Featured Image: Disney World 2017 by canterbury
With the summer around the corner, kids getting out of school, and family vacations being planned, I figured it may be fun to share one of my favorite family vacation experiences. Although that trip was less than perfect, it’s one of my favorite memories because when I bring it up today, my family and I have a good laugh as we reminisce on our less-than-awesome ideas. Also, I’ve told this story on my favorite radio station before, and I ended up winning tickets to an event I no longer recall. So, let’s have a laugh and let me tell you a story – after all, it’s Fun Friday! 🙂
When I was about 12 years old one of my brothers was working as an intern at Disney World, in Florida. One of the perks of working there was that you could offer your family a one-day pass to a theme park of their choice (or maybe all the parks? I don’t know – it was a long time ago). So, one day my brother invites us (our mom, my brother and then sister-in-law, my little brother, and a family friend) to come to Disney World and have some fun. Of course, we packed our bags and headed over to the dreamlike place, duh!
Our first day at Disney was no less than magical – it was my first time and I was loving it! Although, my little brother didn’t want to get in any of the fun rides because he was “scared,” so we stuck to all the sissy ones – but that’s OK, I was just happy to be there. I took pictures with Goofy, got autographs from Mikey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, so it was going swell. How could anything possibly go wrong?
As it turns out, we didn’t get our “Disney fix” with just one day of fun; you need several days to fully enjoy the wonders of Disney, so we decided that we wanted to go again the next day and enjoy a different theme park. Here’s the problem: my brother was only allowed a one-day pass, so we would need to buy our tickets in order to continue our adventure. As most of you know, Disney is PRETTY expensive, so of course my ingenious older brothers had to come up with a way around that.
When it came to my mother, our friend, my little brother and myself, my mother said there was no way we were going to get into any shenanigans, so we purchased our tickets for day two (good woman, my mother 🙂 ). My older brothers, however, had a different perspective, and my poor brother’s wife was inevitably dragged into it. Since my Disney-employed brother had a few sets of uniforms, he figured that my brother and his then-wife could wear these uniforms and just go in the park as if they were employees. And it actually seemed like a fail-proof plan, so that’s what they did.
Many of you may or may not know that Disney has some very strict policies on employee apparel and appearance – they only allowed closed-toed shoes, and you had to be clean-shaved, just to name a few. This, however, was something my brothers seemed to have forgotten to take into consideration. So, as my non-Disney-employee brother begins to walk into the park through the employee entrance, he is wearing open-toed sandals, has a very noticeable 4-inch-long goatee, and to top it all off he smiles at the security camera and gives the peace sign as he casually walks on by. Wondering what happened next?
Needless to say, they were caught. While the rest of us were waiting for them inside the park, we received a call from my brother (the Disney intern) and he let us know that the plan failed. My brother and his wife were interrogated for like an hour, seeing as how the idea of this scheme was so bizarre that the security staff thought they might be terrorists. Eventually they were let go, although banned from going to Disney ever again (that’s what they were told, anyway). My brother, the intern, was fired from his job, but it was his last day anyway so he didn’t seem to be heavily affected >_<. As for the rest of us, I can’t remember if we were asked to leave due to association or if we just decided to leave due to the circumstances…? Either way – my second day at Disney was ruined!
After going through a big scare thinking that my brother was going to jail, I was relieved to find out that they were only kicked out and banned. Disney seemed to understand that they weren’t terrorists; they were just young and recklessly creative boys (to put it nicely). Things didn’t turn out as we expected, but we quickly started to laugh about it and how stupid it was to even think that was a good idea. In the end, we created a memorable story and had some good laughs, and I’ll be happy to tell the story to my children one day – when I know they will be wise enough not to try that themselves. This taught me that good times are not about the places you go to, or about having everything go perfect; it’s about the people you spend it with, and the memories you create. So go have some fun with your family and loved ones today, and make some great memories! Just don’t try to sneak into Disney; it will not go well.
Have a great weekend!
By Nayadee Wilson
. Hence, some of the kiddos had to stay behind with grandma (the hike was a bit too epic for my mom and my little nuggets). Nevertheless, this was one of my absolute favorite moments of the trip, and we had a lot of fun! (I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that I was child-free for 2 hours?). 
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