Parenting at its finest

[GMC]

Shame I don't work routes you sound like a lot of fun Alice. :D Yeah same holds true at Pooh. We allow lap sitting, parents get mad when we tell them its ok to lap sit. Jose who used to work Routes once told me they encouraged lap sitting cause of the lap bar and keeping the child seated.

Alas my favorite one is: "Will this scare my 3 year old? (In reference to the Mansion)" Serriously I don't know what will scare your kid. I've seen 30 year olds too terrified to get on and have seen 2 year olds think its the funniest thing in the world.

i remeber watching the queue past the elevators from the "tower" on a Fantasmic! break, with a nameless CM, who i hired in with, and watching a preteen girl try and drag another preteen girl to the loading area. what do you do if they don't wanna go on, send them back up the elevator?

[Stduck]

Shame I don't work routes you sound like a lot of fun Alice. :D Yeah same holds true at Pooh. We allow lap sitting, parents get mad when we tell them its ok to lap sit. Jose who used to work Routes once told me they encouraged lap sitting cause of the lap bar and keeping the child seated.

Alas my favorite one is: "Will this scare my 3 year old? (In reference to the Mansion)" Serriously I don't know what will scare your kid. I've seen 30 year olds too terrified to get on and have seen 2 year olds think its the funniest thing in the world.

i remeber watching the queue past the elevators from the "tower" on a Fantasmic! break, with a nameless CM, who i hired in with, and watching a preteen girl try and drag another preteen girl to the loading area. what do you do if they don't wanna go on, send them back up the elevator?

Ever notice the door right across the portraits? Or the door back past the load belt? That's door 2A and 2B respectively. AKA Chicken exit and ER3 (if we have an extra cast member and a child wants to ride but is afraid of the ER we can escort them in via door 2) Only guests that get to come back up in the ERs are GAC guests

[hobie16]

We took our two year old daughter to Dizzyland and, of course, used a leash. The best part was when Pluto took her for a walk. We still laugh at the pictures.

[GMC]

We took our two year old daughter to Dizzyland and, of course, used a leash. The best part was when Pluto took her for a walk. We still laugh at the pictures.

i have mixed feelings about the leashes, as long a you don't use it to drag you kid down mainstreet i suppose thier a good method of not losing them, which makes my job easier, making less children comming up to me screaming about how thier mom will never find them at LOST CHILDREN "she'll never look for me there!" kid that's the first place we send lost parents, lemme get someone to escort you.

[Grumpy]

I can see why there are mixed opinions of these "child leashes." I'm sure their main intent was to keep kids from getting lost, but there are some parents out there who will DRAG their kids on them. When I take my (almost) 2 year old to Disneyland, I am soo reluctant to let him out of the stroller, unless wer are in a queue. Even when we are in the queue, he likes to wander (as children do). I just haven't gotten around to getting one for him, but what really gets me, is seeing 6-8 year old kids with them on. . . . that's just like seeing a 3-4 year old with a bottle, pacifier, diapers, etc.

It's the few that make it bad for the many.

[lovethefuzzies]

^^or a seven-year-old being breast fed. :mickeyba:

[Grumpy]

^ that too. My b/f said that he saw that happen before (not sure if it was at DLR or somewhere else). He said the kid must have been about 7 or 8, climbed up on his mother, pulled down one side of her tube top, and just started sucking away. . . some parents. . . . :roll:

Luckily I don't have to worry about that; my son hated pacifiers, and I had him away from bottles; drinking from sippy cups from the time he was 10 months old.

[SRT_GB]

i have mixed feelings about the leashes, as long a you don't use it to drag you kid down mainstreet i suppose thier a good method of not losing them, which makes my job easier, making less children comming up to me screaming about how thier mom will never find them at LOST CHILDREN "she'll never look for me there!" kid that's the first place we send lost parents, lemme get someone to escort you.

I was yelled at more than once by guests when they found out we had stopped selling those things. Actually the ones we sold were the handholder kind, not the ones that went around the kid's body. From what I was told, they were recalled for safety reasons, either some kind of choking hazard or the strap cutting off circulation.

We did have an incident once at Strollers where a mom was completely berating a dad for whatever reason and she kept trying to yank the kid out of the stroller by the leash while the kid was still buckled in, screaming and crying. She kept yelling at him for doing nothing while she had to deal with the two "brats." Meanwhile the dad was being a spineless coward and just letting her do that to the kids. Actually I think I've posted this story before.

