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Memoir
The Moment That Ruined Our Family Road Trip to Disney World
Family dynamics amid a memorable vacation in 1996
In 1996, my mother decided that we had waited all too long for a family vacation. Our last one, by my recollection, had been in 1988 and was cut short due to car trouble and a funeral. But that’s another story altogether.
That summer, my newly divorced mother took her tax refund and packed up her new-to-her minivan with her three kids, and headed for Disney World. This trip is still talked about at visits over the dinner table, in phone conversations, and at reunions with family and old friends. And it’s the best example I can think of when asked about our family dynamic in that all too brief period of our lives — after the divorce and before my brother died.
Nowadays, family trips to Disney World are a seemingly ubiquitous experience. Even if not to the great mouse village in Orlando, family vacations, in general, seem to be a given — just look at the traffic the National Parks have been getting. But when I was growing up, vacations were rare and almost mythical. Staying in hotels was even a rare and exciting experience. A trip to Disney World was something we had been saving for since I was old enough to know that money went in a piggy bank, and the cost when I was a…
