How did you (or plan to) surprise your kids with their upcoming trip?

[lazydazy8]

I think I've decided how to surprise the kids, but I'd love to hear how you all have done or are doing it...

We are going to be staying at a hotel the night before our flight. (Our flight takes off at 7:30 in the morning and we are 1.5 hours from the airport.) We have taken the kids to a hotel in the middle of the winter before, simply to swim. So, we will enjoy the hotel for the night... My DH and I will get up in the a.m. and prepare to go. I will have a box with some helium balloons in it wrapped beside the bed. Also in the box, I will put the gifts I have been buying for them for the trip! Their fanny packs, Mickey and Minnie "Jibbitz", pins to trade, a kid's pictoral Disney Guide, the autograph books I made, etc. Tied to the bottom of the helium balloons will be the two envelopes of Disney Dollars. I will sprinkle glitter around the box, as pixie dust.... We will wake the kids up and tell them that we have been planning something big, and their clues have arrived!

We had thought about delaying the surprise all the way to the airport, but the more I think about it, the more I think that the surprise could be better in our room, rather than in the airport where we may be stressing out a bit hustling around...

I'd love to hear what anyone else did/is doing!

 

[dianemb]

Last time we went i used a we site that count down to the second and then a message came on full screen. THat web site is no longer around but it was great to see his face in shock. This time we are going again in December and going to surprise him. He gets a LEGO calendar every year and I think on our leaving morning I am going to switch out the toy for a disney pin and note. I hope it works out.

 

[Kim1964]

Wow, that's very cool! I hope you'll post about their reactions after the trip .

Last year I surprised my then 9 yo daughter with a mom and daughter trip to WDW. She was talking on the phone with my sister (who had just moved to the Orlando area) and saying something about missing my sister. So my sister says, "Ask Mom if you can come down before next year". DD turns and says to me, "Can we PLEASE go see Auntie before next year?" I said, "OK, how about tonight?" Her jaw dropped, she didn't believe me. Then I said, "Daddy is on his way home to take us to the airport...we leave in 3 hours".

I've booked us for a family vacation to WDW for next August, and we're giving it to the kids on Christmas morning. I bought a set of Disney luggage, and I am going to pack one of the suitcases with Disney Dollars, Disney T shirts, and (hopefully, if it ever comes) the new planning DVD. It will be the last gift they open Christmas morning, and the Disney Dollar envelopes will have our trip dates printed on them. Our 4 yo may not understand, but she will when the 10 yo starts reading it and screaming .

 

[Reese]

We surprised our kids last Feb with a trip. We took them out for breakfast with both sets of grandparents (somthing we do regularly anyways). After breakfast everyone came back to our house and we told the kids to all sit in a circle and close their eyes. I places a Disney box in front of each of them and told them to open them up. Inside I had placed a Disney sweatshirt and hat, wallets with American money in them, some little Disney trinkets, a homeade autograph book and their boarding passes. It took the oldest (13) a few minutes to put it together. We had to tell him to look at the date on the boarding pass and even then he looked a little perplexed than suddenly said "We're going to Disney World today?!!". So than all the other kids joined in. The grandparent all got to see their reactions...it was priceless. We left for the airport about an hour after telling them. It wasn't until we were halfway there that my DD said what about our clothes .
I work evening so I had been packing after I got home at 11:00 so they wouldn't notice. I snuck some of their clothes doing laundry and they never even missed them. I also bought a lot of Disney shirts at the Disney store for a fraction of the cost so they had new theme shirts for each day. Princess shirts for princess lunch. EEyore shirts for breakfast at CP,ect. It was a lot of fun.

We are going again in Jan and plan on giving it to them for Christmas. I'm going to put Disney balloons in a big box and wrap up each day's iternirary with some fun stuff to go along with it. We are attending the P & P party so each child is getting a costume with their ticket for the event.

I can't wait .

