Creative Way to Surprise the Kiddos

I would tell them now so they can look forward to it and dream about it, tell their friends, etc. The anticipation is half the fun!

We just returned from Disney World last week. We did not tell our girls (7 & 3) we were going. We told them we were going to visit old friends of ours, Donald and Dale. (Hey...it wasn't a lie, I've met Donald and Dale on several occasions and consider them old friends!)

We drove to Florida from Maryland over a two day span. I pack travel bags for the car whenever we travel. In this case I packed all things Disney. They had coloring books, reading books, puzzles, a book with little Disney princess figurines inside, paint by numbers (with markers not paint), Disney games for the leap pad and Disney dvd's for the tv. Hubs was sure they would figure it out but they did not put two and two together.

We had our refillable Disney characters water bottles. I also packed Disney themed snacks. I found the Disney snack ziplocks at the dollar store. I packed Disney animal crackers from Costco, pretzels, mickey shaped rice crispy treats and brownies I made using my mickey pans. In the cooler I packed Disney yogart cups, and I used my cookie cutters to cut out mickey, minnie, and princess shaped watermelon slices. None of this is unusual for the girls because they are used to me using the cookie cutters for their sandwiches and fruit occasionally for lunch.

I pre-ordered personalized Mickey ears, lanyards with pins (get the pins from ebay), autograph books, and princess t'shirts. When we arrived at Disney I gave each girl a Mickey backpack (Walmart Clearance $1.99) filled with all of the items mentioned above and a card from Mickey Mouse that I had made using publisher that said :

a message from…...Mickey Mouse
Hot Dog!!!
Put on your ears, it’s time for cheers!
I’ve waited so long to meet you! Hurry!
Get out of the car so I can greet you!
Welcome to Walt Disney World!

Needless to say our girls were over the moon excited and could not wait to get inside Magic Kingdom. I preordered our magic band bracelets so I was able to pre select fast passes which are loaded on the bands. Within five minutes of entering the park we were in a room with Mickey Mouse getting pictures and autographs. Once done there we walked next door to fast pass and meet Rapunzel, Aurora, and Cinderella...the girls were so excited and awe struck. We had tears in our eyes watching their magical moments. If you are staying on property you can pre order your magic bands using mydisneyexperience.com or you can get them once you check into your resort. The cool thing about the bands is you can use them in conjunction with the disneyworld app on your smart phone. You can select fastpasses on your phone and they are automatically linked to your bracelet. We did not wait in any lines to ride anything, we fast passed everything. The bracelets also act as your room key, tickets to enter the parks, and you can charge items to your room using the bracelet as well.

Another thing I did to cut down on the "Can I get ___ or Will you buy me___".... I shopped the Disney Twice Upon a Year sale and bought each girl a gift for the 8 days we would be there. Every morning they awoke to find a gift from a different character. They got jewelry from Minnie Mouse, carriages from Cinderella, personalized books from the Princesses, figurine playsets from Snow White and Rapunzel, Rapunzel's Tower and Cinderella's tea set, dolls, swimsuit with coverup and sunglasses, etc. Nice gifts that usually cost between $15 - 40. I paid as little as $.99 up to $8 per gift. Each gift was wrapped in a yellow gift bag with red tissue paper all from the dollar store. I made cards from each character for each girl and attached the card to the bag using red ribbon. They looked pretty Mickey Mouse if you ask me :)

I made invitations from the characters for the meals we were attending each day as well as the Bippity Boppity Boutique and Mickey's not so scary Halloween party and included them in the gift bag each day. Some would say I went overboard on this but there is always a method to my madness. I knew the girls would want to scrapbook the trip. The cards will be the centerpiece of each page detailing their activities for that date. We can simply add photos and embellishments around the cards and viola the page is done :)

I also was able to get them Disney character t'shirts for every day of the visit for around $3 each some were only $1 on Disney Store Clearance. Check your target for clearance items.

I realize you are going soon and will not have time to shop Disney itself but you can find many Disney items at the dollar store and walmart/target. It really did eliminate the "wants" at the parks. We told the girls on day one that they would each get to pick one small thing per day on a budget. After the second day of waking up to a gift my oldest figured that they were getting a present every day so she didn't want to "waste her one thing a day on something she might be getting as a present anyway." Pretty smart little cookie :) Instead she opted to wait it out and pick one nice thing from each of the four parks but still had a price limit. The three year old only asked for two things the entire trip. All in all I'd say this was a success and saved us a ton of money and we didn't have to deal with any "Can you get me/I wants."

If you have girls and plan on doing the boutique I advise you to check your local Costco for outfits now. I paid $18.99 for princess costumes from Disney at Costco. Those same outfits are only included in the very pricey $189 makeover. We opted to take our own outfits which Cinderella happily left as a gift the night before along with the invitation to the boutique. For around $40 the girls got their hair, tiara, makeup, and nails done, were given a sash and gift bag to take their supplies home and had a private photo session from the boutique. Well worth the $40 but no way would I pay $189.

I don't know if your children are into pressed pennies but that is also a very inexpensive souvenir and made for fun scavenger hunts in the parks. I dropped by CVS pharmacy and asked them for 4 tall skinny medicine bottles. At first I think they thought I was nuts until I explained that I wanted to stagger 2 quarters and 1 penny in the bottles so that I could easily dump out the required amount for each pressed penny in the park rather than searching through a bag of change. Plus who wants to haul around a big bag of change all day through the parks. I labeled one bottle for each of the girls money and one for each girls completed pressed pennies. The RX tubes fit nicely into my purse, no searching required. I simple refilled the money each night at the hotel. At the end of our stay the girls each got a pressed penny book for $8. Viola, an entire weeks worth of fun and souvenirs for $28.

