![Grade 11 student Eva Peters (right) visited Disney World through the Sunshine Foundation.[Submitted]](https://www.observerxtra.com/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/post_news_disney.jpg)
From Hamilton to Orlando and back again within 24 hours is a busy enough day as it is; throw in an afternoon at Disney World, and you’ve got yourself a bursting calendar. But that’s exactly what Grade 11 EDSS student Eva Peters did as one of 80 students to take a one-day trip to “the Happiest Place on Earth” last week, courtesy of the Sunshine Foundation’s DreamLift program.
“We had to be at the airport at 4:15 and then get on the plane, and then fly there,” said Peters in her Elmira home. “When we get there, we walk around and all that, and then at 7 o’clock we had to fly back the same day.”
The London-based foundation specializes in “making dreams come true” for children with disabilities or life-threatening illnesses.
Since 1987, it has granted more than 34,000 “dreams,” many in the form of a trip to Disney World.
“I think it means a lot,” said Peters. “If [kids] have to go to hospitals all the time, this is a day they can forget about all that and do something more fun, instead of just seeing doctors.”
She added that her best memory of the day was “seeing the kids smiles on the kids’ faces, and how much fun they were having meeting all the characters.”
Peters, who is wheelchair-bound with spina bifida, learned about the opportunity through the Waterloo KidsAbility Centre, which provides rehabilitation and therapy for disabled children. The day had the kids touring the entire park, including a ferry ride and a private audience with a certain rodent Disney star.
With Disney World the size of a small city, the kids got a small taste of everything, and plenty of ideas for a future visit. If she goes back again, Peters says she’ll be “meeting more characters, because we only got to meet Mickey Mouse, and there’s not so much time to do everything, because there’s so much to see and do.”
“It was very exciting,” said Helena Peters, Eva’s mother. “She was so excited she didn’t sleep! She was up for 36 hours straight.”
Added brother Jacob Peters, “When she came home we knew she’d be either smiling, crying, or sleeping.”
For more information on the DreamLift program, visit www.sunshine.ca/dreamlift.
