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10 no-cost, no-line things my kids love in Disney World

It’s easy to be disillusioned by the prices and the crowds, but on a recent trip, our favorite things had neither.

Evan Porter/Upworthy

They say Disney World is the most magical place on Earth. Sadly, not everyone feels that way! A lot of parents half-jokingly call Disney a "nightmare" because of the cost and the crowds, not to mention the fact that the overstimulating environment can sometimes bring out the worst in kids. It's pretty amazing to see a child decked out in Mickey Ears holding an ice cream cone and a cinnamon roll and a new toy still crying because they didn't get what they wanted! And then there's the complexity of planning an efficient trip, which can rival the logistical efforts of visiting a foreign country.

And those things can absolutely be true. But you know what? I still love it, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. If you have kids of a certain age, there's just nothing quite like Disney. There just isn't.

What surprised me on my most recent trip to Disney World with my wife and 4 and 9 year olds girls was how excited we were just to be there. Sure, I was looking forward to checking out some of the newer rides, like Guardians of the Galaxy, but I was only able to get on most of them once, if at all. It didn't matter. The thing that made our trip special was that we were all together and focused on having as much fun as possible in the time that we had together, which is a big shakeup from our regular fast-paced daily routine. Everywhere you look in Disney World, there's an opportunity to have fun and do something you just can't do in the normal world. That's the kind of thing that makes families think it's worth it, and what keeps them coming back year after year.

Here were some of the simple things that proved to be a ton of fun without a long wait or an extra cost:

Disclosure: My family and I were able to attend Disney World for free as part of a recent Magic of Milestones celebration, but under no obligation to provide a positive review.

1. Riding the Skyliner

Lee/Flickr

Hands down, by far, this was my kid’s favorite thing to do and, as long as you can get inside the Disney World complex, it’s totally free. If you've never tried it, the Skyliner is a gondola transportation system that connects a few of the Disney resorts to Epcot and Hollywood Studios. It honestly feels like a park ride and gives you an incredible view of the Disney grounds, to boot.

We never even had to wait in line, though we never tried to take the Skyliner directly back to our hotel as the parks were closing — it tends to get a little more crowded then.

The monorail isn't quite as fun but is still worth a ride at least once. The boat that goes from Wilderness Lodge to Magic Kingdom is also 100% worth checking out for the novelty, as well. Who needs rollercoasters when you have all this at your fingertips!? You could spend at least half a day just riding Disney's various transportation systems in a big loop.

2. Collecting stickers at Animal Kingdom

Evan Porter/Upworthy

We had a blast at Animal Kingdom, and actually found it to be a more slow paced experience which was nice after a hectic few days. You might think the kids would be dying to go get in line for a ride or beg us to buy them things in the gift shop, but no, they were so thrilled to just walk around and do all the Wilderness Explorers activities: Kids get a little booklet and keep their eyes out for cast members dressed as Rangers, who teach them animal facts or do a guided activity with them before giving them a sticker to keep in their books.

Epcot also has something like this called the Kidcot stations where kids can collect little activity cards from around the "world."

3. Pin trading

If you're willing to invest in buying a Disney pin or two, the kids can have a blast trading with Cast Members at every park. Most gift shops in the parks have a pin trading board where they are obligated to trade with you if you offer!

If your kids like Pokemon cards or any sort of collectible memorabilia, they'll really dig this. We didn't do much trading this time around, but we did snag a few pins and will be ready to swap next time.

4. Spotting characters

Any time we were bussing to and from the parks, my kids would stare out the window and yell every time they saw a new character lining the side of another bus. “Pluto! Minnie! Donald!” They were endlessly entertained, they didn’t even have time to fight or complain about being hungry. Can all of our car rides at home be like this?!

The resorts also have character hunts where the kids can look for hidden cutouts of different characters, snap a selfie with them, and receive a prize — which is priceless entertainment when you're waiting in a front desk check-in line.

5. Magic Band statues

Caveat, this one isn’t technically free because you need a Magic Band (a special bracelet that acts as your park pass, resort room key, and more). But man did we have fun running around the parks looking for the semi-hidden bronze statues!

They’re interactive, so if you walk up to them and do a certain motion with your wrist, your band will buzz or light up in different colors. It sounds simple, but you’d be surprised how much of a kick the kids got out of this. When we found one, we had to drop everything to make our bands light up.

