Finding Your Stroller in Disney World

The stroller situation at Disney World is unbelievable. There are so many strollers. Everywhere.

They literally have designated stroller parking lots. With lot attendants who constantly shuffle the stroller positions, keeping the lot orderly and compact. Efficiency is the key, but finding your stroller after being repositioned is a challenge.

Look at the photo above. Crazy huh? And it just barely begins to describe the stroller mania as the photo was taken at the beginning of the day at Epcot - a park families with young children sometimes skip. Multiply the image by about three and you'll have an idea of the stroller parking in Magic Kingdom's Fantasyland around lunchtime.

Forewarned by a friend prior to vacationing, I marked our stroller with this brightly colored flower and ribbon sash. A stroller identifier of sorts.

I was going for small enough to be cute, yet large enough to be functional.

I was wrong. Very Very wrong.

While the sash was helpful in distinguishing our stroller from the 47 other similarly colored Chico strollers in each lot, it was not nearly large enough to aid in actually locating the stroller. (Remember, the lot attendants rearrange the strollers for maximum occupancy. So it's not exactly where you left it.)

At one point during our vacation, we actually did lose our stroller. We had unknowingly left our stroller in a non-designated area. (There were several others lined up along a fence and we just assumed it was a stroller area...)

It took about five minutes, but we did eventually find our stroller - relocated about a hundred and fifty yards away. And you know how we eventually found it? We spotted our daughter's balloon floating overhead.

Now I understand why one family I observed had tied a six foot tall silk flower to their child's stroller. Obnoxious? Maybe. Functional? absolutely!

So there you have it. My two cents on strollers in Disney: 1) Never leave your stroller in an unmarked stroller area, and 2) Get yourself a BIG stroller marker.