Quiet Confessions: Episode 26 - Magic, Meltdowns, and Memory-Making

In this week’s Quiet Confession, Chelsea shares the real, unfiltered magic and chaos of their family’s recent trip to Disney. From the long drive down the East Coast to the unforgettable moments in the parks, they open up about the joys, challenges, and lessons learned along the way. 

Expect a mix of laughter, meltdowns, gratitude, and the gentle reminder that even the most magical experiences can still come with a few bumps.

To learn more about Laraine and Rainy's Magical Moments, visit her Link Tree!

🗝️ Key Takeaways

• Joy can exist even when things are messy.
• Family trips are a balance of chaos and connection.
• Flexibility and humor make the hard parts easier.
• Gratitude multiplies the magic, especially when community support makes dreams possible.
• Perfection is not the goal. Presence is.

💬Soundbites

• “Things do not have to be perfect and polished to be what they are.”
• “It was busier and more frantic during the Halloween party than it was during a regular day at Magic Kingdom, but once we slowed down, everything felt calmer.”
• “We saved every little penny, and this trip would not have been possible without our family and community.”
• “My three-year-old melted down every morning, and still, it was magical.”
• “When we finally drove under that big arch that says ‘Walt Disney World,’ we were all freaking out.”

Transcript

 Chelsea Myers (00:01)
⁓ hey, welcome back to another Quiet Confessions. My dogs are a little rowdy, so if you can hear them, I apologize. I will do my best in post to make sure you can't hear them, but I can only do so much. Yeah, if this is your first Quiet Confession, these are just little mini episodes where I get to check in with you and let you know how I'm doing.

And I asked you guys on Instagram, I've been going back and forth about how to sort of do these episodes, to craft them. When I first started, things were totally off the cuff and just rambling. And then in the middle, I started kind of like...

outlining episodes, like making little notes about what I wanted to talk about. And then for the past couple of weeks, I have had scripts. So I'm a writer by nature. I write in journals or I used to, and I write for Vermont Mom blog, and I write blog posts for this, for Quiet Connection.

I just, love to write. ⁓ So I would script things because it would make getting to the recording feel a lot more comfortable. I knew what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. But yeah, I just, I don't know. So today I'm doing like a hybrid of all three things. I have an outline, but I'm

just kind of like glancing at it as it like to keep me on track like on so that I don't talk to you for an hour. ⁓ But yeah, so that I just wanted to start off with that and let you know, I'd love your feedback. ⁓ You can when you reach out to us on any of our our social media platforms. It's me.

So I'd love to hear from you. Do you like scripted episodes? Do you like outlined episodes? Do you like it when I ramble? you... Whatever. What would you like to hear about? I'd love to hear from you. But so now jumping topics completely. Today, I'm going to talk about our trip to Disney. We've officially been home for just over a week. We realized...

on the drive down, we drove, we drove down the entire East Coast ⁓ and we realized on the way back that we spent more time traveling to and from than actually at Disney, but only by a day. So I don't, I don't think, I don't think it was a waste. But yeah, we...

went to Disney. That was, we've talked about this a little bit. We saved every little penny and my husband and my family just, I mean, this trip would not be possible without them. And yeah, we decided to drive. We rented a van and decided to spread the drive out over three days. So yeah, my now 10 year old and my three year old

and my husband and I in the van that was packed. I'm so glad we did a van. We had a SUV originally, but we upgraded to a van and it was the best decision ever. ⁓ And yeah, we did it. We took turns driving ⁓ and the kids, like for the first half of the day, the rule was that they had to do car activities. So we had stickers and we had coloring books and they had like,

just, you know, the target, like that little section right by the door where they have all those discounted activities. They had a bunch of those. ⁓ And yeah, the first half of the day had to be like crafting or playing. they had little mini magnet tiles. And then after our midday stop, they could use their Kindles and watch a movie. And we were usually...

at our hotel around dinner time. ⁓ The first day was rough. We got to our hotel very late. ⁓ But it was, it was something. It did not go as chaotically as I thought it would. Is chaotically a word? I think it is. Yeah, it just, there were definitely lots.

of moments, mostly from my oldest, where she was like, I'm bored. Where like, are we almost at our next stop? And my three year old was totally content, which shocked the heck out of me. ⁓ but yeah, the, so we, we did it. We did the thing and we listened to a lot of Disney music on the way down. And then when the kids were on their Kindles, we would listen to, ⁓

memoir. We listened to Patrick Stewart's memoir and we almost finished it. We need to make time to finish it. yeah, and I mean, when we finally drove under that big arch, if you've ever been to Disney, it says Walt Disney World, we did a little countdown and when it was, we just were all freaking out. All of us were freaking out.

We stayed at Pop Century, which is ⁓ where we stayed when we went the first time with Lilly. This was a few years ago now, but, there's a lot of reasons for that and I'll get into that too. But yeah, it just was when we got there, kind of all the stress, it definitely didn't melt away, but it was a hundred percent worth it. And the trip was, ⁓ my God, it was,

so magical, truly magical. ⁓ And a huge part of that is because an original OG ⁓ Quiet Connection mom, Lorraine, ⁓ who is a travel agent who specializes in Disney planning, helped us plan our trip. And she seriously took the stress out of everything.

Everything was lined up the way that we wanted it to be. I knew how to utilize the My Disney app so that I could make the most of our time. And yeah, it was crazy how smooth most of the park days were. I will say every morning, my three-year-old started our day with massive tantrums.

and refusing to comply with literally anything we asked her to do. Comply feels like a harsh word. That's what came out of my mouth. So clearly that's how I was feeling. no, she just, anything that you asked her to do, go to the bathroom, eat her breakfast, put her clothes on was, it was like asking her to rip her own hair out. It was pretty bad. But then as soon as we would pull up to

the little bus stop where they pick you up and take you to the parks. She was over it. And she didn't have any meltdowns at the parks. like, yeah, it wasn't incredibly hot. It just was, it was so nice. We got to ride every single one of our favorite rides, including some rides that we had never ridden before with barely any wait times.