I've never been to Disneyland but if pricing is anything like Disney World I would recommend if staying on property that you participate in the Dining plans. The food is ridiculously overpriced. We were able to get the free dining plan when we booked our trip and I tell you what, it was well worth it even if I would have had to pay for it. We used the table service meal to book a different character meal for all 8 days. Thereby eliminating the need to wait in extremely long lines for pictures and autographs. Our girls literally met every Princess, TinkerBell, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse gang, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Winnie the Pooh and friends and many more. We only had to wait in two lines the entire time we were there and that was to meet Sofia the First and Merida.

The food is delicious but way overpriced. Our table service meals averaged $150 for the four of us. No way we could have afforded to do that everyday without it being included in our dining plan.

The quick service meals are also tasty and most were really huge portions where we could split the meals and eat more often. We didn't want to get to full and then be miserable walking around the parks in the heat.

We still had a ton of snack credits left by the end of our stay so we loaded up the snack bins for the ride home.

I also recommend preordering the Photopass. It saves you $60 if you order it ahead of time. For us it was more than worth the money. We had 535 photos taken by disney photographers. I think it was $129 for the photopass. Once you get home you can log in to your account, add enhancements, borders, autographs to the pictures, then enter your code in at checkout which then makes your total zero. Disney then burns all of your pictures to cd and mails it to you. If you do not do the photopass, they will take your picture, give you a photopass card to use and then you can purchase print outs for anywhere from $9-$15 per picture depending on the event where taken. $129 for 535 pictures breaks down to .24 cents per picture to be on the cd, we then own the copyrights to the photos and can print them at home, make gifts out of them or print them at snapfish, walmart, or shutterfly much cheaper than at Disney.

We opted not to tell the girls for two reasons, number one we wanted to record their reactions when they discovered they were at Disney World, and number two we didn't want to hear are we there yet a zillion times during the two day drive...lol. I like your husbands idea but if you want to avoid the are we there yets consider telling them you're going to see old friends like we did.

Enjoy your vacation. We did and I'm already planning the next one...lol.

Peace and Blessings,
T. B

We surprised our kids with a cruise last Christmas. We booked it February 2012 and left January 4, 2013. Talk about it being hard to keep a secret!! I know your pain :).

They found out Christmas morning and we packed their brand new carry-on luggage with things they would need for warmer climates. Living in MD, there is little need for flip flops, sunglasses, bathing suits in January. We also put in a brand new "formal" outfit for the formal dinners. At the bottom of their suitcaes, I had made an itinerary for them. Lots of pictures for the younger one, but words so the older two could read them. I had pictures of each port, the ship for our sea days, airplanes for our rides to and from, etc. They were SO excited. It took a few minutes for them to get it. We also had gotten new ornaments (a santa on the beach and a cruise ship) and placed them at eye level for the kids. They saw those first, but didn't really think anything of it.

So how about packing their bags and sticking a luggage tag on them with DISNEY LAND as the destination? Or if you are leaving really early in the morning and the car will already be packed, do you have a Disney destination DVD you could show? And just let them get it on their own? You could get them Disney t-shirts and put them on as their outfit for the day? Or you could always just get up and moving as usual and when they ask where you are going casually say "Disney Land."

I LOVE this stuff. My kids get surprise vacations for Christmas each year and I LOVE the surprise of it all...priceless :). Have a great time and let us know what you decide to do!

Give them something to wear on the trip - a Mickey t-shirt, mouse ears, etc. Wrap it up with a special note that says something like "Mickey's waiting for you. Put these on and we'll see him in a few hours."

You can cook the pancakes a head of time?

How old are they, can they read? Let them get up and open a card?

Option 1:
A few days before the trip, ask them where they want to go for the week. 3-5 choices. Write them all down. Put them in envelopes. The next night, (after you have changed all of the choices to Disneyland), pick a winning location.
'Well, I guess we're going to Disneyland!'

Option 2:
Say that you want to paint their rooms. Have hubby come home with the Disney colors. Well, it's hard to tell the true color from just the paint chip. Guess we'll have to check the colors our in person! :)

Option 3:
Create a scavenger hunt. I don't know how long your trip will take, but think up clues that will take you about 10 - 20 mins to get to. As you get to each spot, open the next clue.

My parents woke us kids up waaay before sunrise, telling us we were going to take a trip to see Grandma. We were all groggy and confused. By the time we got to freeway exit to either continue going to Grandma's or go to to Disney Land, we were awake. We heard them discussing Grandma or Disneyland and all us kids were yelling and excitedly "convinced" my parents to go to Disneyland.. so it seemed like WE made the choice! hahahaha good memory. I do, though, think that the paint sample papers is really cute and creative. :) Have a blast!

I would get 2 Mickey M. sets of ears & 2 Mickey M. stuffed animals. In the morning surprise them by pulling these out of the bag!

Bring plenty of things to keep them busy in the car (DVD player, erase board & dry earse pens etc) so they won't drive you too crazy with "Are we there yet?" questions. :) Don't forget to pack plenty of snacks & drinks for the ride. Bring a backpack for the park. Have fun!!!!

How old are they? Are you sure they don't have other plans? The danger with surprises is that you risk not giving them enough time to reschedule study groups etc. Try to find a creative way to hint that they should clear their schedules for the days you'll be away!!

Granted I personally do not like surprises, even good ones but much of the happiness my kids get from a trip is the anticipation. However you decide to surprise them I would consider doing the surprise sooner rather than later. I like your husband's idea combined with your idea of Mickey pancakes for dinner if you do the surprise part early.

Just tell them that morning. That in itself is a surprise.

I seen where someone bought a Disney backpack(with fav character on it) Then filled them with one new Disney outfit, Disney books, Disney coloring books and Disney fruit snacks and then asked the child if they knew where they were going. LOL