childhood dreams

It seems that every child's dream is to oneday go to Disneyland. It was mine once, and Ashley has also admitted as much. So while we are here in North America, we thought we might as well indulge in our dreams a bit, and take our own family to "the happiest place on earth".
It will take some planning and a great deal of saving to make this trip happen, but we were scheduling it for May 2007.
We hinted our plans to the kids, and Alex at least, was very excited at the possibility. He doesn't know what Disneyland is, but several of his pre-school class mates went last year and their discriptions must have been so vivid and wonderful that he thinks it is a place he would like to experience for himself. And why wouldn't he, it is a world designed to indulge every childhood fantasy there is...right?
There is one little detail that I forgot to take into consideration however....Alex and Olivia are terrified of people dressed in character.
When Alex was one and a half, he saw Santa's elves at the mall and freaked. He also saw a giant candy cane walking around. I can understand how he might find that most unfathomable and unsettling.
Last year at a local fair, The Canuks hockey mascot - a killer whale with mist spouting from its blow hole - terrorised both Alex and Olivia to the point that I had to drag two screaming, hysterical kids to the safety of the car, which happened to be far far away from "the whale". Unfortunately, they have never wanted to return to the lovely park since - the same park we spent every single day happily playing in when we first arrived in Canada, while cooped up for two months in "the hotel" across the road. That was a year ago, but last week at the pumpkin patch there was a "giant pumpkin" and "big corn" walking around waving at visitors as they crossed the bridge to the hayride. I watched Alex who was walking ahead hand tightly in hand with his "pumpkin patch buddy". He didn't seem to flinch, but I noticed that he didn't linger either. I kept reassuring Olivia telling her repeatedly "they aren't real giant vegetables, they are people dressed up...oooooonly people dressed up - it is Oooookay". She seemed fine.
Today, a friend asked if we woudl like to go to the pumpkin patch tomorrow, so the kids could play...what, I am being asked to socialise? How could I pass up such an offer? "Of course WE would love to go".
I told Alex about it afterward - he didn't want to go. In fact, he desparately DID NOT want to go - "not that place with the BIG vegetables NOOOOOoooo" he wailed. Oh dear! Sigh.
I don't know if it is worth going to the pumpkin patch tomorrow - the giant vegetables could be avoided if need be. But Disneyland, I am thinking we might have to cross off "the happiest place on earth" and leave it until the kids are a bit older - we wouldn't want to blemish Disney's reputation now would we?