Wonderful world of Disney — After 50 years, Utah woman's childhood dream finally comes true

The little girl was born two months after the amusement park opened, so it took her awhile to realize that she shared a birth year with such a magical place.

But when she was about 4 or 5, her older brothers got to go visit cousins in California and were able to go there. They came home with wonderful stories. Oh, how the little girl wanted to hurry and get big enough to go visit her cousins and go to the park, too. But before she did, the cousins moved back to Utah.

As she was growing up, the girl knew friends that went to the park. But, she says, her father was a schoolteacher, and her mother was a secretary, "and we just didn't go on big family vacations. We were lucky if we got to Lagoon once a year."

She grew up and got married and thought she would take her own kids to the park. But first there were too many diapers to change and then life got busy and just went on by.

She watched as the park celebrated special anniversaries. When it turned 30, they gave away new cars. When it turned 40, there was another big party. But still the now-grown woman (with her secret little-girl dream inside) did not go.

Then she heard about the 50th anniversary. And she knew that this was the time. She would celebrate her own 50th birthday by going to the park — and taking all of her children and grandchildren with her.

So, that's how Evelyn Stanley finally got to Disneyland.

And that's how she learned some very important lessons: Some things are all the sweeter if you have to wait for them — and you're never too old to have fun.

There were 19 of them all together — Evelyn and her husband, J. Robert; their four children and their spouses and nine grandchildren, all under age 5.

"It was just as fun as I always thought it would be," Evelyn enthuses.

And she didn't miss out on anything. "I rode Dumbo. I rode the tea cups. Who cares if those are children's rides? I'd waited all my life to do it." She worried that she'd be "too tall horizontally" — that's Disney's polite way of telling people they're too big and wide to ride. "But I wasn't 'too tall' to ride anything."

They gave her a badge to wear that let everyone know it was her birthday. And if she was the oldest birthday girl there, it certainly didn't bother Evelyn.