Visiting the Mouse Episode #1

It's summertime around the Coberly household.  That means the kids are settled in up at Papa and Gram's house in Massachusetts and the adults are on their own for a month.  Lest you think Ted and I are resting and relaxing this summer break, we've got some major house renovation planned that I'll get to in the next post.  Before that, let's start the recap of our trip South.  There's a lot to report so I'll break it up into a few posts, it will make the magic last longer.

We’ll address the elephant in the room in this first post.

For those that don't know we traveled the week of June 12th-18th.  It was not the best week to travel to Orlando. That city received a real sucker punch over the course of seven days. The first event (shooting of singer Christina Grimmie) happened right before we left.  The second event (Pulse nightclub shooting) happened while en route. We heard the news as we walked into the breakfast room at our hotel in St. Augustine Sunday morning.  CNN was on and it was the only thing they were talking about.  The kids asked a few questions during breakfast but I don’t think they could really grasp the concept of what had happened.  How do you explain a mass shooting to a child???  Why have we found ourselves in a place where I have to explain a mass shooting to a child???  How is it that 49 people loose their lives in one event and so many are injured and everyone carries on with their business while the TV is showing image after image of the tragedy.  We've become immune and that's another commentary for another blog post.

As tragic as they were, these events happened off Disney property so while they were on our minds, it was much easier to get into the spirit once we rounded the corner and saw the welcome signs.  Once in the Disney Bubble, you’d never know something was amiss.  But the next one, I think every parent in that place could put themselves in that family’s shoes and just the mere thought of it was enough to put tears in your eyes.  It was all abstract to the kids but to the adults it was very real. I think when something like that happens we like to distance ourselves from to assure ourselves that that would NEVER happen to us. Self preservation at its finest. I was selfishly thankful that we were not staying at the Grand Floridian.  I (like many other commentators around the inter-webs) could smugly say that it would never happen to my children because...pick the reason of your choice.  However, I knew that anything I could come up with was a only a weak attempt at making myself feel better and only that.  It wasn't going to change anything.  It was a freak accident. a very unlikely event considering the stats on alligator attacks.  And yes, we can rationalize all we want but the truth is events like that can happen to any of us, at any time.  It's called life. 

One of the big thoughts in my head was that as much as Disney tries to control the environment, create a perfect fantasy and spread magic, reality always finds a way to creep in.  WDW was built on suspending reality. It was a week where it was easy for the kids to believe in magic, harder for the adults. No one talked about it openly, no guest area TV had it playing, no cast member uttered a word about it but it hung in the air.   You couldn't get more real than that week.

More to come...