Wearing Shopping Bags as Ponchos

We’ll start with something I almost have to admire. Disney World rainstorms have a way of arriving when the sky looked perfectly innocent 11 minutes earlier, which means occasionally you have to improvise. And we have seen children wearing Disney shopping bags as makeshift ponchos.

Plastic shopping bags

Head through the bottom. Arms through strategically placed holes. Congratulations, your $45 Spirit Jersey purchase has now also provided emergency outerwear. It isn’t glamorous or particularly safe (plastic bags can be suffocation hazards, after all), but I have to give props for creativity and ingenuity. And to be fair, the kiddo didn’t think this up by himself; there was definitely an adult involved who saw the $12 poncho in the shop and decided that they had spent enough. But compared to what’s coming later on this list, the shopping bag poncho kids are practically wilderness survival experts.

Tap Dancing on a Via Napoli Table

One of my personal favorites happened at Via Napoli in EPCOT. A child climbed onto the table and proceeded to perform what I can only describe as a miniature tap dance routine. Not one quick bounce onto the table before a parent intervened. A routine.

Via Napoli in EPCOT’s Italy pavilion

Meanwhile, the adults at the table continued their conversation like this was simply the entertainment portion of dinner. I was fascinated, dumbfounded, and completely perplexed while also wondering what this family’s home life must look like if this is normal “out at a restaurant” behavior.

Via Napoli in Epcot

Via Napoli already has giant pizza ovens named after Italian volcanoes. And on this particular afternoon, it also had dinner theater. I get it, kids get restless during long meals. But restaurant tables are generally better suited for pizza than choreography.

Putting Absolutely Everything in Their Mouths

Children explore the world with all five senses. Unfortunately, sometimes they really commit to taste. We’ve watched kids put a questionable number of weird things in their mouths. We’re talking loose change, MagicBand fobs, pens, and Sharpies. You know, the same Sharpie they are about to hand Mickey Mouse so he can sign an autograph book.

Mickey signing the bottle

Disney World has Mickey pretzels, DOLE Whip, cheeseburger spring rolls, and about eleven billion other legitimate things to eat. The quarter from the bottom of Mom’s backpack does not need to make the tasting menu. Beyond the obvious germ factor, small objects can become choking hazards, which is where the quirky childhood curiosity stops being funny pretty quickly.

Licking Disney World

This deserves its own category because, according to the kiddos, Disney World is one enormous lollipop and nobody told us. One member of our team watched a kid lick the railing while walking through the “it’s a small world” queue.

“it’s a small world”

I’ve watched a child lick the queue chain at Haunted Mansion. Another team member saw a kid lick the monorail window during COVID, I may add. Someone else watched a child fully lick the gemstones around Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Not touch them. Not press their face against them while looking closely. LICK.

Interactive Elements

At some point during our discussion, a DFB team member finally asked the question haunting all of us: Why are they licking everything? We do not have an answer, but we do have hand sanitizer. Bring it.

Licking PEOPLE

Unfortunately, the licking problem does not end with Disney infrastructure. I know this because I have been licked. By a child I did not know. On the back of my leg. And, somehow, this ALSO happened in the Haunted Mansion queue. It still haunts me (pun intended).

Haunted Mansion queue

There’s another slightly less horrifying version of this phenomenon that several members of our team have experienced: kids standing behind you in a queue and just…rubbing your legs. Tiny hand. Stranger’s calf. No introduction. Little kids are still learning personal boundaries, so an accidental bump or grab happens. Disney queues can also pack people together pretty tightly. But if your kid has been quietly petting the stranger in front of you for the last four minutes, it may be time to redirect.

Turning Souvenirs Into Weapons

Bubble wands are delightful until they become medieval weaponry. One of our team members had a child smack her in the leg with a bubble wand. His mom responded, “Aw, sorry, he just got it.” Which explains why he had the bubble wand, but did not entirely explain why our team member’s shin needed to meet it.

