vacationer1954
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2010
My father passed away yesterday. He had been struggling for many months and I'm content that he's now at peace.
We had an interesting relationship that involves too many private details to share here, but it is interesting to me how, even though I've been preparing myself for his passing for a good amount of time, the event itself evokes a lot of memories associated with whatever else I'm doing. I was straightening up the den and put a Blu-Ray disc set of "The Hobbit" away, and suddenly I remember him reading the first page of the book to me when I was very young. I made coffee this morning, and I suddenly remembered the great coffee my father used to serve when we visited. And I logged into the forum this morning, and suddenly I remembered that Disney trip almost twenty years ago when we brought him to see the theme parks.
He was a pretty old school kind of guy and generally suspicious of the value of anything that he couldn't associate to something that his parents or grandparents would have found value in. The cost of airline tickets alone might have caused him concern but he'd taken other trips before -- though those were to Europe (the old country!) and so I think his suspicion was still pretty high with regard to paying so much to fly to Florida. I bet he had reservations about the value of all the rest of the aspects of the trip, but that's natural for people doing something new even for people who aren't a old school as my father was.
The one memory of that trip that stands out - and stands out so much that I mention it to whoever we're visiting with whenever we walk through the Maharajah Jungle Trek - is how much my father's perspective on the value of Disney changed when we reached Animal Kingdom Park. It was Tuesday, so I think he was either not impressed or noncommittal until that point. However, when we walked into Animal Kingdom Park he was amazed. This wasn't the amusement park he saw at the Magic Kingdom and it wasn't the world's fair he saw at Epcot. This was something different.
We spent about 45 minutes getting through The Oasis. He was so impressed not just with the animals there but with how well their habitats were presented. He probably took a hundred photographs (on film, back then - not the "shoot-and-discard-what-you-don't-like" approach we use with digital). I don't remember how he responded to the safari - I bet he thought the bridge part and the poachers part was silly.
But it was when we arrived at Maharajah Jungle Trek that things really changed. He was utterly blown-away by how real it all seemed - how it really seemed like a nature preserve in an old village in India. I think he spent as much time looking at the structures as he spent looking at the creatures. It was clear that that was the point in time when he finally understood why we had been returning to Disney year after year for a decade.
I remember now that I took this photograph specifically to remind me just how much my father appreciated the way Disney put together the attraction:
I don't have a lot of other memories of that trip - whatever memories I had haven't been refreshed by looking at old photographs. I'm looking at those photographs now for the "first time in forever". My first impression is that he was just like me - hated to be photographed. I haven't found a photograph of him yet - just photographs of what we saw.
I'm getting a little bit of a vibe off the photos - like I was trying to impress him with this things of value that I found (Disney). We were not just visiting the parks and seeing the attractions, but I took him around to see the other (nicer) resorts, we went to a nice restaurant at Downtown Disney. I think I was a bit proud of being able to share this with him. Given those aspects of our relationship that I mentioned were too personal to share, it seems a bit strange for me to have bothered. Complex relationships are complex.
Now, years later, though, I look back at that trip and hope he had as good of a time as his response to Animal Kingdom Park led me to believe. It would be nice to know that there was something that features so strongly in my life that he enjoyed as well.
It is something that I regret with regard to my mother. She passed away many years ago, and like my father I did try to get her to visit this place that I value so much. Eventually, I pulled together a trip with my brothers' families, and of course my mother could not say 'no' to coming with us. Unfortunately, we couldn't convince her to go into the theme parks. So while she enjoyed hearing from the eldest grandchild about our day at the parks when we returned to the villa we shared at the Disney Institute, she insisted on spending her day alone in the villa, "resting". I think she would have found many more aspects of Disney that she valued as compared to my father. Missed opportunity.
