Cool ways to tell kids about cruise?

[kcb911]

We are taking our 4 and 6 year old children on a cruise out of Galveston in October. We have not told them about it and think it would be a neat surprise to arrive at the boat and let them figure it out. I would love to hear ideas for how other people have given hints or surprised their kids.

 

[Disneytracy]

We are taking our 4 and 6 year old children on a cruise out of Galveston in October. We have not told them about it and think it would be a neat surprise to arrive at the boat and let them figure it out. I would love to hear ideas for how other people have given hints or surprised their kids.

We are telling our two DD (8 & 6) on Christmas morning. However I was at The Disney Store yesterday and the cast member told me they could help us surprise them. This is very tempting

 

[WeLoveM1CKEY]

We leave next week. Tomorrow we are going to use the "Have our characters call your characters" and let Mickey tell her while I video her getting the call.

 

[Macmaro]

We leave next week. Tomorrow we are going to use the "Have our characters call your characters" and let Mickey tell her while I video her getting the call.

We do the same thing. It will be the day before our upcoming cruise this time.

 

[momtoejanda]

I made a puzzle of a picture of the ship and hid the pieces around the house and gave them a bunch of clues to find them for one of our trips.

We also sailed out of NY earlier this summer and I told them we were going to the Intrepid (docked next to the Disney ship). When we pulled up I told them the parking lot was full for the Intrepid and lets see if we can park next to the Magic. When we got out of the car I asked them if they wanted to see if we could get on, of course the answer was yes.....

 

[j2tyco]

we played a game a disney head bands and after all of us had a chance to guess one character I pulled the game instructions out and pretended to find rules for a special "bonus round"

I had printed out 7 small mickey heads--with 7 clues and had a dice....and had the boys roll the dice and answer the question that the dice showed....they wrote the answer on the back of the mickey heads

the first 6 questions were:

How do you say "yes" in french? OR. If too hard...What game system do we have at our house

What does a pirate say? Or the last letter in both of their names

A word that starts with G and rhymes with showing

On a light switch..the opposite of OFF

The first letter of the alphabet

The last name of both Roy and Walt

the final question was

You will not feel blue once you answer this clue. To figure it out there is no need to fight...simply read all your clues from left to right. As you will see this game is hard to lose..because......

it took a few seconds for them to grasp the sentence they had just read...and then a few more seconds to realize we were telling THEM this...and they both asked ... is this a message for US? For REAL? and then proceeded to hyperventilate

 

[Skitheboat]

We took our kids on their first cruise a few years ago & it was a total surprise. We told them we were going on vacation but it was a "surprise" location. We flew to Jacksonville & took a cab to the cruise ship terminal. When we pulled up to the ship, I thought their little eyes were going to pop out of their heads. They were sooooo excited!

 

[Shartman79]

What great ideas!!

 

[Brittmarie04]

We leave next week. Tomorrow we are going to use the "Have our characters call your characters" and let Mickey tell her while I video her getting the call.

Can anyone tell me what this is?? And how it works? We are planning Dream for jan 2013 for DD birthday and want to surprise her at her birthday party the day before we will be leaving.

 

[WeLoveM1CKEY]

Can anyone tell me what this is?? And how it works? We are planning Dream for jan 2013 for DD birthday and want to surprise her at her birthday party the day before we will be leaving.

Once you book the cruise on your reservation page there is a box at the bottom that says "Have our characters call your characters". You can set the date and time for the call. It is a recording from Mickey or Goofy (you choose).

 

[Brittmarie04]

Once you book the cruise on your reservation page there is a box at the bottom that says "Have our characters call your characters". You can set the date and time for the call. It is a recording from Mickey or Goofy (you choose).

Awesome. I love this. Thank you.