 

[colieolie]

Several years ago we surprised my niece 8yrs.old, by having her and her mom take me and my DH to the airport. we asked if they would come in the airport and help us with our luggage. DH made it look like i packed for a month, complaining could you believe how much luggage your aunt is taking.
To her surprise it was her own luggage she was carrying, her mom packed it prior to the trip and gave it to us the day before.

when the plane was boarding, we asked if they could carry the luggage on the plane with us and she did willingly. we had her boarding pass so she never had a clue.
Once on the plane, everyone was boarding, so she could not get off. we told her we had to wait till everyone boarded then she could get off.
as time passed, she started to get nervous. once the other passengers were boarded and we kept telling her wait one more minute, the doors on the plane were closing, she at this point got so nervous that the plane was leaving with her on it, she started to cry. her mom was with us too and then we said surprise we are going to disney and you are coming. she was so happy she could not stop crying. it was something i will never forget.
she had the best time and it was so great to see her enjoy herself.

now we leave next week taking a cousin and his family, kids 4 and 8. kids have no clue they are going. they are saving to go next year.
not sure exactly when they are going to find out. we all keep throwing ideas around. us adults are more excited about seeing the kids reaction......
counting down, 7 more days to go.......

 

[lazydazy8]

Colieolie! My goodness.... 7 days... I am going to have to medicate 7 days out! I totally understand about figuring out how to tell! I can't believe we've held it this long. I cry almost daily thinking about the moment we tell them.

My best friend's two kids, DS7 and DD5, are my two kids (DD7, DS5) best friends. Another facet to the surprise for them, is that they will be walking into each other somewhere along Main Street USA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The four of them have been saving to someday go to Disney together. Even trick or treating... someone gave them all a quarter. They all agreed that it was going into their banks to save for Disney! Her kids don't have a clue either.

I hope we book our next trip while we are down there with the specials going on. (Saw some info about it on allears.net) If we don't, I'm afraid I will be a mess coming home. I cried on the way out of the BWI when we left 8 years ago. If I knew back then that it would've been 8 years b/f I'd get back, I would've been REALLY sick!

 

[ppony]

Mine is pretty boring I guess but we plan on just getting up at 4AM that morning to take a taxi to the airport and my bet is he will guess (he's 6 1/2) at that point or at least at the airport. We want him to guess where he is going. I KNOW he'll guess quickly too now becuse DH and DS were waiting with me in line at the airport 2 weeks ago for my solo business trip to Chicago and I had an old WDW tag on my luggage and he asked THEN if "we" were going to WDW. I just had to say "not this time." And then DH and I looked at each other and smiled. He knows something is coming ebcuase I can't seem to escape him in this house when I need to be on the phone making ressies and such. He finds me every time! Kids know when their parents are on the phone and don't WANT to be heard. I've just managed to avoid saying when. Now we're just trying to figure out how to tell him he will be a big brother next year. We're hoping to tell him on the trip.

 

[lazydazy8]

That's so cute (telling him in Disney about becoming a big brother)! Maybe you could make him a Tshirt to wear that day in a Disney font or something!??

When do you go?? I'd love to hear everyone's updates after their surprises!

 

[CharmedLife]

Our trip is a surprise for both my mom and my kids (dd6 ds3). I am sending my mom our Christmas card the day before with a Christmas letter inside. It will be boring and go through our year, etc., etc., and then I'll get to December when I'm going to write something like "In December we took a trip to Disney with my mom and dad. It was so much fun because it was a surprise for my mom (actually, she's finding out about it right now while she reads this card!)". I wonder how long it will take for her to figure it out? My only regret is I won't be there to see the look on her face when she reads it!!

Anyway, my parents will have to come down here the night before since we fly out of Milwaukee at 7 am the next day. We are telling my kids that Grandma and Grandpa are taking a trip and we're driving them to the airport in the morning, then driving down to Chicago for Christmas shopping. When we get to the airport and start unloading luggage, DH is going to say "Hey kids, what do you say we just skip Chicago and fly to Disney World instead??". I know DD will get it right away, DS will catch on soon.

