My Disney Hangover – A FastPass+ to Reality

Coming back from vacation is never fun. You’re worn out from all the traveling and suddenly you’re thrown back into the reality of normal, everyday life. Coming back from the happiest place in the world…well, pardon my French, but it sucks.

At Disney World everything is pretty much perfect (really, it is) and they do everything they can to make your vacation as pleasant and enjoyable as possible.

Then you come home where pretty much nothing is perfect, and where you have no food in the fridge, at least nothing without any mold on it, and you’re just too tired to go to the store, so you to subsist on water and dry cereal until you’re so hungry that you’re forced to go to the supermarket. Meanwhile, your suitcases — one containing all your dirty clothes from the week, the other with everything else crammed into it — sit there on your dining room floor, mocking you, waiting to be unpacked, reminding you that you’re a long, long way from the magic of the Magic Kingdom.

Welcome home.

Just in case you were wondering, here’s a little recap of my first day post-Disney. (Hint: It wasn’t very magical.)

• After having zero pain all week long in Disney World, as I sit at my desk slogging through my emails, my neck and back begin to tighten and ache as my shoulders slowly rise back to their normal position just below my ears.

• Just a day or so earlier, I was standing in 85 degree heat complaining about the sun’s scorching rays. Now I’m wearing a tossle cap indoors and standing at the kitchen sink running hot water on my near-frozen hands.

• A few days ago I was rushing to make my FastPass+ at the Haunted Mansion and then at Thunder Mountain Railroad. Now I’m rushing to empty the dishwasher, change the laundry, and make it to the Giant Eagle for some groceries before I have to go pick up my daughter from gymnastics.

• I fight the rush-hour traffic on the way back from gymnastics, only to have to turn around and go right back after my daughter informs me she left her Disney MagicBand and charm bracelet there. By the time I get back, my dinner is cold.

• After fighting with The Animal to get him to eat his veggies, we spend the next hour fighting with Boogs while helping her finish all the homework she’s missed in the past week.

• A short time later I’m upstairs chopping up one of my kids’ you-know-what with a stick so that the toilet doesn’t clog. Again. (Nope, not joking.)

• I miss the first quarter of the Steelers game on MNF because I’m busy cleaning up the kids’ playroom, which was driving me crazy and which was such a disaster area that I didn’t feel it was safe for them to do it themselves.

• I finally sit down to watch the game, a glass of Cabernet in hand, but I can’t hear anything over the cries emanating from upstairs after my wife decides that now, bedtime, is the perfect time to tell our daughter that, no, she cannot have seashells spread out all over her dresser. (Don’t worry; I don’t get it either.)

So that was my smooth transition from the magical world of Disney back to my normal, unpredictable, and sometimes chaotic life as a small-town dad. If I could only figure out how to install a FastPass+ on the laundry…

Now that would be magical.

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Copyright © 2014 Valentine J. Brkich