/ 202 MANIC MANAGED MOM / rachel recommends
BY RACHEL HARRIS, Mangedmoms. com
Lessons Learned From Our Disneyland Vacation Gone Bad!
Planning a family vacation this summer? Read my tale about how our Disneyland adventure went sour and the lessons learned.
Our Story
To celebrate my girl’ s straight-A report card, we planned a four-day stay at The Walt Disney Hotel in Anaheim for some Disneyland and California Adventure Theme Park fun. We never made it to either park.
Instead, we spent our first day in an urgent care, followed by a trip to a pharmacy for the antibiotics that were prescribed for the diagnosis of Tonsillitis. The Walt Disney Hotel was full of compassionate employees; having witnessed her tears at checkin, they gave her a free DVD movie and a Mickey Mouse doll wishing her a speedy recovery.
Sadly, my daughter was so ill that the next morning, I found her lying on the bathroom floor, burning up with fever and unable to speak. She wasn’ t keeping anything down, so it was time for an emergency room visit. As soon as we arrived at the Orange County Children’ s Hospital, I knew that we were in good hands. She had a pretty bad virus so was prescribed some painkillers. They even surprised us and paid our cab fare back to the hotel!
Even though we were up again that night, we both felt strong enough to make the journey home the next day. You know your kid is sick when she says that she doesn’ t want to stay extra days to recover to visit Disneyland; she just wanted to go home, poor thing. Thankfully, she made a full recovery, but it took almost two weeks since this virus was an especially mean illness.
Lessons Learned
A Buy travel insurance! If I would have purchased the $ 50 travel insurance package, I would have received all of my Disney money back. Fortunately, I did get our $ 500 three-day park hopper package money refunded because the front desk literally witnessed my girl being rushed to urgent care moments after we checked in. Be aware that a lot of the travel packages are nonrefundable, so always ask that question when you book. I was also able to persuade the hotel to refund our last night’ s stay since we flew home early, but they repeatedly stressed to me that this was a one time exception.
A If you are going to Disneyland in LA, fly in and out of Orange County. The John Wayne Orange County Airport is only a 20-minute cab ride( in good traffic) from Disneyland. The airport is also nice and is not congested. Since my girl was so washed out by the time we went home, that calm environment was what we needed to keep us going.
A Pack a sick kid kit! The hotel gift shop had children’ s Advil and a thermometer, but children’ s Tylenol was nowhere to be found on the property. Fortunately( after several hours), the helpful hotel employees did find a delivery service that brought us Tylenol and some Gatorade. Advil can be rough on a sick tummy, so needing to alternate to Tylenol was crucial during one stage of her illness.
A Bring entertainment from home. Our hotel had no in-room movie service. Even healthy kids need some down time from all of the Disney excitement, so pack some movies for your room’ s DVD player, an iPad or favorite books for some relaxing entertainment.
Here’ s hoping that you never experience the kind of illness that my child had and at Disneyland, of all places!
Do you have a crazy travel story and if so, what are your best tips? Talk to me at my blog at managedmoms. com. I’ m wishing you safe and smooth travels this summer season.
Freelance writer, Rachel Harris, is also known as the Manic Managed Mom on KTVK’ s“ Your Life A to Z” morning show. Rachel is also the proud mother of a teenage son and tween daughter plus three cats that were all rescued from local animal shelters. Check out Rachel’ s website at managedmoms. com for parenting talk, recipes, beauty news, pet pics and more. And see her lifestyle segment every Wednesday at 10 a. m. on 3TV.
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202 MAGAZINE \ JULY 2013 \ 202magazine. com