A Road Trip to Disney World

When my wife and I told people we were taking the kids to Disney World, they all said “They are going to have so much fun!” When we told them we were driving, they said, “Oh….Good luck.” Luck? Who needs luck on a 1,200 mile drive when you’ve got a rubbermaid bin full of snacks and a plan. Turns out we did.

Driving to Disney World: Fueled by Joy and Caffeine

We knew the drive would have it’s challenges, but to be fair, flying with my family had been challenging as well. We made a plan for the drive down, and I have to say, it was solid. We picked the kids up from school, made them pee, and then hit the road. We would drive all night while the kids slept and be in Florida when they woke up. The plan pretty much worked as perfrectly as we could have hoped. The only issue was when my 5 year-old daughter, Evie, fell asleep way too soon. She went from literally screetching with excitement as we pulled out of the driveway to sleeping in her car seat only an hour down the road. Clearly, the excitement got the best of her.

Flash forward to the wee small hours of the night when the other two kids are asleep but Evie’s eyes are aglow in the backseat. Staring back at you as you glance in the rearview mirror like a painting of somebody with eyes that seem to follow you around the room. Creepy? Adorable? Adorably creepy? Yes.

Lucy, my seven year-old daughter, tried to stay awake longer than she should have to check on when we were going into a new state. Much to her disappointment, Indiana and Georgia are both very tall. She slept through the quicker border crossings of Kentucky and Tennessee. At least 4 times she woke up to ask what state we were in only to be told “Still Georgia.” And that is with breezing through Atlanta at 4:00 am with zero traffic.

On the trip down, Georgia ended up being my shift. My wife prefers to drive rather than be the passenger. Partly because she doesn’t want to get carsick, but I think mostly because she doesn’t want to be the one to have to be reaching and/or climbing into the backseat to deal with the kids. She did an awesome job crushing cans of ice coffee and making it from Michigan to just north of the Tennessee/Georgia border in one shot. At about 1:00 am I stopped for the biggest coffee you can get at a Circle K and got behind the wheel. A few Bob Seger and Garth Brooks albums later, the sun was coming up, our plan was a sucess, and everybody had to pee.

Driving Home: So This is What Hell Is Like

The trip home from any vacation sucks. Everybody is sad to leave, nobody wants vacation to end, and certainly nobody wants to spend another 18 and half hours in a van. Well, to our surprise, we didn’t spend another 18 and half hours in a van, we spend another 21. I think. I don’t know, I lost count.

The plan for the drive back was not to do it all at once. Because of the time we’d leave, driving all the way meant driving almost all the way with kids awake. Our goal was to get from Disney World to Nashville day one, then get back to Michigan day two. A very reasonable plan. However, our plan didn’t account for vomit.

The First Vomit: My Daughter Pukes

Was it being cramped in a hot car? Was it some side effect of the pink eye she had started to come down with earlier in the week? Was something off with her breakfast? Perhaps some combination of all of the above. Either way, whatever was going on in Evie’s stomach set us off on a nightmare path through Georgia.

The ride back started fine. We were delayed a bit by a too early potty break (perhaps an early warning sign that all was not digestively well?), but we were in as good as a mood as people who were driving away from 70 degree weather toward 20 degree weather could be. Then the complaints of “my tummy hurts” started bellowing up from the back seat. Uh oh.

I will say this – she hung in there. There was at least a solid hour from the time she started saying she didn’t feel good until she couldn’t hold it in anymore. But alas, there she blew. Amazingly, her tiny little mommy instincts kicked in and she was able to throw her stuffies to dry safety before she threw up. While throwing up in the first third of an 18 hour car ride is bad, it would have been so much worse had she covered her newly purchased Disney souvenirs in vomit. Worse for me I mean. Don’t know that it would have made a difference for her. I know how much those things cost.

We got her cleaned up in a McDonalds bathroom and aired out the van. She felt better, but the delay pushed our timeline back again. This time there was no way around it, we were going to hit Altlanta during rush hour traffic.

