times when you can use a lightening lane to skip to the head of the line. Oh, and I almost forgot … the app allows you to check on the photos that Magic Kingdom photographers capture of your party going about eating, riding and hopefully having lots of fun! Whew! Even with this state-of-the-art digital technology, I can foresee FOMO (fear of missing out) being a problem. You can see it all, but you can’t do it all. How much stamina and enthusiasm we have will be interesting to see.

Secret Mouse Post-Op:

Everything about our family trip met and even exceeded expectations. Our rooms in the Disneyland Hotel looked out over the entrance to Downtown Disney, with the added perk that the nightly fireworks were visible from the comfort of our home away from home. What seemed like a complicated system to navigate via the Disney App on our phones turned out to be anything but difficult. We were able to book Fast Lane times at popular rides with ease, and finding our way in the parks proved straightforward, although it did involve a lot of walking. We gifted the grand kiddos cash to spend on souvenirs and had fun oohing and ahhing over the light sabers, droids and remote control spiders that we lugged back to our rooms. The restaurants we chose to eat at proved a delight to both kids and adults. With Disney, you never have to worry about whether there will be a “kid’s menu.” The famed Disney parades lived up to their billing, and the kids were able to fill their autograph books with signatures from a host of Disney characters. It boggles the mind that you can spend a magical day with your family accompanied by thousands of other people trying to do the same thing. It’s a real credit to the Disney operation and the staff that they can pull this off every day, all year long.

The advance planning prepared us well for the adventure. I think three days in the parks was just right for our group. The experience was fresh everyday and we kept discovering new things to do, to see and to eat. Maybe we are ready to take on Disney World? 🙂