Some people dream of riding rocket ships. Climbing to the top of Mt. Everest. Traveling to far off lands where they teach remote villages how to play \u201cCandy Crush\u201d on their iPhones. <\/p>\n
Then there is me. <\/p>\n
My dream? Much more epic: To arrive with my family at Disney World\u2019s Magic Kingdom just as the park opens, allowing us to scamper about, deliriously riding whatever we want while unimpeded by crowds. <\/p>\n
In my fantasy land we do everything \u2026 twice! \u2026 before most people even get off the parking lot trams. There is a parade for us. Triumphant music plays. Park management declares we have broken a Guinness record for accomplishing 220 rides before 9 a.m. They give us each a medal while we recover in the medical tent (possibly while we are hooked up to IVs.)<\/p>\n
THIS is my dream!<\/p>\n
Last weekend I came as close to accomplishing it as I have ever been. It wasn\u2019t easy. To make it happen, I first had to make a spiritual journey. I had to go to another \u201cplace\u201d where I was transformed into a new person. I call him: \u201cLunatic Dad.\u201d <\/p>\n
Lunatic Dad rises before the crack of dawn, drinks about $45 worth of Starbucks coffee and then proceeds to march about the hotel room screaming like a drill sergeant: \u201cPeople! Do you have no respect for yourselves?!? Do you think Small World will come to your pretty little behinds?!? Do you think the rest of the 15 million people going to Disney today are going to let you waltz up to the spinning tea cups?!?\u201d<\/p>\n
Lunatic Dad stomps and taps his watch and sighs heavily when people decide to take on unnecessary tasks like breakfast or brushing teeth or putting on sunscreen.<\/p>\n
Lunatic Dad breaks the sound barrier driving to the park, and Lunatic Dad thinks that if he concentrates hard enough and blows a blood vessel while holding his breath, the Monorail line will go faster. <\/p>\n
And once Lunatic Dad makes it into Disney \u2014\u00a0as close to opening time as he can \u2014\u00a0he doesn\u2019t shut up about it. \u201cSee!\u201d he says, while racing from empty ride to empty ride. \u201cThis is what we trained for! This is what victory tastes like! I am LUNATIC DAD!!! HEAR ME ROAR!! MUHAHAHAHA!\u201d<\/p>\n
An hour in and we already had eight rides under our belt. Eight rides! I don\u2019t remember what any of them were. It was such a blur. We were all exhausted. Looking like we had hiked across a great desert. Dehydrated. Depleted. Ready to go back to the hotel. <\/p>\n
But in my dream world, we had tasted success. <\/p>\n
Maybe it\u2019s time for a new dream. Maybe it\u2019s time to slow down. Maybe it\u2019s time to find a remote village needing to learn how to play iPhone video games. Or maybe … we can just get there a little earlier next year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some people dream of riding rocket ships. Climbing to the top of Mt. Everest. Traveling to far off lands where they teach remote villages how to play \u201cCandy Crush\u201d on their iPhones. Then there is me. My dream? Much more epic: To arrive with my family at Disney World\u2019s Magic Kingdom just as the park opens, allowing us to scamper about, deliriously riding whatever we want while unimpeded by crowds. In my fantasy land we do everything \u2026 twice! \u2026 before most people even get off the parking lot trams. There is a parade for us. Triumphant music plays. Park management declares we have broken a Guinness record for accomplishing 220 rides before 9 a.m. They give us each a medal while we recover in the medical tent (possibly while we are hooked up to IVs.) THIS is my dream! Last weekend I came as close to accomplishing it as I have ever been. It wasn\u2019t easy. To make it happen, I first had to make a spiritual journey. I had to go to another \u201cplace\u201d where I was transformed into a new person. I call him: \u201cLunatic Dad.\u201d Lunatic Dad rises before the crack of dawn, drinks about $45 worth of Starbucks coffee and then proceeds to march about the hotel room screaming like a drill sergeant: \u201cPeople! Do you have no respect for yourselves?!? Do you think Small World will come to your pretty little behinds?!? Do you think the rest of the 15 million people going to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[553,561,8,565],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-nutshells","category-family","category-parenthoodandchildren","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1457,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304\/revisions\/1457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}