My Fear

My fear has always been rather difficult to explain. Besides my most recent diagnosis of claustrophobia, my greatest fear as a child was the fear of people in mascot-type suits. To futher explain myself, so you have at least some clue of what I'm talking about, I'll give you an example. When I was about eight or so, my mom and I took a trip to Disney World in Florida. We stayed in a suit that came with the whole 'Disney Package', which included an autograph book that all of the characters I happened to run into at the parks could sign. On our first day out to Magic Kingdom, I was so excited I could barely control myself from running out of my mom's sight and around the next corner, just to plunge myself in the adventure and magic of Disney. My mom was holding on to my little booklet and looking out for all of the Disney charaters she could see while I ran around the park mesmerized by everything in sight. As we arrived at the teacups, my mom called my name and said that Tigger wanted to take a picture with me. While trying to grasp the realization that Tigger wanted my picture, I flew back to where my mom and him were both kneeling with their arms wide open for a hug. In the blink of an eye, Tigger, the bouncy lovable tiger, morphed into a giant, ravenous beast with fierce teeth and razor-sharp claws. Standing at ten feet tall, he reached out to grab me for his dinner. Tears flooded my terrified eyes and while screaming as loud as I possibly could, I attemted to flee to the other side of the park and away from his grasp. Thankfully, my mom caught up with me and calmed me down. She took me back and showed me that Tigger was just a man in a mask. Even though this did calm me down, I realized that all of my beloved Disney friends were just strangers wearing masks.
If Ralph, Jack and the littluns had their parents to show them that the Beast was a non-life threating part of their imagination, they wouldn't be going insane over the whole ordeal and could focus more on getting rescued than killing the Beast.

*Does anyone have ANY suggestions for wording that sentence (mostly the part highlighted in red)? I'm stumped...