Vacations are great to plan, but no plan is also fun

It’s summertime, and like so many others I’m planning a Disney vacation, except I don’t know when we’re going.

I can’t help myself. I’ve been planning for my next Disney vacation for 32 years, ever since I went to Disneyland as a child and brought home a fistful of brochures thinking about what I would do next time.

Since then I have been on seven trips that have included Disney theme parks in three locations, and for all my efforts, I still always leave with a list of what I want to do next time.

Let’s get one thing straight: I like to plan. I make plans for the kids’ weekends, plans for organizing my house, plans for planning more activity.

Strategizing our life relaxes me. And nothing is more fun to plan than a vacation. There is so much hope involved, so many expectations untempered by reality. As I plot an airplane route, I am focused on the destination, not the crowded plane and the smelly passenger in the next seat.

And things have changed since I was a kid. Disney theme-park planning is no longer about park maps and folded brochures. There are endless online message boards on how to optimize your ride time and score deals. I get alerts from one of them every single day.

The first time I took my then-2-year-old son on a Disneyland vacation, I dragged him down Main Street, only to be halted by his leaden feet at his first glimpse of a costumed Goofy. I confess I spent too much of that trip mentally agonizing over missed ride opportunities because my son just had to wait in another long line to get autographs from Tinker Bell, Br’er Bear, Donald Duck and Alice.

A year later on my son’s second Disney trip, he developed an odd fascination with ducks, which are everywhere on Walt Disney World property. He did not share my sense of urgency about catching the bus to the theme parks when mama duck and her flock of ducklings were waddling by.

By Disney trip three, a few years had passed, and he had grown up a bit. I had grown in my parenting, too. I learned I couldn’t plan every minute of every day. To keep my sanity and preserve everyone’s joy on vacation, I had to plan some time each day without a plan.

That way, when my then-7-year-old really needed to watch the Jedi Training Academy show, not twice, but three times in a row (or four precious theme-park hours) in hopes of being one of the audience kids selected, I could relax, go with the flow and help him create a makeshift sign that got him noticed at show No. 3. It is one of his favorite memories of the trip; one of mine, too.

I still plan for our vacations — a lot — but I have learned to abandon the plan on occasion and embrace the unexpected. I make my agendas and itineraries, and then when I step off the plane, I let life happen.

Also, I’ve found it’s easier to let my original plan go when I’ve crafted a backup plan.

“She Speaks” is a weekly column by the women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Reach Donica Kaneshiro at dkaneshiro@staradvertiser.com.