I'm taking my toddler daughter to wdw & I could tell my mom wanted to meet us there/ get her own room/ take her own flights/ would agree to have days/ time apart.
I'm hesitant because
1- we just can't seem to get along even for an hour when hanging out in regular life
2- we are different kind of travelers and (see 1) we also haven't been able to get along travelling before.
I'm for it because:
I feel like I'd have a chance to ride rotr! it will be a while before my daughter is 40 inches & we only get to go every year.
Yes it's a selfish reason! Haha and she just wants to do anything involving my daughter. she'd be happy just having lunch with her daily (her words)
It's kinda a unique situation so any thoughts of traveling with family? I feel like it's all regrets from what i read lol
Honestly, this sounds like a recipe for a trip disaster. Especially since you: (1) can't get along with each other even for an hour; and (2) you're both very different types of travelers.
Are you REALLY willing to have a potentially miserable time just so you can go on ROTR? ROTR isn't going anywhere any time soon.
When you say that you could tell that your mom wants to go, what do you mean exactly? Did she communicate this directly to you? Or did she play some passive-aggressive game and drop a bunch of hints?
How old is your toddler? 2 or 3? How much time has your mom spent around your toddler when your child is tired and cranky? Does your mom respect your parenting decisions when she's around or does she undermine your authority? What sort of traveler is she? Is she physically able to keep up with an energetic toddler at a Disney theme park all day long? Can she handle walking up to 9-12 miles in a day? Does your mom expect you to read her mind or will she tell you when she wants to do something different than what you've planned?
All of these and more questions are what you need to consider.
2 years ago, we took my MIL with us to
Disneyland. I will never again do that. We did ALL of the things that people recommended ahead of time. For example:
- we had a couple of family meetings before the trip w/MIL.
- we explained how things would go.
- we told her to pick ONE thing that she wanted to do on the trip. Just one. And told her that we'd try to do that on the 1st day.
- We told her that our family expectation is that once you get to do the ONE thing, then you have the attitude of "everything else is icing on the cake."
- We told her to speak up when she got tired.
- We told her that she could take breaks at the hotel when she got tired.
- We told her to tell us ahead of time when she needed to stop and rest or eat a snack (she's diabetic).
- We told her to rent a scooter and have it delivered to the hotel ahead of time (DH helped her arrange this beforehand).
The trip was hell. We learned that if your eye sight is bad enough that you can no longer drive a car, then you should not be driving a scooter (MIL plowed into several people, including driving over my ODD's foot, and then laughed about it). My MIL accidentally stole some other lady's scooter and then laughed about it. The other woman was in tears. MIL spent lots of money on herself, but not once did she even buy either of my kids an ice cream cone, let alone a souvenir. She complained that she didn't get enough time to shop (she never spoke up about it; turns out she wanted to spend an entire afternoon shopping and have us follow her around doing that, but she never said a word about it until we got home).
MIL is also very hard of hearing and refuses to get hearing aids. So we basically had to yell at her all of the time. Many times, she would nod as if she understood, but then she'd take off in the scooter at break neck speed in the wrong direction and 1 of us would have to sprint after her.
Her one goal was to eat lunch at the Blue Bayou. All OUR family could afford was for DH to eat there. So DH & MIL ate there by themselves while the kids & I had a wonderfully casual lunch at the French Market while listening to the Dixieland jazz band play. MIL didn't offer to treat us or anything.
We DROVE from AZ to Anaheim with MIL in our car with us. Not once did she offer to pay for part of the gas.
Every time she needed to use the restroom, it took 30 minutes.
She decided that she needed to bring a purse into the park with her that was big enough to fit a toddler. Every time we went through security, she forgot the routine & the procedure. Because she has a pace maker, she couldn't be wanded. This meant that they had to hand pat her down. MIL getting through security took 20 minutes every single time. It was so bad that by Day 2, YDD said, "Mama, we're 'THAT family,' aren't we?" LOL!
My kids didn't want to go on rides with her because she was such a huge pain in the neck. She'd talk through the ride, and would talk really loud so everybody else around her, including other park guests, could hear her. It was embarrassing. As a result, DH rode w/MIL on every ride. The kids rode together. And I rode every ride by myself.
My kids love their grandmother very much, but they said, "Mama, can we please not do that again with Gram?" And then on the long drive back home, what did my DH blurt out to his mom? "Do you want to go again next year?"
AAAHHHH!!! I told him privately that he's welcome to take his mom to DL again, but neither the kids or I will be joining him. He'll be doing it by himself.
And oh by the way, my sister-in-law told my DH (her brother) that she thought he was nuts for pitching the idea to MIL in the first place.
Honestly, it was like having to deal with a very needy preschooler for 3 consecutive park days. I had to think about the needs of my own kids, but also had to constantly check up on MIL and ask her all the time whether she was hungry, or thirsty, or oh here's a bathroom, do you need to use the bathroom, etc. My MIL has a LOT of health problems. On top of it, she is NOT the sort of person who will speak up when she needs something. She expects you to somehow auto-magically just KNOW that since it's 11:00 am and since she apparently eats lunch at 11 am every day, that she needs to eat something at that time every day.
But she won't say anything until an hour and a half later, when her blood sugar is starting to crash.
She has to be reminded to drink fluids because otherwise, she just won't. And then it goes downhill and she ends up with health issues from that. So both DH & I had to remind her to drink water all day long. And then we had to remind her to go to the bathroom.
And no, this isn't a woman who has dementia of any shape or form.
Leave your mom at home. IF you consider having her tag along in the future, wait a couple of years. Wait until your daughter is about age 6. And then go back to this thread and re-read it and reconsider.
