overeducated & understimulated

In three weeks, we’re leaving for Disney.  I am planning like crazy.  I have all the dining reservations booked, lists of attractions in the order we will visit them, and the kids have been working hard to earn “Disney Dollars” for months already.  Am I going overboard? Maybe.  Probably.  Okay, yes.  But I can’t just throw some bathing suits and sandals in a suitcase and wing it … I mean, that would be asking for disaster.

I didn’t know anything about Disney World when we decided to take the kids there.  But most people seem to have extensive knowledge and advice about Disney.  I wanted to learn, so I did what I always do when I want to learn about something:  I read a book about it.  The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World.  854 pages.  Cover to cover.

Anxiety set in.  Questions were everywhere.  Should we spend two days at the Magic Kingdom, or one day each there and at Epcot?  If we do go to Epcot, whether to eat lunch at Coral Reef Restaurant or Akershus Royal Banquet Hall?  And should we pass on the overpriced Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique or would it be the highlight of the trip?

Well, these are very nice problems to have.  But problems nonetheless, and I still felt like I didn’t know enough.  The biggest problem was how to move past all these questions and make some decisions.   I turned to the web.

There are so many websites dedicated to Disney.  It’s like the Bible: if you look hard enough you find evidence to support anything.  Soon I realized that recommendations are only as good as the person making them.  How do you know whether you even have anything in common with these recommenders?

Well, I figured it out.  It doesn’t matter what we do because it is all good — it has to be, after all, it is all Disney.

I am still taking my lists.