Fathers Everywhere Stand in Solidarity With This Dad Who Took His Kids to a Disney Princess Breakfast and Got a Bill for $1K

Steve Granitz. Getty Images.

The world has changed in innumerable and unfathomable ways over the span of my lifetime. To the extent much of it would be unrecognizable to my Greatest Generation dad. From the time he raised me to the time I was raising the grandsons he never lived to meet, the game had changed considerably. To him, the idea of being in the delivery room when the mother of his children gave birth was unthinkable. By the time I had kids, it had become mandatory. We took one family vacation with him. He bought a camper, hooked it up to the back of the Country Squire wagon with the faux wood paneling on the side and we proto-Griswolded our way through two weeks at campsites in Maine and New Hampshire. My boys got one or two trips a year, minimum. The concept of staycation was unheard of in their world. I rode a bike to my Little League games and no one asked how it went when I got home. I drove my kids to all their games because I was going to be there anyway. As a coach. 

None of this is a complaint, mind you. I knew what I had signed up for when the Irish Rose and I pulled the goalie and I put the genetic puck in the back of the net. Classic radio had long since put "Cats in the Cradle" in heavy rotation to guilt generations of fathers into feeling like they're soulless, black-hearted deadbeats if they ever spent a moment not making their kids the center of their entire universe. I've lived with crippling daddy issues from the moment Bud Thornton went to God just before my 10th birthday, and my treatment method was always to overcompensate. I can't prescribe it for anyone else, but it worked for all of us. 

And those overcompensations included a couple of trips to Disney in Orlando. Which no father agrees to for himself. You go into those trips thinking it will be a vacation for you at your own peril. They're not about fun. Relaxation is not an option. Slowly getting up, having a nice breakfast and leisurely making your way to the park is a sucker's game. It's for losers who show up and wonder why the lamest attractions have a 45-minute wait for what will be 90 seconds of an unmemorable experience falsely advertising itself as Fun for the Whole Family. 

Winners plan their assault on the theme parks with the precision of Operation Overlord's D-Day landings. But understanding that no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, you build in contingencies, alternatives, and improvisations to handle all the variables. That's how you achieve victory. 

All of which is preamble for the story of this well-meaning dad, who went viral when his best-laid plans for his family went astray. Because he came up against the fiercest, most entrenched enemy in this war: A mega-corporations profit motive:

Fox Business -  A family of five's breakfast at Disneyland in California has gone viral after a father shared a photo on social media of the meal's pricey nearly $1,000 receipt. 

 

X user John ‘Rock & Roll’ Tolkien, or @jrockandrollt, took to the social media platform on Monday to share his sticker shock after he received a $937.65 bill for breakfast at Disney Princess Breakfast Adventures. The guest said that the meal was for two kids and three adults, with the total including a $150 tip — just over 20% of the original amount.

The dad's post on X has garnered 16.5 million views and received thousands of comments over the course of just a few days. 

"Please tell me you have 35 kids," one X user commented.

"That's ridiculous," another X user said. "So torn about going to Disney, could literally go to Italy for a month for the same amount." …

While the father said he expected the check would be half of what it was before it arrived at his table, he acknowledged the meal at Disney Princess Breakfast Adventures was good and said it was a fun experience. 

"Service was attentive and enthusiastic, princesses were all trained pro-actresses and spent a lot of time with the kids," he said. "I enjoyed it."

Note that since this was published, Rock & Roll Tolkien's post is up to 17.2 million views and 160,000 likes. 

Five people, 60% of them children who probably ate half a Mickey-shaped waffle with fake syrup and some knockoff of Fruity Pebbles cereal. And the tab was $200 per person. Just so his little angels could interact with some slender, preternaturally perky Theater majors in family-friendly cosplay. If you find that hard to believe, congratulations. That only means you've never taken a family on a theme park vacation. 

One of my favorite lines from one of the great screenplays of modern times in the one in Rounders where Matt Damon says, "You can shear a sheep many times; but you can only skin him once." Well fathers aren't sheep. (At least not in this context.) These companies have figured out a way to skin us, let it grow back, and then skin us again. Repeatedly. Thank you sir, may I have another? Knowing we not only won't complain, we'll say things like "I enjoyed it." It's Stockholm Syndrome, Disney style. We sympathize with our captors. 

It's not enough that you put up with the frantic running around to outsmart the other tourists. And the stifling heat. And the creepy, childless Disney Adults. The chubs in their Handifat scooters running roughshod over everyone and skipping to the front of the line because they can. The way your kids hit a wall late in the day and become exhausted, emotional, insufferable little feral chimpanzees by the time you call it quits. No, the powers that be also had to perfect ways to monetize your fatherly love. To systematically use your desire to be a good dad in order to take as much money from you as possible. And they're so good at it, you'll actually promote their wretchedly overpriced goods and services afterwards. 

So rather than criticize Tolkien, we need to support him. He is all of us. He's Everydad. And anyone with young kids is one trip - a literal Guilt Trip - away from getting screwed over by his own desire to be a loving father. I just envy the men of my dad's generation who could love their children without having to spend a thousand bucks on one mediocre breakfast.