Si ou se tankou m ', epi ou gen yon timoun piti nan kay la, li kapab mennen nan konvèsasyon etranj nan yon pak tèm lè li ka tan yo kapab monte yon “pè woulib”. My son, ke yo te 11 kounye a, toujou te gen kèk dout nan gwo kay won nan laterè, N coaster roulo Rock 'ak menm Mountain Espas. It took a bit of white lying and some bribery, but in the end it paid off.
Rock'n Roller Coaster
At Disney’s Hollywood Studio’s, we started our day attempting the impossible and getting our child on Rock ‘n Roller Coaster early. Up until now, his scariest ride has been Thunder Mountain Railroad in the Magic Kingdom. Needless to say he was a bit hesitant. In order for everyone to enjoy our day in the parks when we like the thrill rides it can be a difficult feat. So if my son is afraid to go on, then I might miss my chance to go too and we won’t have this ride experience together.
So here is the game plan… Give your kids a brief description of the ride. Let them know how it may go a little fast, have a dip here and there or may be in the dark in some areas. I know this sounds terrible, but we left out little details about the ride and told him it was just like Thunder Mountain but in the dark with music playing. We showed him how many 6-8 year old were already in line and how excited they were. We tried to give words of encouragement and let him know that it is good to try things once. “It will be a lot of fun” we kept saying. Finally by the end of it, he was begging us to go on again and it quickly was his favorite ride in Disney and we went on a total of 5 times before the vacation ended. Now Tower of Terror was another story!
Tower of Terror has a higher level of scream from the parks. You can hear people screaming from this ride when you are still in the parking lot. It builds fear long before you even know what the ride does. So again, we did a little bribery. We promised if he would come on with us we would get him a new set of pins he wanted and since I already knew I would be buying them for him anyway I was able to kill two birds with one stone.
He has a slight “fear” reaction when we entered the first room and it shows the Twilight Zone Video, but once we were passed that, we were ok. He was very nervous through the ride but at the end he had an “oh, that wasn’t that bad” attitude. Although he did not want to do it again, he successfully completed the parks and went on all the rides. It became a funny topic of conversation when we met up with another family we had traveled with prior and they have a younger 5 year old son who was fearless of every ride and did Tower of Terror a few times himself. Every child is different with reactions to the attractions.
So try to be supportive of your child’s fears. Let them know it is okay to sit out on a ride that they may be afraid of. For an older child you can remind them of some of the previous rides that they went on so they can compare how fast and what kind of drops it may have. It may also help to talk about how much fun they had riding those rides before. In the end we are there to enjoy a family vacation together.