Summer vacations are a staple in my family. Since my children have been old enough to walk, we have packed them and what seemed like everything they owned into the car and driven to some theme park. When a family is broken though, family traditions tend to get broken too.
So this summer I decided to reinstitute the tradition of spending our vacation waiting in line in the heat. Of course, this also meant tackling another milestone, and taking my first solo parent vacation.
We headed out to Florida with a well-planned vacation to accomplish. I had booked hotels and bought tickets online all in an effort to relieve the anxiety of doing it on my own. I did not map out my trip though because I had my trusty GPS.
I placed too much trust in that GPS, though. To give it credit, we always managed to end up where we were going. We also did plenty of sight-seeing of the area on the way, and not intentionally. There was an incident where it told us to go right, showed me to go left, and in choosing between the two, I chose the wrong way. Just another sight-seeing adventure.
Disney and Universal were fantastic though. We have visited both of these before, so instead of trying to see or ride everything the parks offer, the kids chose what they wanted to do, and we only did those things. They found their favorite rides and rode them again and again. It was our first stress-free theme park trip.
We spent most of one day in Harry Potter World. We wandered up and down the street, exploring the different stores, even eating at The Three Broomsticks. Last time we’d gone two years ago, Cara hadn’t been tall enough to ride on the Forbidden Journey ride inside the castle. She was excited to get to do it this time. Waiting in line, she began to get nervous and asked a million questions about what the ride would be like. The ride ended up being a bit much for her to handle. She couldn’t walk straight after getting off of it and ended up falling on the stairs you had to climb down to get off of it. They both returned to ride it again in the afternoon. What can I say? I’ve converted both my children into Harry Potter fans. They each came home with another wizard wand from Olivander’s wand shop and memories from the park.
I also did something I’ve never done before. I lost our park tickets… the first day. Those tickets I’d carefully had Fed Ex deliver to me fell out of my purse at some point during the day. No matter how frantically I searched the next morning, the tickets could not be found. Not to worry though. I kicked into problem solving mode and took care of it.
So first vacation as a single parent equals success. I even convinced Andrew to get on an airplane for a future trip. That people is a life-changing event since the boy never changes his mind. I better book the flight before he changes back.
