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Danielle Levitt
At the start of the trip, I told my children, seven-year-old Julian and five-year-old Paloma, not to compare Disney World to Disneyland. Our job was to take each new experience as free from expectation as possible. But comparison is the engine of judgment, and I was judging.
The sprawl threw me. When people say Disney World is a city, they don't just mean its self-governing municipality—they mean the scale: six parks and dozens of resorts, all stitched together by highways, ferries, the monorail, and skyways. I grew up devoted to Disneyland. We live in Los Angeles, and my kids are growing up that way too. Our Magic Kingdom is quaint, compact to the point of being claustrophobic; I like to say it's intimate. Disney World, in the months leading up to the trip, felt like a logistics marathon. But we would do three parks in three days—I had fully committed.
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A Pinocchio float at Magic Kingdom after “rope drop”—a term from the early years of the park that refers to employees literally dropping a dividing rope to open for the day.
Danielle Levitt
When I admit to being a lifelong Disneyland devotee, other adults tend to unload their skepticism onto me. It's so crowded, it's so corporate, it's so expensive. “Sure,” I say. It's all of those things. But it is also, without fail, absolute magic for children. That magic can work for adults too, once we stop pretending we're above it.
And yet, for all my go-with-the-flow philosophy, I'm a big believer in “rope drop.” This term refers to the early years, when Disneyland's Magic Kingdom opened in the morning and employees would literally drop a rope. Today it means: Get there when it opens. But in truth it means: Get there 15 to 30 minutes before the park opens. This sounds excessive, but the crowds and wait times affect the quality of your experience. At Disney World, getting ahead of the crowds means you stay ahead all day.
Which is to say: We did not remotely make rope drop. West Coast jet lag had me dragging my children from bed. But once my boyfriend, Adam, and I were properly caffeinated, the children properly snacked up, we walked from our in-park lodgings, Disney's Contemporary Resort, to see about Disney World's Magic Kingdom, a park we thought we understood. My plan was a ride, a snack, another ride. All I knew was that we had a much-coveted Lightning Lane Single Pass for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, a roller coaster we don't have back in Disneyland, at 8 p.m., which seemed nuts except that it would be only 5 p.m. in California. Still, we had to make it till dark.
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A Mickey Mouse-shaped soft pretzel
Danielle Levitt
The recently updated lobby of Disney’s Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., now features a collection of modern art pieces as well as historical, behind-the-scenes photographs of the resort in development