Against All Advice, I Wore New Shoes to Disney World — Here’s What Happened

We give out a lot of advice on AllEars, and a lot of it comes from personal experience.

The funny thing is, if I’m being honest, sometimes we do a terrible job of following our own advice. I know for me personally, I’ve forgotten my rain gear more times than I’d like to admit and then had to walk around soaking wet, I’ve worn the wrong shoes to Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, and my second to last trip, y’all, I made a choice I KNEW could have gone so wrong so fast — I wore brand new shoes to the parks.

It takes time to break in brand new shoes, and that doesn’t change when you’re in Disney World. But now, instead of spending an hour or two walking around in them running errands, you’re walking 10 miles through the parks, and your feet are about to HATE you.

I say this, and no one is surprised to hear this, from experience. HOWEVER, I was between a rock and a hard place. Let me set the scene: It’s the end of September and Hurricane Helene is barreling towards the U.S. I don’t know how much rain Orlando is going to get, but I know rain is in my future.

Normally, I’m a socks and sneakers in the park girl, because I actually HATE open-toed shoes with a passion, especially flip flops (sorry Myranda, I know you love them) — there’s just something about the feeling of my feet not being protected fully and all those straps that are uncomfortable to me. But do you know what I knew would be MORE uncomfortable? Soggy shoes and sneakers.

And when your sneakers get wet, that’s not an easy fix — sure, you can switch socks, but if your sneakers are wet, it’ll just get your new socks wet, too, and then you’re right back where you started. Wet socks and sneakers can also cause blisters VERY quickly, and the moment you step into AC you’re suddenly freezing, and I really didn’t want to deal with all of that. So I reached out to Emma for her personal open-toed shoe opinion (as she is the AllEars Style Queen), and she recommended Tevas to me! I ordered a pair on Amazon, and they were there the next day, which happened to be about 24 hours before I left for my trip.

I tried to wear the Tevas around the house a little bit just to break them in the slightest bit, but I knew ahead of time it wasn’t enough. I drove down to Disney World in them, actually, and then made the decision the following morning that I would wear them into Animal Kingdom, because I knew rain was on the radar for that morning.

And wearing them in Animal Kingdom was the RIGHT CHOICE. It downpoured as I was leaving, and I had to slosh through about 3-4 inch high water, which would have totally covered my sneakers and drenched them for the rest of the day. When I got to Disney Springs though, the rain was tapering off and radar didn’t show anymore coming for the entirety of our filming duration. At this point, my feet were hurting more than usual, but nothing too bad, and so I made the decision to switch to my socks and sneakers.

Again, it was fortunately the right call. My feet were much more comfortable in the sneakers I’ve been using for years, and there was no rain to drench them (actually, it did rain once, but we timed it really well and were bowling while it did!). Now, I got lucky with this timeline, and had rain been on the radar while we were in Disney Springs, I would have likely worn the Tevas.

I will say though that the following day, which was filled with a LOT of walking, as most Disney World days are, my feet weren’t very happy with me, and I could feel the effects of wearing unbroken-in shoes to walk a few miles in basically my whole body (contrary to the way this is making me sound, I promise I’m only 23 😂). Thankfully I had Advil with me and that took care of most of it, but just keep in mind that wearing the wrong shoes one day CAN and WILL affect your remaining days as well.

We’re always bringing you the latest tips and tricks that we try to remember to follow ourselves, so be sure to stay tuned to AllEars!

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What’s a mistake you’ve made in Disney World you’ll never do again? Tell me in the comments!

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