Disabling movie clips via _xscale

Okay- I came up with this wacky way of doing something- because I don’t know the right way. It’s working. But can anyone think of problems with this. :

I have some MC’s and they have buttons and other MC’s within them. (dynamically loaded). I don’t want them to be seen or the buttons enabled until my startbutton is pressed. I tried
mc.enabled = false
mc._alpha = 0

and it didn’t work. (If anyone knows why, I’d be curious to know the answer)

So I did mc._xscale = 0

and that seems to do the trick. They aren’t visible and there’s no fear of anyone pressing any invisible buttons. It feels a little funny though- like there will be problems with this method. What to do you think?