6. Disney Jr. Dance Party

My 9-year-old has tragically aged out of loving the Disney Jr. characters like Vampirina, Fancy Nancy, et al. But my 4-year-old worships the ground that Doc McStuffins walks on, so the entire Disney Jr. area of Hollywood Studios was heaven for her.

The dance party, a show held several times with a day (that usually doesn't get all that crowded), is really hard to describe unless you've done it. Imagine a club in 2001 except filled with toddlers, then swap Lil John for The Chicken Dance and you've pretty much got it. The DJ does an amazing job getting the kids dancing and laughing, characters show up — it's just an amazing time all around and it was one of the most unforgettable experiences of the whole trip for our little one.

7. The fireworks

Any good day at a Disney World park ends with the fireworks show. These are top-notch shows that rival the best New Years Eve displays in most cities, and you can see them pretty well from almost anywhere in the Epcot or Magic Kingdom parks.

OK, full disclosure: Only one of my kids loved this. My youngest one, who has some sensory issues, found them too loud and got scared, even with noise-muffling headphones. Woops! She said she wants to go back to Disney World as soon as possible so she can't be too traumatized.

8. Bedtime stories

In the rooms at the Disney World resorts (and on the Disney Cruises, as well), the TVs have access to tons and tons of Disney content. But my kids can't get enough of the bedtime stories, specifically. They're short, animated picture-book style cartoons that are narrated as if you're having a story read to you. They have them for Frozen, Tangled, Cars, and a few more.

There's just nothing quite like throwing on a bedtime story while we're brushing teeth and winding down from a huge day of fun. It's just so Disney. Now that we've seen all the stories several times, they almost feel nostalgic, like getting a warm hug. If you can finagle some milk and cookies from room service or a dining area, now you're really cooking.

9. The Cast Members

I once heard someone say that the Cast Members are the magic and I have to wholeheartedly agree. Every single person you meet at Disney is so kind, so helpful, and so great with the kids.

For example, we sat down for a quick bite on our first day at the parks and unfortunately had to wait a bit for our food. We had just flown in that day and were already exhausted from walking around, so the kids were getting a little grumpy. While we were waiting, a man who had been cleaning off tables came by and started asking my youngest what she was coloring, asking about the colors, making jokes, and making her laugh.

That's the kind of interaction you'll get almost everywhere you go in Disney and honestly, as someone with young kids, you can't put a price on it. You won't find it anywhere else. In the end, it's really the Cast Members that make parents want to keep coming back despite the costs and crowds.

10. Just being together

This sounds corny and obvious: As a family, we're literally together all the time!

But our regular life is so fast-paced and can get so monotonous. The weeks fly by with early wake-ups, school, soccer practice, quick messy dinners, bath, bedtime, and waking up to do it all over again. We love our life, it's full of joy and love and as much fun as we can possibly cram in to every week. But there's just something amazing about walking away from all the obligations and responsibilities and worries and just enjoying each other on a level we rarely get to.

Sometimes it takes something extreme to break you out of your routines and patterns — like spending a few thousand dollars on a trip to Disney World. But when you're sitting there watching your little one hug Doc McStuffins like she's a real person, and watch your oldest try and fail to be too cool to get a high five from Mickey Mouse, and you're thinking, Damn I love my family — well, that feeling is well worth it. And you don't even need to wait in a long line — or pay through the nose to skip the line — to get it.


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Joy

Why this simple finger trick forces your foot to change direction

Try this and let us know how it goes for you.

@CheriJacobus/Twitter, Photo by Vitamina Poleznova on Unsplash

This foot and finger trick is mind-blowing.

Our bodies are so amazing and weird. The fact that human beings have gone from banging rocks together to creating the most intricately detailed works of art is a testament to what our bodies can do. Just think about the kinds of physical feats we (well, some of us, anyway) have mastered, from brain surgery to playing musical instruments to Cirque du Soleil-style acrobatics.

Humans are marvels. Through coordination and balance and muscle training and practice, there are so many incredible things our bodies can do. But honest to goodness, I cannot make my foot not change direction while doing this stupid physical trick. It goes like this:

Sitting in a chair, lift your right foot off the ground a few inches and rotate your foot to the right (clockwise), making a circle in the air. While making that circle, use your right finger and draw the number "6" in the air.

I tried this a dozen times. A full 12 in a row. And every single time, no matter how hard I would concentrate, my foot would change direction as soon as I started to draw the "6." I tried it fast. I tried it slow. I tried concentrating only on my foot or only on the "6." It didn't matter. My finger influenced what my foot was doing no matter what.