We had an interesting relationship that involves too many private details to share here, but it is interesting to me how, even though I've been preparing myself for his passing for a good amount of time, the event itself evokes a lot of memories associated with whatever else I'm doing. I was straightening up the den and put a Blu-Ray disc set of "The Hobbit" away, and suddenly I remember him reading the first page of the book to me when I was very young. I made coffee this morning, and I suddenly remembered the great coffee my father used to serve when we visited. And I logged into the forum this morning, and suddenly I remembered that Disney trip almost twenty years ago when we brought him to see the theme parks.
He was a pretty old school kind of guy and generally suspicious of the value of anything that he couldn't associate to something that his parents or grandparents would have found value in. The cost of airline tickets alone might have caused him concern but he'd taken other trips before -- though those were to Europe (the old country!) and so I think his suspicion was still pretty high with regard to paying so much to fly to Florida. I bet he had reservations about the value of all the rest of the aspects of the trip, but that's natural for people doing something new even for people who aren't a old school as my father was.
The one memory of that trip that stands out - and stands out so much that I mention it to whoever we're visiting with whenever we walk through the Maharajah Jungle Trek - is how much my father's perspective on the value of Disney changed when we reached Animal Kingdom Park. It was Tuesday, so I think he was either not impressed or noncommittal until that point. However, when we walked into Animal Kingdom Park he was amazed. This wasn't the amusement park he saw at the Magic Kingdom and it wasn't the world's fair he saw at Epcot. This was something different.
We spent about 45 minutes getting through The Oasis. He was so impressed not just with the animals there but with how well their habitats were presented. He probably took a hundred photographs (on film, back then - not the "shoot-and-discard-what-you-don't-like" approach we use with digital). I don't remember how he responded to the safari - I bet he thought the bridge part and the poachers part was silly.
But it was when we arrived at Maharajah Jungle Trek that things really changed. He was utterly blown-away by how real it all seemed - how it really seemed like a nature preserve in an old village in India. I think he spent as much time looking at the structures as he spent looking at the creatures. It was clear that that was the point in time when he finally understood why we had been returning to Disney year after year for a decade.
I remember now that I took this photograph specifically to remind me just how much my father appreciated the way Disney put together the attraction:
I don't have a lot of other memories of that trip - whatever memories I had haven't been refreshed by looking at old photographs. I'm looking at those photographs now for the "first time in forever". My first impression is that he was just like me - hated to be photographed. I haven't found a photograph of him yet - just photographs of what we saw.
I'm getting a little bit of a vibe off the photos - like I was trying to impress him with this things of value that I found (Disney). We were not just visiting the parks and seeing the attractions, but I took him around to see the other (nicer) resorts, we went to a nice restaurant at Downtown Disney. I think I was a bit proud of being able to share this with him. Given those aspects of our relationship that I mentioned were too personal to share, it seems a bit strange for me to have bothered. Complex relationships are complex.
Now, years later, though, I look back at that trip and hope he had as good of a time as his response to Animal Kingdom Park led me to believe. It would be nice to know that there was something that features so strongly in my life that he enjoyed as well.
It is something that I regret with regard to my mother. She passed away many years ago, and like my father I did try to get her to visit this place that I value so much. Eventually, I pulled together a trip with my brothers' families, and of course my mother could not say 'no' to coming with us. Unfortunately, we couldn't convince her to go into the theme parks. So while she enjoyed hearing from the eldest grandchild about our day at the parks when we returned to the villa we shared at the Disney Institute, she insisted on spending her day alone in the villa, "resting". I think she would have found many more aspects of Disney that she valued as compared to my father. Missed opportunity.
With Soarin', she wanted to know "who dreamed something like this up"? (Imagineers!) Oh, sorry, there was a third time she cried and that was at Biergarten during the polkas, because her sister loved polkas and the songs reminded Mom of her. So a few moments of sadness and awe, but mostly it was fun and exciting, and she was like a kid again going on all the rides! It was nice seeing things through her eyes, and will give me lots to remember on future trips. I did get a lot of nice pictures, as well. 
