![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/thegirls_cruise.jpg\")
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For #1\u2019s third birthday, mythical wife made the decision that we should go on a Disney cruise.\u00a0 I\u2019m usually so drowning in dad life that I don\u2019t really have much capacity to think about vacations and trips, and I\u2019m pretty much down to go along with any of mythical wife\u2019s ideas as long as it doesn\u2019t tank us financially and I have the capability to take the time off of work for it, and this was no exception.<\/span><\/p>\n It would be a daunting task taking a three-year old and an 20-month old, but we were also being accompanied by my mother in-law as well as our au pair, so with an adult-to-kid ratio of 2:1, it seemed more plausible.<\/span><\/p>\n Overall, despite the fact that there were points of the trip where everyone, including myself, hit burnout points of exasperation in dealing with a kid or kids, I would still say it was a positive and memorable trip as a whole.\u00a0 Sure, it\u2019s not something I like to admit that I lose my cool at times, but the combination of my kids being so drastically out of their routines, not napping, the choppy rocking of a vessel that I had expected to be a little smoother, and piss-poor air conditioning all over led to some instances where it was easy to boil over and get pretty annoyed at circumstances, but that\u2019s basically what parenting is sometimes, having expectations that don\u2019t get met, and being flustered as a result.<\/span><\/p>\n Countless times throughout the trip one or both of my kids would be fussy and intolerably cranky, and when this occurred, it just sandbagged everything around us.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to be the parents of the loudest kids in the room, which fortunately rarely occurred, but at the same time I\u2019d like it of my kids behaved like angels all the time, which is the utmost pipedream for parents all over.<\/span><\/p>\n A thought I had is that my kids have been raised with such structure and routine, that putting them in an environment such as a vacation cruise, where their settings and beds are different, the food is richer and restrictions have been relaxed, and they\u2019re basically not on a very structured schedule anymore, leads to what felt like chaos.<\/span><\/p>\n It was these moments of frustration and despair that I began to think about all the other parents I know, who have basically stated that they don\u2019t feel that it\u2019s worth taking their kids to Disney or any Disney-related things like cruises, until they were like 8-10 years old, where they might be a little more manageable than basically two toddlers.<\/span><\/p>\n But on that same token, I\u2019m grateful and glad that my kids can already say they\u2019ve been outside of the United States, and although they won\u2019t really remember much, I\u2019m happy that my girls have stepped foot in Mexico and been outside the country, which is something that I really couldn\u2019t say until I was an adult.<\/span><\/p>\n And no matter how much my kids might have acted like pills at times, one of the consistent things was that the sight of any Disney princess or seeing Minnie or Donald Duck, immediately snapped them out of their angst and into awe-struck children who were all smiles and hugs when given the opportunity to meet them.<\/span><\/p>\n I had the foresight to go ahead and plunk down for the unlimited photo package, and I would highly recommend it to really anyone who takes a Disney cruise and has the expectation of wanting at least 5-6 good photos from the on-site photographers, because that\u2019s the threshold in which it basically pays for itself.\u00a0 My party ended up with 142 photos, which are basically the best souvenirs I could ask for.<\/span><\/p>\n Overall, this was a vast improvement over the vacation experience from two years ago where I was taking a 16- and a 2-month old to Disney World and absolutely everything in the world was a colossal undertaking, and I know that as the kids age these things will become easier.\u00a0 I had high expectations for the Magic based on my experience on the Fantasy, and they fell short because of all the differences I was unaware of.<\/span><\/p>\n But damn, after this vacation, I could use a vacation.\u00a0 I love my kids, but I\u2019m completely incapable of relaxation when I have to be a dad.\u00a0 I wanted to at least one opportunity to run a train on the breakfast buffet at Cabana\u2019s, but that didn\u2019t happen because of needing to tend to my kids\u2019 needs first, and the fact that the lines and demand for it was way harsher than I had expected, and it was impossible to get in line.<\/span><\/p>\n But at least I was able to get another La Parka lucha libre mask when #2 and I spent a few hours walking around Cozumel on our one shore day.\u00a0 Shit was so cheap that I didn\u2019t feel right trying to haggle with the locals, even though I used to enjoy such in the past.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For #1\u2019s third birthday, mythical wife made the decision that we should go on a Disney cruise.\u00a0 I\u2019m usually so drowning in dad life that I don\u2019t really have much capacity to think about vacations and trips, and I\u2019m pretty much down to go along with any of mythical wife\u2019s ideas as long as it … Continue reading Dad Brog #106: the Girls\u2019 first Disney Cruise<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[193,71,192,83,166],"class_list":["post-49283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-dad","tag-famiry","tag-kids","tag-observations","tag-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49285,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49283\/revisions\/49285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}