It's not a new trick, but it was new to me and to the people who responded to a tweet sharing the trick with various iterations of "What is this sorcery?!?"

If you are one of those people who were able to do it without any problem, congrats. You have some kind of superhuman coordination.

That's what I'm telling myself, anyway. My teen and young adult children were somehow able to keep their foot going clockwise. One of them is a musician and one is left-handed, so maybe that's why? Drummers and ballet dancers in the comments said they didn't have any problem with it.

As it turns out, there is a scientific explanation for why it's pretty much impossible for most of us.

The Curious Crew folks at Michigan State University explain why it works:

"The cerebellum part of the brain manages body movements, like the circling of the foot or the drawing of the number 6. However, the nerve fibers from the right side of the body cross the brain stem and connect with the left side of the brain, just as the fibers on the left side of the body connect with the right side of the brain. When you try to draw the number 6 with your right hand, those signals are coming from the left side of the brain. Even though circling your foot is easy to do in either direction, you cannot rotate your foot in the opposite motion of the drawn six at the same moment. The left side of the brain cannot manage two opposite movements in the same moment, so the brain combines the movement to a similar motion. When you switch to the left foot, there is no problem because the right side of the brain controls your foot movement, while the left side can focus on drawing the number 6."

So there you have it. The old brain controlling the two sides of your body thing. Clearly, there must be a way to train yourself to not have your foot wig out when making the "6" in the air, so pardon me while I spend the next six hours trying to make my body do my bidding.

This article originally appeared two years ago.

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Someone criticized a middle school teacher's behavior. Her comeback was an A+.

When a person commented, "your a teacher act like it," Amy Allen hilariously took the advice to heart.

@_queenoftheclassroom/TikTok

A rude commenter got a lesson from Ms. Allen.

Being a teacher isn't easy. Teaching middle school students is especially not easy. Teaching middle school students who spent several of their formative years going through a global pandemic in the age of smartphones, social media and a youth mental health crisis is downright heroic.

If you haven't spent time in a middle school classroom, you may not fully grasp the intensity of it on every level, from the awkwardness to the body odor to the delightful hilarity that tweens bring to the table. When you connect with your students, it can be incredibly rewarding, and when you don't…well, we all read "Lord of the Flies," right?

Skilled teachers bring out the best in young people, and that can be done in many different ways. For Amy Allen, it's by making her middle school classroom a fun, welcoming place to learn and by bonding with her students.

"I love teaching middle schoolers because they are awkward, and I’m awkward, so we get along," Allen tells Upworthy.

She plays games with students, gets rambunctious with them and creates opportunities for them to expend some of that intense pre-and-early-teen energy in healthy ways. For instance, she shared a video of a game of "grudgeball," an active trivia game that makes reviewing for a quiz or test fun and competitive, and you can see how high-energy her classroom is:

@_queenoftheclassroom

If this looks like fun to you, pick up my grudgeball template (🔗 in bio) #qotc #grudgeball #10outof10recommend @Amy Allen ☀️ @Amy Allen ☀️ @Amy Allen ☀️

"I think for teachers, we always want to create moments for our students that are beyond the standard reading, writing, memorizing, quiz, 'traditional learning,'" Allen says. "Games are a great way to incorporate fun in the classroom."

Allen clearly enjoyed the game as much as her students—"I love the chaos!" she says— and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Fun keeps teachers sane, too. But one person took issue with her classroom behavior and commented, "your a teacher act like it." (Not my typo—that's exactly what the person wrote, only with no period.)

Allen addressed the comment in another video in the most perfect way possible—by acting exactly like a teacher.

Watch:

@_queenoftheclassroom

Replying to @كل الكلبات تريد مني Come see me if you have any further questions. #qotc #iteachmiddleschool #weDEFINITELYdonthavefuninhere @Amy Allen ☀️ @Amy Allen ☀️ @Amy Allen ☀️ #Inverted

There are two solid ways to handle a rude comment without making things worse—you can ignore it or you can craft a response that makes the person look like a fool without being cruel or rude yourself. Allen's grammar lesson response was A+ work, right down to the "Come see me if you have any further questions" caption.

In fact, the person apparently went back and deleted their comment after the comeback video went viral, which makes it all the more hilarious. The video currently has more than 4 million views on TikTok and over 18 million views on YouTube.

