Dinosaur Rides, 3-D Duck Electrocutions, and Smoldering Cracker Barrels: How to Scare Your Kid to Death on Vacation

We're back! And we're more or less caught up on sleep! What a trip. It was fun, but as my favorite red-slippered Kansas girl says, there's no place like home.



Five consecutive days touring Walt Disney World is a lot to take. It was overwhelming for Jason and I, so I know it had to be sensory overload on Ains. In typical 4-year-old fashion, though, Ainsley didn't want to leave and cried on the way out Saturday morning, saying she wanted to stay at Disney World forever. And tiring though it was, I can see why; it truly is a magical place.



I'll spare you the play-by-play. We saw way too much to decribe everything. It was a Cranky vacation, though, so it was filled with quirks. Let us discuss those first, shall we?



Dinosaur: The Ride



Our second day there we hit the Animal Kingdom. It was incredible; there's a safari "ride" where we got close enough to the giraffes to reach out and touch one (if we'd been allowed). There was a very cool Finding Nemo stage musical and a Monsters, Inc. 3-D comedy show. What they didn't have a lot of, though, were rides. After a few turns on the Triceratop Spin (think Dumbo ride but with cute little dinosaurs instead of cute little elephants) we were all jonesin' for something a little more exciting. I looked through the brochure, and there was really only one ride left that Ainsley was tall enough to ride. It was simply called "Dinosaur" and from the outside it looked a lot like the old Smurf ride at King's Island. Our brochure did not have an exclamation point next to this ride (exclamation points in Disney guides denote rides that may frighten young children) so we gave it a shot.



Now bear in mind that Ainsley beat the height restriction for this ride by 6 inches. And also bear in mind the fact that there was no parental warning.



It started off well; it was a little car that went through a prehistoric forest. The story of this ride (everything in Disney World must have a story) is that we were sent back in time to capture a dinosaur and come back to the present with it for study. We were all learning a lot the first 5 minutes; as we passed different dinos, we heard their names and whether or not they were plant- or meat-eaters. But then things took a turn. There was a "malfunction" and our "time-travel vehicle" took us too close to a T-Rex. As we passed this huge, fake dinosaur, whose scary, toothy head was no more than 2 feet away from our car, it roared. No, not roared; it ROARED. Loud enough to feel it in your heart.



Have I ever mentioned that Ainsley is afraid of loud noises? Like, really afraid?



That was it. She started bawling. You couldn't hear her, though; the ride stayed that loud for the remainder of the story. I could just see her open mouth and her tears, and there was nothing Jason and I could do but hold her and tell her it would be over soon.



The last dino was something or other that was right over our heads and when it roared, I even had to avert my eyes. I don't scare easily on rides, but that seemed a little too real.



We were able to get her calmed down right after we got off the ride, and she seemed to understand our explanation that the dinosaurs weren't real. But she was emphatic in her assertion that she would ride no more dark or loud rides.



When we got back to our cabin, I popped out our Unofficial Guide to Disney World and flipped to the section where the authors dissect every ride. Sure enough, if I had paid closer attention to that before we went, I would have seen that that ride is loud and scary and sends kids younger than 6 into total panic. Live and learn, I guess.



For the rest of the trip, every single ride or show we took Ainsley to earned an anxious, "But is it scary?" It was frustrating after a while because there was nothing we didn't have to talk Ainsley into riding, including the Dumbo ride she had been talking about for ages. We brought it on ourselves, though. Us and some scary-ass dinosaurs.



Mickey's Philharmagic



This was my absolute favorite attraction. It's in Fantasyland in the Magic Kingdom, and it's a 3-D movie showcasing some of the best scenes from Disney animation with special effects that make you feel like you're there. You get the marching broomsticks from Fantasia, and when water splashes you get misted with water. You see "Be Our Guest", and when accidental maestro Donald Duck holds an apple pie out to you, they scent the air with apple cinnamon. As Jasmine and Aladdin take their magic carpet ride, wind blows around you perfectly synched with the motions of the carpet so you feel like you're zooming on the carpet, too. Since it was a real 3-D movie, we got the added treat of putting on those fashionable 3-D glasses and laughing at how dorky we looked.

