When you live in Southern California, and you're not far from Disneyland, it makes perfect sense to spend an incredible amount of money on Magic Key passes. At least that's the logic we keep telling ourselves in our family.
Our Disney passes started out as a way us to be outside and have some fun on date nights. My wife and I found regular dining boring — this was after we had our first child — and we'd get so tired mid-meal we couldn't enjoy our food.
We then started taking our oldest child, and it was such an awesome experience for all of us!
However, this was all well and good until our kids became the age to where they were no longer free to enter Disneyland. You have to be under the age of 3 to not need a ticket.
Now I have a pass as does my wife and my two kids. And you know what? It's totally worth it. I grew up in New York City and Disneyland was so far away — it was like a legend you would hear or read about, but could never see in person.
To live so close to this place and give our kids this experience that so many people travel from all over the world to view is tremendous.
The only issue is that it sometimes knocks us out of other activities. Since we've pre-paid our passes, any other entertainment that's not Disneyland comes at extra cost. But whatever ... as long as we're all still enjoying the experience, that's all I truly care about. Seriously, it's Disneyland!
And there's so much more to the park — the history and the aura — than we all know. To get a sense of it, I highly recommend this book by Richard Snow, which examines why Walt Disney built Disneyland and the sacrifices he made for it to get done. It's given me a greater appreciation of everything that is Disneyland.
I'm mostly curious to see if my children continue their love of all things Disney when they get older. Who knows. But for now, we're enjoying it as much as we can.
(On a total sidenote, Disney's partnership with Formula One is a match made in heaven for us! Can't wait to see what they produce!)