[screnwriter]

Here's a story from my character days. I wrote about it for a college class:

On Meeting an Abused Child

"Hi Goofy! Can we get a picture with you?" A platinum blond cherub dances across the red-brick street to stand at my side. Click!. A hug. "Thank you, Goofy. All she wanted to do today was to see you." I send the little girl back to her parents, bright smile, wavy hair clipped back for her day at Disneyland. It's an Easter-perfect morning on Main Street, Disneyland's gateway to the magic kingdom, and I am already turning to hug, pose and wave with the next child, who is already standing at my other side. Click! A hug. I pour out love to the children from a never-emptying vessel, and life-long memories are pressed into little heads as our picture is taken. I kneel in the center of a semicircle of fulfilled dreams, wishes come true. Fresh-scrubbed children, toddlers only recently able to walk, older children, everyone wants to see Goofy. To hug, to get some love, and take it back home with them. ("We had a great time at Disneyland, Timmy is still talking about meeting Goofy and getting a hug!")

When I'm inside my costume, the world is different. There is a spirit of love, playfulness, innocence that comes out of me whenever I wear it. I look at the world through the mouth of the fiberglass head that I wear; it's like looking through an empty oatmeal tube. I see hands that are not mine reach out to people who will never know me; but it is really my heart reaching out to theirs. I am Goofy. I am their dreams and happiness - reality doesn't touch Goofy. They join in the spirit of make-believe, elderly people play "hide-and-seek", teenagers shake hands, adults play charades. No one ever questions why we characters don't talk, but somewhere in their memories they will think that they heard me speak.

I look around this circle, like so many before it! Yet each family is important to me; they've never seen Goofy before, and I treat them as though I was expecting them to show up, and I'm glad they're there. I see happy young couples passing on the best memories of their own childhoods, excited little children eager for their turn to meet me. Their upturned faces, the brilliant light of innocence and wonder that I see in each one is another flawless gem in the treasure chest I keep in my heart. The love alone brings me to work each day. Click! A hug. As I pat a small bottom and send another delighted little one off with a heart full of love, when suddenly an ugly voice shatters the peace of the morning and destroys the innocence of the day.

"Go stand next to Goofy!" The tone is unforgivable. An order, not an entreatment, the voice of a dictator, not a daddy. The circle freezes. I look around, finding the family even though I hadn't seen who was talking. There they are, in the center, father, mother and a little boy. The boy is quiet and slightly built; eight maybe, but no bigger than a six year old. Malnutrition I figure, and his face - too many bruises and scabs to be just from playing. The answer is obvious, he is an abused child. The father looks small, greasy, mean. The mother's hair looks like the stuffing from an old mattress. The three of them are unwashed. They look as if money is never squandered on things like new clothes, the exception being the father's leather sport coat, and fancy new cowboy boots, ridiculously out of place in the California heat.

The little boy hesitates, seems to wonder what to do. Somehow I know he is afraid to disobey, yet at the same time afraid of appearing too eager - to appear to prefer Goofy, for this too could anger his father, and he would be punished for it later. ("You don't like me, do you, you little brat! You want to be back with Goofy, don't you?") The boy puts a cautious foot forward, then slowly shuffles toward me. He feels his father's eyes burning into him, like a gun pointed at his back. The others in the circle remain quiet, the other parents hold their children back. And perhaps hold them just a little closer to their hearts than before. The boy says nothing. I hear neither his voice or his name, but he will remain with me forever.

I open my arms. He comes to me. Turns to face his abusive father for the picture, the idea itself a mockery of what it is meant to be - a happy memory. I put my arm around the boy and try to draw him to me. His body is as hard unyielding as a lamppost. I'm crying inside my costume, trying to be silent as the tears flow. I want to talk to him, to tell him that things will be better, but will they ever be? I've read statistics; should I tell him I hope he lives to his next birthday? The unspeakable ugliness of his life is beyond my ability to console. Click! He has done what he was ordered to do. I've only known of his existence for 12 seconds. I pull him to me, put my arms around him for a hug; trying to break through that fear. His is still rigid, then he melts, throwing his thin arms around my neck and squeezing me back. My costume separates me from this little boy by only a fraction of an inch of cloth, but it might as well be a thousand miles. He doesn't know me; but he knows Goofy. It strikes me; I'm doing the best thing for him that anyone could possibly do. I'm giving him hope, a moment of real, human love that abuse cannot take away, nor cause him to forget.

I must let him go, send him back to his family. My tears still run freely down my cheeks; letting him go is like saying goodbye to a dying relative, yet back he must go. Back to his abusive father, back to a life that is a prison for his soul. Even as he walks back, another child is already at my side; I turn to her, but this time all the love in my heart has already been given away.

I will learn years later, through therapy, the reason I knew the little boy's thoughts; I was an abused child myself. The little boy I saw that day was me, dirtier than I had ever been; more physically abused than I was, but me nonetheless. On that morning I walked with him, in his shoes, as he came to get a little of the love that I was freely giving, the love he had never had before.

[Christopher]

Here's a story from my character days. I wrote about it for a college class:

On Meeting an Abused Child

That was one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful things I've read in a long, long time. Thank you so much for sharing that, I'm grateful to have had the chance to read it especially as I've always wanted to know what the characters' perspective was with guests and this story has my eyes welling up.