Feeling the pain

Family travel can be full of wonderful, magical moments that everybody remembers forever. Most of the time, however, as any parent will tell you, the experience verges on shitshow, complete with meltdowns, tantrums, complaining, and whining—from kids and parents alike.

This is precisely why I loved a recent post from Clint Edwards, a fellow father-of-three who blogs about parenthood at No Idea What I’m Doing.

The post in question wrapped up an Edwards family trip to Disneyland, and was titled, “What a trip to Disneyland really looks like.” Edwards set up the piece by explaining that he and his wife spent three days on the ground with three kids under the age of 11. Then he launched into a laundry-list if stuff that went wrong along the way. The bullet points tell frightening tales of everything from the challenges of managing connecting flights with kids to the fact that kids will hang on fences and guard rails no matter where they are.

Sure, the specifics might be different, but we Villanos have had this same experience at Disneyland time and time again. We’ve had the experience at other destinations, too. I’m willing to go out on a limb here and say that every parent has had it every time he or she has ever taken with kids. It’s part of what makes traveling with kids real. It’s simply part of the deal.

I think Edwards himself says it best at the very end of the post: “Swore up and down that we were Disneyland[ed]-out, but feel confident that this will all happen again and again and again until we are broke or dead.”

Quite honestly I’m not sure I could have said it better myself.