Yesterday I posted about how I stopped taking a backpack full of all kinds of things into the parks with me. When I was writing that, I mentioned taking our ponchos and that reminded me of a funny thing (one of many) that happened to me one year at Walt Disney World and I decided to tell you about it.

I don’t recall what year it was, but my youngest son was at the age where the Crayola branded yellow poncho I bought him still fit him fine. It was just a youth size poncho I’d bought for him. He might have been 6 or 7? I still had two of the old yellow Disney World ponchos that we had for years and I’d packed those for me and my older son. I really liked those ponchos for some reason. Keep in mind that at this time I was still taking a big backpack stuffed with lots of things.

Anyway, during that trip, it ended up raining on our day at Magic Kingdom. As I’m sure most of you know, it’s not unusual for it to rain in Florida and the majority of the time, it’s just a shower that lasts a little bit and then moves on. I don’t mind when it rains in the parks. Some people will start to leave the park because of the rain and you can sometimes end up getting on rides quicker because of this. Or, the line gets longer if the queue is indoors…but either way, I usually don’t mind the rain.

So, as we were walking towards Liberty Square from Fantasyland, it started raining. My kids knew the drill here so they turn to me to ask for their ponchos. I directed them to get under the covered walkway near Peter Pan’s flight because I was going to have to get into the backpack without dropping water bottles and other junk I had on top of the ponchos. As we walked that way, a big family that had two little ones in strollers ran and got to the spot first and there was no room for us to get out of the rain there. No big deal, none of them had ponchos and the little ones were not liking the rain so I just told my kids to walk to the covered area that joined Fantasyland with Liberty Square.

I start digging the ponchos out and I get the one for my oldest son first, then pull out the Crayola poncho and hand it to my youngest son. As I took out my own poncho, I noticed my youngest looking at me and just holding up that Crayola poncho as he sees that the one my oldest son was wearing had Mickey Mouse on the back. He looks at me and asks, “Why doesn’t mine have Mickey?” By now, I have my poncho on, and I tell him that the Mickey ponchos are kind of big so I brought his Crayola poncho that he wore last year. He just stared at me and his shoulders slumped and he said, “I don’t want this one.” He then started walking back to where the family had beat us to the spot near Peter Pan. It was pouring down rain by now.

I shoved the backpack under my poncho and started after him telling him to wait for us and giving this entire “don’t walk off like that so that you don’t get lost” kind of speech, but he didn’t care. He’s upset that he doesn’t have Mickey on his poncho and he’s on the verge of crying. We’re standing in front of that family, only we’re out in the rain, and my little dude is getting drenched. I was like, “Ok! Just put this on for now and we’ll go find you a poncho with Mickey on it.” But nope, he wasn’t hearing any of that. He wanted my poncho with Mickey on it even if it was just long enough to get to a shop to buy a new poncho.

I was not impressed but I also wasn’t going to argue with a kid who already made up his mind even as we stood in the pouring rain. So I quickly take off my poncho and give it to him. I had to adjust it a bit because it’s way too big on him. It’s raining even harder now so I decide I’m gonna throw on his Crayola poncho because I’m still holding the backpack which is now getting really wet. But my big head does not fit in the hood part of the poncho and it rips apart down the front because I was forcing it on. I can feel that the poncho is up on my shoulders in the back and I tried to get my older son to put it over the backpack. He tries and lets me know it doesn’t fit because the backpack is too big and the poncho is too little for me. He suggests I give him the backpack so I do.

By now, I have the poncho on but since it’s for kids and I’m 5′ 7″ and even though I was thinner at that time than I am now, I was still not a thin gal, so I’m crammed into this Crayola poncho that fits me kind of like a crop top, has a rip almost halfway down my chest, and has a too little hood that is trying to hang on for dear life to my big head. It was about this time that I looked up and see most of the big family of 8-10 people just staring at me and trying not to laugh. I giggled and told my kids to head towards Liberty Square.

By the time we got to a shop for me to buy a new poncho, I was completely drenched from the waist down. And guess what? Because the ponchos that were being sold were no longer yellow, my son didn’t even want one. He wanted the yellow one. But of course I had to buy one anyway because I looked incredibly hilarious in that Crayola poncho and it was so tight and uncomfortable. I was already so soaking wet that I shouldn’t have even bothered with the new poncho. But I figured I was down a poncho so I might as well get one while we were there. For a few years after this, I bought cheap Dollar Tree ponchos to keep as back ups because I wasn’t going to buy anymore ponchos from the parks.

I wish I had asked someone to take a picture of me before I had to tear that poncho up to get out of it. I had it on less than 10 minutes, and it stopped raining by the time we got off of Haunted Mansion, but my oldest son giggled about how I looked in it for the rest of the trip. °O°