There were some years with some definite low notes. On our first trip, Justin, our now twenty-year-old profoundly autistic son, wasn't feeling well, and his behavior was challenging. I will never forget how we pulled in to my mom's after our return flight, and Justin emitted his loud, hi-pitched "eee" sound with a smile, ecstatic to be home, and my six-year-old burst into tears, because we were home. Yin and yang, yin and yang.

There was the year, five adults managed to be so distracted, that the two boys wandered off, with my sister-in-law discovering them minutes later staring at the water gushing down from Splash Mountain, and my youngest telling me afterwardS that he saw Justin head off and "just took his hand to stay with him so he wouldn't get lost." Good times.

In the good old days, I watched my husband run to the future disability ride to book a time, then hustle back to meet us at our fast pass ride. He would do this all day long. At least he got his steps in. In the old days at Disney, once you finished one ride on your disability pass, you could run ahead and book the next one, and you had to physically do this at all the rides. In between, you could use the three "fast passes" that Disney gave you free with each ticket. You either had a bracelet or a card that was scanned at each ride for both.

Now those free fast passes are gone. You have to purchase passes if you want to skip the lines on a few rides, and you have to book your disability rides on your phone. You no longer do it physically at each attraction.

I've always said Disney is a working vacation, and it is. I will never get back the hours I've spent trying to acquire the disability

pass and requisite passes to daily rides (a system which seemed to change with every trip, as grateful as I am that the system exists); or figuring out why the only time Justin tried to flee anywhere was to FutureLand for a pretzel, while making sure we didn't lose any of my family members while in hot pursuit; or figuring out the particulars of the DAS on our phones; or making sure we didn't lose any of our cards in the old days, so Justin wouldn't have a meltdown if we didn't get on a ride.

Was every second of aggravation worth it to create indelible memories with my family on the only vacation my eldest would ever tolerate, and actually enjoy? Absolutely. Every fall that we were scheduled to go. Justin picks out the scrapbooks with the Disney trips in them, and starts playing his Disney DVDs, as soon as school started up again. Without us even saying anything, he just knew.

We will figure out a way to get him there in the future, which will be challenging, since when he (hopefully) enters a day program after graduation in June he can only miss a certain amount of days, but we will work it out.

The truth is a tremendous amount of work went into creating an

FULL EXPOSURE: Justin with his Dad Jeff at Great Adventure; "No matter how difficult it is, get your kids out in the world — have them wait on lines, expose them to times when a ride is broken or the weather turns bad, or something happens and you simply have to leave a venue early."