The problem was we hit the Magic Kingdom and this ride after the Dinosaur fiasco, so Ainsley was a little squeamish about it. As it went on, though, we could hear her giggling and occasionally see her reach out to try to touch one of the things popping out of the screen.

During the Little Mermaid sequence, though, Donald brushes against an electric eel and gets juiced. Loudly. Which apparently freaked Ainsley a little.

We went back to the Magic Kingdom for an encore the next day, and it took us forever to figure out what Ains was talking about when she said she didn't want to look at Donald while he had the "blue lines" on him. As we rode the Philharmagic one last time, and she hid her face in my shoulder during that scene, we finally understood. When he hits the eel, the electricity makes blue lines on him and he keeps getting zapped throughout Ariel's swan song.

And speaking of the scariness of electricity...

A Smoldering Cracker Barrel at the Tennessee Line

Georgia sucks. (Sorry, Karen!) On the way down, we broke up that monstrosity of a state by stopping for an overnight with some friends. It tricked us into thinking it wasn't that bad to drive through.

On the way back, we decided to buck up and drive straight through. Ainsley was doing surprisingly well in the car by that point, and we all wanted to sleep in our own beds, even if it meant we wouldn't see those beds until 1 in the morning.

We almost changed our mind in Georgia. We hit some terrible traffic in two different spots that added an hour to our trip, it stormed almost the entire time we drove through it, and it went on forever. We had resolved to not stop for dinner until we crossed into Tennessee and to hit the first Cracker Barrell we saw on the flip side. (I am a hillbilly at heart, after all, and can't make a road trip without a fried okra stop.)

Finally, we crossed the state line. Jason and I let out quiet whoops so as to not wake Ainsley, who gave up in the mountains of northern Georgia and decided to sleep it out. We had seen signs for a Cracker Barrel at the very first exit in Tennessee and wearily veered in that direction.

No sooner had we gotten seated than we started to smell a hot, electrical smell. Our waitress brought our drinks and said they had someone checking out some wiring and that it was no big deal.

I was doubtful, and got up with Ainsley for a potty break of my own in case we had to leave and hit the road again. The hostess stopped me and said, "Hon, we're going to be evacuating the building soon because there are some smoking wires in the ceiling in the gift shop. You need to hurry."

I grabbed Ainsley by the hand and rushed to the bathroom 'cause, when you gotta go, you gotta go. She sensed my urgency and started to panic. The panic became a full-tilt scream when the hostess came into the bathroom and said she was going to wait with us to escort us out. Ains screamed and cried so loud our escort had to step out of the small enclosed space in order to keep her hearing.

I peed as fast as I possibly could, all the while looking in awe at the acrid blue haze that had started to fill the space above my head in the bathroom. By the time we made our mad dash out, the restaurant had been evacuated and fire trucks were outside. Of course, I had to backtrack to our table to get my purse, because darling hubby had left it behind.

The gift shop was full of that caustic-smelling electrical haze as we left. We knew there would be no chicken and dumplins served at that particular old country store that night and headed back north, calming Ainsley the whole time (and assuring her she could still order mac and cheese at the next Cracker Barrell.)

Fortunately, there's a Cracker Barrell roughly every 4 miles in Tennessee, so we didn't have to drive very far to get us some chicken and turnip greens. We did have to assure Ainsley that the next one wasn't on fire, too (since they all look the same, she got a little panicky in the gift shop of our next Barrell and looked up at the ceiling for smoke.)

From there, it was smooth sailing through Tennessee and Kentucky. When we finally pulled the Canyonero into the driveway, I was very relieved to have our adventures behind us.

But yesterday as I unpacked our souvenirs, and went online to view the pictures taken throughout the House of Mouse, I got sad. Like Ainsley, I wanted to go back and live in that special place forever. We got hot, we got tired, and we got scared, but we also saw some things that can only be described as magical. I have been cynical all along about Disney, but you have to hand it to them; their job is to create a fantasy and make every little girl feel like a princess and every little boy like a hero, and they do that so well that when you come back to your own little home and your own simple life, you long for those vacation days when everything was magic.

Even if you do have to drive through Georgia to get there.