Why I am NOT too old for Disney

If it wasn't obvious already: I LOVE DISNEY! and I am NOT ashamed of that!

I see the looks people sometimes give me, I hear the comments but frankly my dear, I don't care :)

Born in 1983, I grew up watching lots of Mickey cartoons, Disney movies and Disney music. I especially loved The Little Mermaid and Lady and the Tramp. They are still my favorites today, but they got Rapunzel to accompany them now :)

My mom told me she was always so annoyed by the fact that I just watched one of both films and the second it had finished, I was rewinding the tape(because DVD was obviously not a thing back then in the late 80's, early 90's) and just watched it again. This was repeated many times :)

'De Kleine Zeemeermin' on VHS.

She always asked: aren't you tired of watching that over and over again? You almost know those films by heart.

No mom, not 'almost', I just know them by heart :)

During my teenage years, which by the way was a very dark period in my life, the love for Disney slightly faded because, you know, 'not cool' and all that.

But it always had that little spot in my heart and it was still always there, even in my darkest times. It was my secret. It was the only little thing that could still make me happy.

As an 8 yo, I had the privilege to go to the USA with my parents. They also included a couple of days at Walt Disney World Orlando and Universal Studio's for me. Sadly, I only remember just a few little things about that trip. I remember seeing the Universal globe at the entrance, I remember EPCOT, I remember being in Toon town were I saw the cute little houses of Mickey and his friends. But that's about it. So when Disneyland Paris, or EuroDisney as it was called back then, opened in 1992, I was so happy because that was a new opportunity to maybe go to a Disney park again without having to go all the way to America.

My mom and I with an astronaut at Kennedy Space Center. I remember being slightly scared of him because I couldn't see his face. That's why my mom is holding me like that :p I wanted to run away haha

Me at Daisy Duck's school.
My mom's got more pictures,
I need to go search and scan them all in someday...

Sadly, we never got there. My parents promised me we would go, but we never went. :( They are not big theme-park-fans. But it stayed on my bucket list and I promised myself that one day, I would go there! So when I won a dayticket to go to DLP somewhere around september 2010, I was SO happy. I could also buy a second ticket with a nice discount, so we bought that ticket, brought our daughter(born february 2010) to stay at my mom's for the very first time and we drove all the way to DLP for one day on October 16th 2010. My BF wasn't a big theme-park-fan himself, but he wanted to come and I thought: I better soak everything up as much as I can because we will probably never come back again if it depens on him.....
Here are some of the pictures I took that day. It was quite busy and since we only had one day, we didn't want to spend it standing hours in queue lines, we wanted to make sure we saw everything.

I don't know about you, but seeing this sign always makes me very happy already :)

On the left: the old entrance sign of Disney village. I loved it, sad it's gone.

Can you tell it was around Halloween time? :)

The Jolly Roger before refurb

Hakuna Matataaaaa

Pumpkins everywhere!

a Halloween-villain show in front of the Castle

Sulley was out and about...If only I had known he would be a rare character...
I would have gone to have my picture taken with him

New Generation-show in front of the Castle.

Boooooo!!!

parade time

When Pinochio was still on the float with 2 acrobats :)

and some weird dancers

Green Army-patrol!

Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore without any bees...but with party hats! Yay :p

Yoho Yoho

A pirate's life for me

Bert was also on the float back then.

Some villains approaching

some sort of sea creatures?

and flamingo's

Baloo on the float and King Louie with a banana skirt

My favourite mermaid :)

with mermaid tail

and Prince Eric!

No Punzie yet.

Aladdin and Jasmine instead.

Princess-float

When human Beast was a daily thing and Belle's appearance was just too yellow. :-/

Tink? Is that you? :p

some more halloween-villain-stuff

more pirates!

more villains.

Oh and don't forget the pumpkins! :)

Yo ho yo ho, a pumpkin life for me :-)

Even Sally and Jack were on parade!

Little did we know, he got the D-virus too that day :) Since then, we went at least once a year, with our daughter. the first time she was about 1,5 years old and she LOVED it. We stayed at Santa Fe the first time, breakfast was a disaster there. So was parking. We thought Sterre would be scared of all the characters but instead, she ran to them. Stitch I believe was the first one she met, he was in his Elvis outfit and he loved her so much. He kept hugging her and stroking her hair and she Loved it! Needless to say I cried. :)
Sorry for the picture overload... :)

Can you tell the TV was on while I was trying to take a picture of her?

a little bit of Halloween left over here...

Sulley again...

waiting for Slinky

Annette's rollerskating servers were very impressive for Sterre :)

Daddy in his natural habitat... :p

She's a treat to take pictures of.....

and a little bit of Christmas there...

You are weird, man!

Dude, I don't trust you!

This meet with Donald was the cutest! People were constantly pushing her away, but the Cast Member who was with Donald, saw this and she took Sterre's hand and brought her to Donald and he spend extra time with her. Yep. I cried. again. :)

Breakfast sucked, so extra magic hours it is!

So after 'going to DLP' was ticked off my bucketlist...a new thing appeared on it: getting an annual pass.
April 2016 it finally happened and I got a Dream pass. Since then we went ... erhm... A LOT :) We 'only' live about 4 hrs drive from DLP, so we did a lot of 'spontaneous' and planned daytrips. Our house is slowly turning into a Disneystore with all the merch, but hey... it's what makes me really happy so why not.
I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't go out, I don't use make-up so no money spent on that, I don't go shopping every week, I only have 3 pairs of shoes atm and I usually wear them until there are holes in them, .... so if we want to spend our money on Disney, than that's our right to do so! We don't harm anybody with that, only our wallet haha :)

Right now, my daughter is 7 and she is a big Disneyfan now too....I wonder why... :) She spots 'hidden mickeys' everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. She's a bit obsessed by them, but I'd rather have her being obsessed by Disney than by bad things when she grows older... I hope her love for Disney will always be there and it will help her through hard times, just as it does for me. Even know that I'm almost 34(my birthday's next week, may 25th, when I'm writing this), I've had a very tough time these past 10-ish years but Disney is the one thing that keeps shining bright in my life, that pulls me through, that makes me happy and forget everything else for a while. It gives me the strength I need sometimes, to move on. It really is my vitamin D.

Just to show that you are never too old for Disney, no matter what others might say!
Through Disney we've already met so many wonderful people, we've met lots of characters, we've had so many magical moments and most of all: we've made new friends, friends for life! Special thanks to Nikita, Rebecca, Lizzie, Melissa and all the DLP Cast Members. We love you all!