Any suggestions on how to.....

[disneyfreak89]

.....surprise my 11 year old nephew that he's going to Disney World?

He went once before when he was 2 but of course doesn't remember anything, so he's at the age now where he'll REALLY appreciate it!

Here's the plan.....his mother is going to tell him they are coming down to 'visit' us but will in fact both be joining us for our trip to Disney. WHEN should she tell him? HOW should she/we do it? On her way down? When she gets here? The morning we leave?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[disneydreamgirl]

Our DS is 10 and we have yet to tell him that we are going back to WDW in just over three weeks. He will be very excited when he finds out. He is the type of kid, though, who needs to have a bit of advance warning so we will be telling him next week after he returns from a cottage trip with his uncle's family. He was so excited about that trip I didn't want WDW to overshadow it.

How will your little guy react to a last minute surprise?

As for how we are actually going to tell DS, I haven't worked that one out yet! I'm interested to hear what responses get posted here, too!

 

[Reese]

We've surprised our kids twice so far. The first time we gave them a gift box right before we left. It had a bunch of Disney stuff in it along with their boarding pass. The second time they had chose to take a mini vacation as a family instead of have birthday parties that year. While we stopped for a timmies on our way to the falls for two nights. We gave them all their "birthday cards" with some spending money and an itinerary for two weeks at Disney. They screamed so loud people at the drive thru were looking.

 

[dancin Disney style]

Last year I kept the secret right until we left for the airport. I wanted to say nothing and just get on the plane but I thought it was probably not wise to cross the border (flew from Buffalo) with a kid that didn't know where she was going.

I picked my DD up early from school (her teacher knew in advance and helped keep the secret) and all she knew was that I had to go somewhere and would not be able to pick her up after school so she had to come with me. She kept asking where we were going and I just told her she would find out when we got there. It was really funny that she didn't press me for info. After we left school I took her over to my mom's to say goodbye because me mom wanted to see her face when I broke the news.

She started to cry when I told her we were going to WDW for her b-day. She was in shock, which took about 30 minutes to wear off. I'm really glad I surprised her even though her reaction was not what I was expecting.

 

[grover]

We suprised ds when he was 7 yrs old.
We woke him up by saying "suprise, we are going to Disneyworld!"
He wore the look of utter confusion for only a moment-guess he knew we were serious when he spotted me video taping the moment ;-)
He was very excited!

 

[disneyfreak89]

ALL good suggestions.....Keepin comin!

 

[disneydreamgirl]

DH and I came up with some good ideas while driving back and forth from OTR today. We are planning a hidden mickey type scavenger hunt complete with disney related items and a homemade construction paper Hidden Mickey word puzzle. Each head will have one letter on it and the entire word it corresponds to will be in the same colour. We're thinking about "18 Days to WDW!!!" I really want to make this memorable for him, something he'll think back to years from now and remember fondly.

 

[Beechnut]

We are going for Christmas.

I am planning on having Santa deliver an early present about mid Nov. In it will be what ever disney tickets etc we have sor far. and a letter from Santa telling us we are going to go to Disney as his christmas present this year..

I am also hoping that will let Santa off the hook for presents, althought he may have to still fill stockings.!!

It may turn out to be delivered early december depening, on some stuff. but I am having such fun planning , I cant wait to share it and be able to talk about it out loud !!

 

[Babyjustrun]

Parents did a cute scavenger hunt at Christmas for us a few years back to surprise us.
I think it was the best way they could have done it :
We have that Christmas Pickle tradition going on in our house, so they extended it by making it a full blown hunt for things