 

[mizcolon]

LAst year we told our girls we were going to a family reunion, which as true since we do a disney cruise every other year.... Stayed at a hotel the night before going to port...the girls were playing in the back seat playing as view, I pull out twdrove...as the ship came into view, I pull out the camcorder and start recording...I say, hey girls, whats that over there, what does that look like to you?? They struggle to figure it out and then start screaming I am recording and have recorded the whole thing until we pull up.........

 

[toy]

The first cruise for our girls was a surprise. We just drove up and said hey lets go over there. They started screaming. This trip in October we are taking all 3 kids along with my 3 year old nephew and my best friend and her family (also 3 kids). After spending 5 days in Disney we will "head home". Before we leave we will do a group shot but instead of saying "cheese" we will say you're going on a Disney Cruise.

 

[kdeans1010]

I had a great way to tell my mom I booked a cruise for her and I. It didn't work out.

Back story:
While I was on the Fantasy last week (tear), my mom watched/took care of my golden retriever (the love on my life. Love Tucker), my cat, and my fish. So I didn't know what to get for her souvenir.

So I was looking and looking and when I heard 10% down payment, I was like "sweet." And some of my FE co-cruisemates mentioned book the cheapest and change it. I was going to be giving my sister her gifts and then like "aww crap Mom. I forgot to get you something." And hand her future cruise booklet with the info for the cruise and see her face.

What ended up happening was while on a quick layover in Georgia, I called her to check on Tucker. She said Tuck sat in our cuddling spot about 2 days into our cruise (so 3 days into my trip) and started to howl and proceeded to howl for the rest of the time I was gone (my sister said he howled the day before too.). I felt bad. So I was like "I booked another cruise for you and I." She got really excited. I would've liked to do a surprise, but I'm not cool with surprises-- can't do them.

Maybe that would help for your kids? Give you ideas?

 

[redman822]

We planned our trip almost a year in advance but rather than having to field questions from our DD (7 at the time) we held off on telling her until Christmas (three months before the cruise).

I found (through the DCL website at that time) paper models for Mickey and the cruise ship. I got them printed up on heavy paper stock and built them when she was sleeping over a couple days. I had also created her a personalized autograph book with the cruise logo as well as the logos for DW/Epcot/AK/DS and the dates of the trip. I wrapped each of them up separately and then put them in a bigger box and wrapped that (all in Disney princess paper) but without a gift tag and put it under the tree a couple days before Christmas and before we put anything else under the tree.

She immediately asked, "What's that? Whose present is it?"
I responded, "It's not a present."
DD7 - "But it's wrapped and under the tree - it has to be a present."
Me - "Nope, not a present."
(Repeat multiple times over the three days - what can I say, I am evil.)

Come Christmas morning, mid-way through opening gifts, we give it to her. She squealed, "I knew it was a gift..and it's for me! You lied Daddy!"
Me-"No I didn't. It is not a gift and it is not just for you..."

She opened the box and saw that there were three smaller packages and gave me the 'evil eye'. She opened the "#1" package and found Captain Mickey and said, "That's cute," with a quizzical look on her face.

She then opened #2 and got the cruise ship and said, "What's this for?" (I told her to keep going.)

She then opened the autograph book (the cover said, "Spring Break Cruise and DisneyWorld 2011") looked at it, flipped through all the blank pages looked at the cover again and said, "I don't get it..."

Meanwhile DW is laughing, I am sitting there incredulous that she couldn't figure it out and DW asked her if she read the cover. DD said yes, so DW told her to read it out loud...DD did and then she figured it out, let out a shriek and as we were laughing about it, she covered her face because she was embarrassed that she didn't figure it out.

(BTW, if anyone wants the PDFs for the model, I think I have them on my home PC...I will have to check...

 

[Tolson70]

My wife is pretty crafty and she made each of our kids a scrap book of the cruise my dad took us all on before he passed away. The last page had a fake ticket with the dates of the cruise we were taking them on as their Xmas gift this past Christmas. It was a huge hit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbucimITUkI

 

[kcb911]

Some great ideas! Thanks!