To Stroller or Not To Stroller

Word on the street has it that Walt Disney World has raised the price of stroller rentals at it's theme parks. Where a one child stroller used to set you back ten bucks a day, and a double eighteen Disney Dollars, they'll now empty out your wallet at $15 and $31 a day, respectively. That's crazy!

First, let me say that my family and I are road trippers when it comes to traveling to Walt Disney World. We make the 14 - 16 hour drive in a non-stop overnight run and we love it. Last year was our first trip to WDW with the need of the assistance of a double stroller. My two boys were 15 months and 3 1/2 at the time of our trip. Their Graco DuoGlider double stroller took up the majority of the storage space in our Plymouth Grand Voyager mini-van. Actually, let me correct that...my wife's luggage took up the majority of the space, when you added the double stroller there wasn't much room left for anything else.

We love having our own stroller while at Disney World. Sure, it's a small pain to fold it up and get on and off the Disney buses quickly. However, once you get back to your resort you can pop open the stroller again, plop the kids in it and make your way back to your room which can often be quite a hike. When you rent a stroller at the parks, you've got to leave it at the gate on your way out. You are on your own from the turnstiles for the rest of the night. But even though we really like having our own stroller with us we also like having clothes to wear and space for all the souvenirs we're going to go home with. So this got us to thinking about other options for our stroller needs.

Of course our first solution was to rent a stroller. A quick hop over to the internet to look at stroller rental prices revealed that we'd be paying $126.00 for the use of Disney's strollers. That was a good deal of our merchandise budget having to be redirected towards something boring. Plus I wasn't too thrilled about having to deal with getting in line to get a stroller each day. For $126 you can buy a pretty nice stroller.

That got us to thinking back to a 2005 visit to WDW where we had to stop at a K-Mart near Universal Studios and buy a new stroller because in a rush to pack the car an hour before we left home I broke the stroller trying to shove to much stuff into the trunk. There's plenty of places in the Disney area to buy a stroller - cheap. There's Wal-Marts, K-Marts and other kinds of Marts all over I-4, 192, and International Drive. The K-Mart near Universal had a lovely selection of strollers. At the time, we only needed a single and found a real nice one for around $50. We liked it better than the Graco one we got as a Baby Shower gift and we still use it, while the Graco still sits, broken, in the garage. So, buying a stroller in Florida is always an option.

However, to solve our dilemma we opted to get a storage unit for the top of our van. You know, one of those "turtle shell" things. We figured, even if we only use it for Disney World once, we could still use it for trips to the beach and other family outings. In the end, buying the storage unit and having the guys at Sears put in on the van for us cost us $124.00. So we saved two dollars, and we still have the unit if we need it for future trips. Which is good because a week with a double stroller would now set us back $217.00.

O.K....so, my point?! There's options to shelling out big bucks to lug around some Mickey Mouse stroller for a week. Think about adding storage space to your vehicle. Explore the possibility of getting a smaller stroller than your normal one. You only need to use it for a few days. An umbrella stroller (even a double) can fold up pretty tight.

If you're in Orlando without a car, it might even be worth it to call a cab and have them take you to a near-by shopping establishment of your choice to grab a low-price set of wheels.

There can be many advantages to having your own stroller while touring Walt Disney World. If you think outside the box you might be able to save yourself a few dollars in the process.

Keeping The Classics Special

I picked up this paperback at a yard sale last summer, The Official Disney Trivia Book by Bill Ginch and Fred Miranda. It's from 1988 and it's nothing really special except maybe for offering 20 questions on The Gnome-Mobile and 30 for The Happiest Millionaire!?! However, after leafing through it for a couple of weeks I finally got around to reading the introduction and found a passage that really struck a cord with me:

"We can all recall our first encounters with the Disney mystique without too much trouble. Impressive television and print campaigns everywhere let us know what was coming next from the master himself. You never had to ask Mom and Dad twice to take you to a Disney feature film; they were all too happy to accompany you. A Walt Disney film never left you disappointed. You traveled home from the theatre on a cloud."

The sad thing is, there's no cloud to travel home on anymore. The only way to experience the classic Disney films of yesterday is on television wheter it be by DVD, VHS, or network television. Sure, we've all got our larger screen televisions but even the best home theatre system doesn't compare to taking your kids to see Cinderella, Snow White or Peter Pan on the big screen at your local theatre. Going to the movies is still somewhat of an event, especially for little kids. I'm afraid for a generation of kids there's going to be no difference between one of the classic animated films from Disney's golden years and modern day movies like Ice Age 2 or even Barbie The Island Princess. To kids brought up in this media saturated world everything is just a DVD you pick up at Wal-Mart. The viewing experience of watching a true work of art is just the same as watching the latest made-for-DVD movie. It will be a shame if an entire generation doesn't have an appreciation for the special magic of Walt Disney's animated films. It's a problem that could hurt the Walt Disney Company later down the road.

It was common practice with Walt Disney Pictures to re-release the classic animated films every seven years. Each of the big cartoon movies were on it's own schedule so that every Spring, Summer or Christmas there would be a great Disney classic in the theatre to take the kids to. Every child's first movie going experience was something along the lines of Cinderella, or Lady and the Tramp or Pinocchio. This was done from the earliest days of the studio up until the mid-90's. It seemed with home video making it possible for people to have all their favorite movies at home that releasing 30 to 40 year old movies in the theatre wasn't quite practical. Each of the classic animated films got one last bow in theatres and then were dumped onto VHS where the money kept on pouring in. The last of the features to be re-released to theaters were Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1993 and The Little Mermaid in 1997.

I realize there is a boatload of money to be made from DVD sales, but I can't imagine that releasing Cinderella to theatres at Christmas 2005 and then putting out the DVD the following Christmas could have done anything but bring in extra money from ticket sales and raised the profile of the eventual DVD release.

No matter how you slice it, the very core of the Walt Disney Company - what makes it special, what makes it unique, what makes it magical - is the animated products. Everything else: the books, the music, the theme parks, the tv shows are all off-shoots of Mickey Mouse, Snow White and the films and characters that came after them. If people aren't allowed to take part in these films in a grand theatrical setting, the movies start to blend together with all the other media out there. And without the special-ness of these films, what magic will the Walt Disney Company have to sell to a generation or two from now?