This story was contributed by our friend Robb at @stayathomebuzz – ENJOY!
My parents bought my wife and I annual passes to Disneyland for Christmas, and we’ve taken Avery a lot. She is only twenty-months old and has been at least a dozen times.
She always has a great time, but in the last few months she has become a little bit skittish around the characters in costumes. In my opinion, she’d be crazy not to be scared. Have you ever seen Winnie the Pooh on TV? He is half the size of a nine-year old, but in person, he is as tall as most mommies. That’s a big damn tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff.
When we went a couple weeks ago we were walking around Toon Town and spotted Minnie Mouse in front of her house and thought it best if we avoid it because we weren’t sure how Baby Buzz would react. BUT, Avery saw Minnie Mouse and put out her arms and said “Min-Min, Min-Min.” We thought maybe she’d turned a corner and was ready to see the characters again, so we got in line.
By the time we got to the front of the line it was time for Minnie’s tea (read: smoke) break. That gave my wife the necessary time to do a full on photo shoot for Disney magazine in front of Minne’s House.
Look at this child.
She looks like she is about to live out one of her dreams. As we know though, sometimes the dream is better than the reality. Avery was standing on the front porch when Minnie arrived and she wasn’t ready to meet a five-foot mouse. In a matter of seconds, she went from a dream to a nightmare. Clearly this mouse wanted blood.
After snapping off a couple quick photos they shuffled us aside, we moved on into Minnie’s house where Avery was able to calm down. When she stopped crying the first thing she said was “Min-Min? Min-Min?” I’m going to assume/hope she was asking to see Minnie again, and not asking “Why did you guys just try to offer me up as a human sacrifice to that mutant mouse?”
I think we’re going to try to minimize the costumed character visits for awhile. We’ll stick with the Princesses. They tend to be my favorite any way.
Robb Buzzini lives in Pasadena, California with his wife Catherine, daughter Avery, and a baby to be named this summer. When his chores are done you can usually find him working on screenplays and pilots, staring at his computer complaining about how terrible his fantasy baseball team is playing, or maybe even running off to Vegas for the weekend to lose his allowance. You can follow him on twitter at @StayAtHomeBuzz.
We had the same problem with Justin. Year pass, went a dozen times, and he would take off in the other direction like the Road Runner the second any costumed character showed up. No matter how many times I explained that it was like Halloween dress up, it didn’t matter. Oh well!! I think we’ll hold off on getting the next pass!
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I remember the first time Ava saw Yo Gabba Gabba in person! She didn’t blink for about thirty minutes. We had great seats (remember Gwen Stefani and her kiddos sitting right behind us?) and all Ava wanted to do was watch the ginormous monitors on either side of the stage because she’s so used to watching them on tv, haha.
He is half the size of a nine-year old, but in person, he is as tall as most mommies. That’s a big damn tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff.
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