Bubble wand in Disney World

We’ve also seen kids walking around deliberately whacking people with banshee tails from Pandora.

Disney sells a tremendous number of toys that swing, flap, light up, bubble, extend, retract, or otherwise become surprisingly dangerous when placed in the hands of someone who has recently discovered centrifugal force. A quick “please don’t hit strangers with your banshee” goes a long way.

Chasing Down Characters

This one happens more often than you might think. Kids get excited when they see characters. (I can’t blame them; I do, too!) You’re seven years old, and you see Winnie the Pooh walking toward you. Rational decision-making has left the building. But our team has repeatedly watched kids chase characters through restaurants and parks, run in front of them, or cut them off while they’re trying to reach their meet-and-greet location.

Don’t leave the line!

One particularly memorable Chef Mickey’s incident involved children running across the dining room to intercept Mickey before he could reach the other tables. We’ve also watched kids run directly in front of Pooh and Tigger as they were walking.

Chef Mickey at Chef Mickey’s!

Characters often have limited visibility, particularly when wearing costumes with large heads or other elaborate elements. Darting directly in front of them can put both the child and the Cast Member in a genuinely unsafe situation. You want a core memory from childhood being hugged by Mickey, not breaking his ankle because he tripped over you.

Raiding Other People’s Tables at Chef Mickey’s

And speaking of Chef Mickey’s, another DFB Reporter has a story that remains burned into several of our brains. A child from another party walked over, took her bag off her seat, and threw it underneath the table. Then the child started removing things from her table. Salt. Pepper. Menus. Again, this was not somebody seated with her group.

Chef Mickey’s table setting

Imagine enjoying your Mickey waffles and suddenly realizing a preschooler from four tables away has begun systematically dismantling your place setting. Kids get bored, they explore, and grab things. They decide that the salt shaker is suddenly the most fascinating object in the entire Contemporary Resort. That’s also where the adults accompanying them need to jump in. Nobody wants to spend breakfast on a scavenger hunt because little Jimmy has decided Chef Mickey’s entire condiment inventory belongs in his own collection.

Eating Floor Pizza

And finally, we arrive at an incident so powerful that I have thought about it repeatedly since hearing the story. One of our team members used to work at Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort. One night, while delivering packages to rooms, she came across a group of middle school boys hanging around the exterior hallway.

All-Star Movies Resort

There was a food court pizza sitting upside down on the ground. To be completely clear, the CHEESE SIDE was touching the floor. She then watched one of the kids pick up a slice and eat it. Middle school boys are a different species.

Kids Are Going To Kid, But Disney World Is Still a Public Place

Part of the fun of being around kids is that they are unpredictable little agents of chaos. They make weird choices. They invent games nobody else understands. They wear shopping bags as rain gear. They do things that become family stories you’ll still be telling at Thanksgiving 20 years later. And some of the insanity is delightful.

Family Zumba Class

But Disney World is still a public place filled with thousands of other people. Vacation doesn’t mean basic safety and manners disappear somewhere around the “Welcome to Walt Disney World” sign. Licking railings and putting random objects in your mouth can spread germs or make a kid sick. Running through restaurants or darting in front of characters can cause somebody to get hurt. Hitting strangers with toys or invading another table stops being adorable pretty quickly for the stranger involved.

Tiana meeting at Princess Fairytale Hall

And parents don’t magically clock out because there are other adults nearby. If you need to focus on something else for a minute, hand kid-watching duty to another adult in your group. If your child does something unsafe or inappropriate, redirect them. If you suddenly notice your kid has acquired three pepper shakers that did not belong to your table, perhaps investigate.

It’s Daisy Duck!

Disney World should be a place where kids can be loud, curious, goofy, excited, and wonderfully weird. We’re just asking them to please stop licking it. Stay tuned to DFB for more on Disney World and behind!

5 Weird Things That Will Get You Kicked Out of Disney World