I'm as excited for the surprise as the rest of the trip! 4 weeks to go...

 

[nettii]

I love all of your great ideas I too am planning a big box with balloons but for x-mas morn I was planning on saving the pixie dust for our hotel room around the new pal mickey I will sneak in before the kids come in with a few other trinkets for the family (house keeping I will keep the pixie dust to a minimum sorrry!) I love all surprises and have such a hard time keeping secrets Hope every one has a great trip!

 

[LindaOwl1]

I am taking my Granddaughter in just over 2 weeks. Her 4th birthday is in exactly 2 weeks, so I am wrapping up the trip as her present. Right after Halloween, I bought 3 costumes at the Disney Store for $10.00 each, and a couple of Princess T-shirts. I also picked up a new pink ($15) stroller that I'm adding princess stickers to. I have park maps left over from last year's trip too. I plan to let her open all this, and then see if she can guess where we'd need these things. Since she is still talking almost daily about last year's trip, I think she'll guess pretty quick!

 

[3dog2kidmom]

Here's ours... Last year we surprised the kids on Christmas morning. I had been fantasizing for months about waking our then 6- and 8-year-olds up on Christmas morning and saying "we're going to Disney... now!" So when I realized we were going to get a bigger tax refund than I had expected, I booked the trip and that's just what we did.

"Santa" brought them new, personalized, suitcases which were packed and under the tree with plush Mickey/Minnie/Plutos sticking out of the pockets, and matching mini backpacks filled with goodies for the plane (snacks, 20 questions game, little Disney trinkets and Disney dollars). On top of the luggage was an invitation from Santa that read, "You've been so good this year I wanted to give you something really special. Go get dressed and hurry, you're leaving for the airport to go to Disney World RIGHT NOW!"

At first they were stunned (and a little disappointed) that there were no presents, but as the morning went on and they realized there were all kinds of little surprises in their backpacks, they perked up. Once we actually got to Disney they realized the magnitude of the gift and couldn't stop telling us it was the best Christmas ever!

 

[xpor2geechica69x]

We just got back from Disney in September. My boyfriends mom and dad surprise us (his DS DBL DN DN DB myself and him) with the trip by use of fortune cookies. If you want to look at pictures and read the story click the link...Good Luck..Your Idea already sounds really cool! Fortune Cookie Surprise Pictures and Report

 

[DeBestWife]

We are leaving in only 24 days! The boys...10 & 14 don't know yet! Every now and again I think I will simply burst! We live about 2 1/2 hours from the airport. To pull this off we are going to tell them that we are going down to my parents place for a week or so to help out my parents, and do some Christmas shopping. We go down their often enough in the winter that this shouldn't seem strange. We then plan to wake them up on departure morning...video camera in hand...and tell them to get up so we don't miss the plane! It should be truely classic. They knew we wanted to go in December, but they think that airfare was never afordable.

My husband has been calling me the lier in secret...lol. I am starting to have trouble explaining some of the things I do...or ask the kids...it is so much fun though! Hopefully they won't bother to look at what I pack! Yea we need shorts at Grandma's...so what if it is only 35 degrees. Maybe we will get a heat wave?

We did have one idea that I thought I would share with you. Cookies by Design...which delivers all over the US...has Disney cookie bouquets. They are expensive, but we thought it would be a fun, edible way to tell the kids. We looked at the Christmas one with a message of...a merry surprise. When we decided to keep the secret until the end, obviously that idea didn't work.

Thanks for sharing your WDW trip surprise stories! It makes me sure that we have done the right thing!

Stephanie in Idaho...where there is 8 inches of new snow!
Only 24 days till Illuminations and dinner at the Garden Grill!
Me just so happy to be going back!
DH is going as crazy as I am keeping the secret!
DS 10 should totally freak out that he will get to see Stitch again!
DS 14 may disappear now and again...off to a coaster would be my guess!

 

[lynninpa]

We used Fortune Cookies with "personalized" fortunes! Here is the link should anyone like to read just how we did it!

http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1049847