We did have, I know I talked to you guys about the whole DAS experience. Disney had given us two Lightning Lanes per day, ⁓ except for our last day, we got one Lightning Lane because it was the same park we had already visited. And we actually didn't need to even use them for most of the rides that we wanted to ride. And we got to ride some of the rides more than once. And most of them were walk-ons.

And I was shocked like Tiana. We walked on Tiana's Bayou. We walked on to ⁓ Pirates of the Caribbean. There was one time ⁓ we walked on to Haunted Mansion, but I will tell you about that in a little bit. We even walked on to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, which is insane. The last time we went two years ago, even with a DAS pass,

The wait time was over an hour and we pretty much walked onto it. But it, yeah, it was incredible. My mom and my stepdad were there with us and they kind of were like flexible in, in things we would do together and things that they would do on their own. And they surprised Lily, my oldest, she didn't know that they were going to be there. So was really cool. They stayed at Animal Kingdom Resort and we visited them there.

Yeah, it was amazing. mean, Disney is my happy place. You guys know this by now, but it was absolutely everything that we hoped that it would be. ⁓ One of the coolest things and a bucket list item for me was going to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party, which we did. And it was equal parts insanely overstimulating.

and everything I hoped it would be. There were several moments where my husband and I were looking at each other like, what the heck are we doing? Like, what is this? It was busier and felt more frantic during the Halloween party than it did during our regular day at Magic Kingdom. And we kind of both looked at each other and realized it was everyone else's

like chaos and intensity and it was like we were feeding off of that and we just we were like we don't we don't need we don't need to play that game. ⁓ If you are familiar with Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party or any of the special holiday parties at Disney you know that there are goals that people go in to the party with and I knew this I had done my research but you have

The people that are there for the treat trails. So they're going to hit every single treat trail, sometimes multiple times to get as much candy as they can. You have the people who are there for the meet and greets. So they are going to wait in every single line and meet all their favorite characters. You have the people who are there for the fireworks and the parade. So they're going to just sit, they're going to find their spot and they're going to sit there all night long.

waiting for the fireworks show or the Sanderson Sisters show or the parade and that's just what they're going to do. And you have the people who want to ride the rides and that's all they're going to do. And so everyone is just like frantically on their missions and we didn't care about any one thing specifically. So at first we're like, okay, we got to hit the treat trails.

And then we were like, but the rides, we've got to get on the rides. And we really didn't care about the parades at all. ⁓ And we said, if the kids are still up by the time the fireworks go off, we'll see the fireworks. ⁓ But we just, yeah, we paused. think it was right after riding Mind Train. And we were like, this is ridiculous. Like, let's just.

go at our own pace and do what we want to do. And once we made that choice, like everything felt calmer and we did get to ride the rides we wanted to ride. We brought little gift bags for Lily to give out to cast members that she wanted to. I mean, it was her birthday. ⁓ So, and we wanted to thank cast members. And so she did. And that was so sweet to see. She had so much fun doing that. And

That was, she gave one to someone working outside of Haunted Mansion and they in turn pixie dusted us with walking us right onto the ride, even though there was a little bit of a wait. So that was when we got to walk on that, but that was really, really cool and really special. I loved seeing her do that. The kids were awake for the fireworks. We watched from Tiana's bayou and then Avery fell asleep as we were.

buying a pretzel on our way out and did not wake up until we had to transfer her into bed. So she slept from the transfer from the stroller to the bus, off the bus to the hotel room and didn't wake up until we had to put her pajamas on and put her in bed. But yeah, it just, this trip was everything that we hoped it would be. And yes, it had its challenges. I mean, we

We have a very neuro sparkly family. And so we struggled with food, not like not having enough safe foods for my oldest daughter. So it was a struggle to get her to eat. We struggled with, like I said, Avery just melting down every single morning. And then we struggled with expectations that weren't ours. Ones that we just kind of were like, Whoa, okay, we're feeding off of this energy and we need to just let it go. ⁓

But we were able to just navigate around that. And I am still coming down from the whole thing, but I also desperately want to go back and yeah, I just, I cannot stress enough the level of support and just help financially or planning or otherwise that I received that we received.

as a family, it's overwhelming and it continues to be. And this trip wouldn't be possible without my family, my husband's family, Lorraine, and you can learn more about Lorraine if you check the show notes. Yeah, it just, was everything. It was everything that we all needed. so yeah, so okay, here we are. We're coming to

A deep exhale moment. I didn't write a script. I don't know how long I've been recording because I'm not looking at the screen right now. But maybe this is a good happy medium. I don't know what to say here.

I guess I just felt like sharing my experiences and also I want your feedback. That's, that's your little reminder. I would love your feedback. love constructive criticism. I love to learn and grow. And yeah, I want to hear about your guys's trips with your families, like whether it's Disney, whether it's a local theme park, whether it's a zoo that you like to go to if you're more of a universal.

family than a Disney family or if you go to like a beach every year or something I don't know my DMs are open you guys tell me how do you do those trips how do you what are your tips and tricks what are your what are your like fail proof ways to keep your kids entertained in the car for a long time I'd love to hear from you so yeah that's this week's confession ⁓ I guess I'm taking with me that

Things do not have to be perfect and polished to be what they are. And yeah, you know the drill. I'm gonna go fill my water bottle. I'm going to try really hard to take some time for me while Avery is at preschool. And I'll see you back here next week.