No Time for Shoes: An Emergency Bathroom Stop

Let me start this section by presenting an idea. Let’s go full Sherman and burn Atlanta back to the ground. When we rebuild it, let’s start by putting in a 20 lane highway running through the rubble so people can get the hell through the city in under 2 hours. In stark contrast to the breeze through town at 4 am, we had a 2 and a half hour slog at 4:30 pm. We streamed a movie on my wife’s phone to entertain the kids, but the full length of Moana was no match for urban sprawl in the heart of the peach state. Right about as Moana was wrapping up, my three year-old boy frantically had to pee, and the bellows of sore stomachs started again. We were not yet to the northern half of Atlanta’s sprawl.

Try as it might, the Waze app was no match for the traffic it tried to avoid. In an effort to avoid going right through the heart of the city, it set us on a roundabout path around the outskirts. While we never came to a dead stop, we definitly didn’t subtract any time by adding distance. As we meandered around the Eastern edge of the city my son, Brooks, had to pee. Naturally, as we were no longer on the main route through town, there were also no exits every other mile that had bathrooms. By the grace of God, there was one lone Pull-up shoved all the way in the back off van that had yet to be cleaned out in the year since he’s been potty trained. (Score one point for “I’ll get around to that eventually!”)

So I climbed back to him and changed him into it as we faught our way throught traffic. All the while being very appologitic and ensuring him that he is still a big boy, this is just in case, and he doesn’t need to feel bad if he has to go in the pullup. Nothing sends a mixed message to child like giving them the thumbs to pee themselves after years of insisting otherwise.

Luckily we got to a gas station before he had to pee. Unluckily for us, in the rush to get him to the bathroom there was no time to put his pants or shoes back on. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been into a gas station bathroom, but off all the places on Earth that you wouldn’t want to walk barefoot, gotta be top three. And wouldn’t you know it, this particular bathroom was pretty gross, even by gas station bathroom standards. (I hope they take the one-star Google review as an opporunity to address some areas for improvement. I somehow doubt that very much.) As soon as I walked in I saw a sizable puddle of what could only be urine on the floor. Not setting this kid down for sure.

At first I thought I could hold him in the air as he peed down into the toilet, but the hold was very awkward and he was freaking out. Best case scenario he was going to pee on me. I decided to daddy-daughter dance this thing. I had him put is feet on top of my shoes, and we moved and peed as one. Pants-less and with a refreshingly empty blatter, we got my son back in the car. But we were not out of Atlanta, or the woods, yet.

The Second Vomit: My Son Spews

As an astute reader, I’m sure you realized that by previously mentioning a first vomit that there would be a second. Oh yes, there would be a second.

As we finally made our way northward out of Atlanta, all three kids were back to complaining about their stomachs. Emergency puke recepticals were passed around. Evie, God bless her, said she would share hers with her brother. She would use one side of the clamshell take out box, and Brooks could puke in the other side if he needed to. That’s f-ing teaming.

Apparently my son did not pick up on the fundamental purpose of the puke box. His little tummy could take no more, and out its contents came. Nowhere near the box which was holding in his hands. By the time he got he box up to his face, 90% of the puke was in his lap or making its way in to the crevaces of his car seat. Ya know, you never realize just how many crevaces a car seat has until you’re cleaning puke out of it in a McDonalds parking lot. Also, we never eat at McDonalds, so I’m pretty sure my kids are only going to identify that as the place to throw up on car trips.

As I stood in the parking lot trying to fill my lungs with fresh, non-vomit smelling air, I looked over and in the adjacent parking lot was a hotel. Part of me very much wanted to quit. Just stop here. Put the day out of its misery. But before I could even suggest it to my wife, we pressed on. One of the most valuable lessons a kid can learn on a long car ride is how to deal with being miserable. My kids were getting a master class. Plus, if we stopped now, we’d still have at least 11 hours left to drive the next day.

We drove on into the darkening evening as it started to pour rain. Bound for the mountains of Tennessee, which my kids would once again sleep through, pushing forth like the pioneers did so many years ago. Desperatly longing for a place to lay their head in peace, and also to not get dysentery.

When we did finally make it home the next day, my wife and I talked about doing something like that again. The kids loved Disney World, so I assume we’ll go back eventually. But would we drive? After all that, we both agreed that we wouldn’t be against it. As long as the kids were sleeping and not vomiting, peeing, complaining, screaming, singing, eating, talking….it wasn’t that bad.