“Did you feel that?” I asked as the door closed behind us after we had moved into the next room.
“Feel what?” Devin asked me, confused.
“When we got big again!” I replied.
In fairness, she still looked pretty confused, and Abbie was giving me a confused look as well.
Let me go back…
Last year, I wrote a post about how we lie to our kids, because a world where mermaids exist is a better world to a 4-year-old, than one where mermaids do NOT exist.
I guess we are those parents - you know, the ones who take their daughter to Disney World for her 5th birthday. It was a great trip, and one we had been planning just for Devin ever since Abbie was pregnant with Danica. We wanted a trip where Devin could spend some time with just us, and us to give her our undivided attention.
It was a great trip.
We got pictures and autographs with all sorts of princesses and other Disney characters, and Devin was just loving all of it. Then, I realized an opportunity to really buy into the “Disney magic.”
[Now, I didn’t actually hear any of the castmembers at Disney World say this next part, but I think it was pretty good - you can feel free to use it moving forward - and in return, we’ll gladly take an all-expenses-paid trip back for our whole family…of course I’m kidding…unless that’s a possibility…you can reach me here]
Anyway, before we could go in and see Tinkerbell, one of Devin’s favorites, they brought a few of us into the room before we could meet her. It was pretty dim, and a castmember came out and said we needed to get some pixie dust before we could see Tinkerbell. She waved her arm, and a bunch of LED lights lit up on the wall as though it was pixie dust. We were then led into the next room.
We waited our turn, then Devin talked with her, got some pictures, an autograph, and we kept going.
In the next room, is when I asked Devin if she felt it when she got big again. All of the props in the room were oversized - a giant crayon, some flowers, berries, etc. I just played up that they were regular size, but the pixie dust must have made us small. But then when we walked through the doorway, we got back to normal size.
She was amazed. She ate it up. It added a whole new level to the experience. And it just came to me in that moment. The words were almost flying out of my mouth before I even processed it.
Ever since we got back, she’s been telling everybody how they made us small so we could see Tinkerbell, and then how the same thing happened the next day in Toy Storyland at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. (I basically used the same logic on her the next day, and since she fully bought in before, it made perfect sense to her)
Maybe I should feel bad about lying to my daughter. But I don’t - not about stuff like this. Like I wrote before, there will be plenty of time for her to become as jaded as I can be about so many things. But it sure as hell doesn’t have to happen when she’s 5. I don’t know how much longer she’ll buy into these kinds of things, But it sure seemed like it added to the experience.
To her, she was meeting THE Tinkerbell, not just somebody dressed up as Tinkerbell.