I do not know what the collective noun is for cables, but a tangle seems to fit the bill. In the past, I can never remember this being a problem. In early holidays the only "gadget" that went on holiday was a camera and this was generally a mechanical affair. There may be some batteries to be involved for flash bulbs (for younger readers you will need to look this up,in Google). The first gadget that came on trips was a digital camera, this was a 2 megapixel state of the art camera. It required 4 AA batteries and went through them with alarming speed. This required a compact flash card, which you could easily fill in a two week holiday. The only cable required was for downloading the pictures. As laptops were like bricks, these stayed at home so therefore so did the cables. This all changed for us in 2004 when we discovered wi-fi in San Francisco. It was everywhere and best of all it was free. On returning home to the UK we explored wi-fi further. It was possible to set up a home network, but it was not generally available and the few outlets that had it, charged for using it. We are often a good few years behind the USA in these things.
The next handy gadget to go on holiday was an IPod touch. This required a cable to recharge the built-in battery. The plus side was that it provided a camera as well as internet access. It has to be said that I used to be quite au fait with technology, but phones were always a mystery to me. My first mobile phone was a Nokia, with a keypad and a little green screen. I am now on my third phone and at last it is a smart phone. I say smart, it is mildly clever - my usage does not warrant a high end phone. So now I need to take cables for the phone. The IPod is still handy, but has been largely superseded by an IPad. This has proved particularly useful, with features such as FaceTime for keeping in touch with home. The thing is that this is no longer just me as the whole family now has all this technology. The result is that we have a case full of wires, chargers and adapter plugs. This is not helped by the fact that the technology all have different plugs. The IPhone and IPads have two different plugs, depending upon age. The kids tablets and Android phones have yet another plug (micro-usb) and the video camera has yet another (mini-usb).
Is all this technology really necessary? Well in the most part, yes. Everything is on-line these days. All the Disney restaurant bookings need to be done on-line, (with Deposits). The itinerary of Fastpasses and restaurant times is on the My Disney app. The wait times are all on-line, which is much better than traipsing across a park to find a 3 hour wait at the end. We can access all sorts of useful information using the Internet for life outside Disney. Then there is the entertainment value to keep the kids amused while we have some quite time. Yes, we have some quite time, after tramping around the park from my ours we return to the hotel for a little break before getting changed and going out for the next round. With the Disney photo package included in our package we can review all the photographs on-line.
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