"What’s funny is I left my correction on the board accidentally, and the next day, students asked me what that was all about," Allen says. "When I explained it, they thought it was cool because 'why would anyone go after Ms. Allen'? At that point, the video had maybe 10,000 views. I never imagined the video would go viral."

Two days later, as the video was creeping toward a million views, she upped the stakes. "Some of my students are my ultimate hype people, and they were tracking it harder than I was," she says. "I made a 'deal' with my fifth period if it reached 1 million during their class, they could sit wherever they wanted the entire week. During lunch, I checked, and it reached 1 million. So when they came back from recess, I announced it, and it was like I was a rockstar. They screamed and cheered for me. It was an incredible moment for me."

The irony, of course, is that Allen was acting like a teacher in her grudgeball video—an engaged teacher with engaged students who are actively participating in the learning process. Just because it doesn't look like serious study doesn't mean it's not learning, and for some kids, this kind of activity might be far more effective at helping them remember things they've learned (in this case, vocabulary words) than less energetic ways of reviewing.

Allen has her thumb on the pulse of her students and goes out of her way to meet them where they are. Last year, for instance, she created a "mental health day" for her students. "I could tell they were getting burnt out from all the state tests, regular homework, and personal life extracurricular activities that many of my students participate in," she says. "We went to my school library for 'fireside reading,' solved a murder mystery, built blanket forts, watched the World Cup, colored, and completed sudokus. Is it part of the curriculum? No. Is it worth spending one class period doing something mentally rewarding for students? Absolutely."

Teaching middle school requires a lot of different skills, but perhaps the most important one is to connect with students, partly because it's far easier to teach someone actually wants to be in your classroom and partly because effective teaching is about so much more than just academics. A teacher might be the most caring, stable, trustworthy adult in some students' lives. What looks like silly fun and games in a classroom can actually help students feel safe and welcomed and valued, knowing that a teacher cares enough to try to make learning as enjoyable as possible. Plus, shared laughter in a classroom helps build a community of engaged learners, which is exactly what a classroom should be.

Keep up the awesome work, Ms. Allen, both in the classroom and in the comment section.

You can follow Amy Allen on TikTok and YouTube.


This article originally appeared in April.

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Culture

In 1972, an Italian singer wrote a hit song with English-sounding gibberish and it's so trippy

Seriously, this might be the catchiest 2 minutes of utter nonsense ever recorded.

Le Pietre Rotolanti/YouTube, @HarrietMould/Twitter

Sometimes it seems like social media is too full of trolls and misinformation to justify its continued existence, but then something comes along that makes it all worth it.

Apparently, a song many of us have never heard of shot to the top of the charts in Italy in 1972 for the most intriguing reason. The song, written and performed by Adriano Celentano and is called "Prisencolinensinainciusol" which means...well, nothing. It's gibberish. In fact, the entire song is nonsense lyrics made to sound like English, and oddly, it does.

Occasionally, you can hear what sounds like a real word or phrase here and there—"eyes" and "color balls died" and "alright" a few times, for example—but it mostly just sounds like English without actually being English. It's like an auditory illusion and it does some super trippy things to your brain to listen to it.

Plus the video someone shared to go with it is fantastic. It's gone crazy viral because how could it not.

And if you thought that video was something, check out another one of the same song by the same singer. Why are there two videos? Who knows. But this is truly one of the most 1970s things that has ever happened.

Adriano Celentano - Prisencolinensinainciusolwww.youtube.com

Wow, right?

In a 2012 interview on NPR's All Things Considered, Celentano explained how the silly pop song came about.

"Ever since I started singing, I was very influenced by American music and everything Americans did," he told Guy Raz, through interpreter Sim Smiley.

"So at a certain point, because I like American slang—which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian—I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate," he said. "And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn't mean anything."

In fact, Celentano didn't even write down any lyrics for the song at first, but just improvised the sounds. And people didn't appear to care. "Prisencolinensinainciusol" reached number one on the charts not only in Italy, but also in France, Germany, and Belgium.

Celentano's ability to sound like he's singing in English without actually saying anything in English is pretty impressive. Especially when you hear him sing in Italian, like this:

Adriano Celentano - L'emozione non ha voce - Official Video (With Lyrics/Parole in descrizione)www.youtube.com

Languages are fun. And funky. And frustrating when you don't understand them. Celentano was purposefully making a point with "Prisencolinensinainciusol" to break down language barriers and inspire people to communicate more. Whether he succeeded in doing that or not, it sure is entertaining to see him try.


This article originally appeared on 12.1.20

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