Flying Red Eye with kids...any positve experiences?

[cmcsharon]

I've read all the previous posts that encourage you to NOT do it...but, has anyone had positive experiences flying from the West Coast to WDW on a Red Eye? Our kids are 9 and 11 so we don't have little ones to worry about. How long do you last on the first day? Can we plan on going to a park right away? Any tips on getting the kids to sleep on the plane (keeping them up late the night before won't work since they'll still have to go to school before we leave).

 

[SB in KY]

We did the red eye thing for a couple of years when we were on the west coast and all the family was in the south....actually the kids always did better than us adults!!

If you aren't opposed to pharmacologic intervention a little Dramamine always sent them off to slumber land (give it an hour or so before take off) and took care of the one that tended to get airsick at the same time. They usually slept through the whole flight, especially if the plane wasn't full and we could get 3 seats across and share it, 1 parent and 1 kid. Grab a blanket and a pillow as you get on for each of them....and they will get in several hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Usually for mine the adrenaline rush of getting to WDW carried them through the AM just fine... we all were usually out of steam by mid afternoon, which worked out pretty well time wise....the room would be ready when we got back and we learned not to make big dinner or evening plans for that first night....just have dinner at the hotel, go for a swim, shop a little or whatever and call it a day.

One time we were checking into a standard view (cheapo room on an AP discount at that) at the Beach Club, we went back to the hotel about 2:30 and the room wasn't ready yet, so we sat down in the lobby. DD (probably 7 at the time) promptly falls asleep in my lap, other DD and DH sit on the next couch and appear to have fallen into comas...about 15 minutes later the bellman taps me on the shoulder and hands me the room assignment and offers to get me a wheelchair so I can hold DD while he wheels me up to the room....I thank him, but decline and we go to the room to find thay have given us a lovely upgrade to a HUGE waterview room/junior suite arrangement. I never knew if they felt totally sorry for us and it was a sympathy upgrade, or they just wanted to get all the vagrants out of the lobby before we scared people away and it was all that was open at the time!! But either way we LOVED the room!!

 

[cmcsharon]

Thanks SB in KY! That's just the type of thing I wanted to hear! I had already picked up some Dramamine (for the cruise portion of our trip)...I like the idea to give it to them for the plane! I've never been able to sleep on planes...so maybe I'll take it too!

Thanks for sharing your great story about the upgrade! Maybe we should try the 'vagrants in the lobby' approach when we check in!

 

[Forevryoung]

We have done it and we love it!!! I have done it to London as well and it is the best thing. As long as you can sleep a few hours it works out great. We still choose to fly as early in the morning as we can. Except our last vacation my mom made our flights so early that we had to leave for the airport at 4am. We wanted to kill her but we had our adrenaline pumping until we got on the plane and then we just went back to sleep because we were still tired. I think it also reduces jet-lag a lot. When we went to Hawaii we did it that way and stayed up as late as we could so that when we fell asleep at 7pm (I think that was 2am our time) we slept until umm 5am and then it was sorta morning hehe. It was great.

 

[Brian Noble]

The problem with domestic red-eyes is that they are too darn short! For example, on my monthly SEA-DTW trips, the direct flight lasts only four hours. Europe is actually easier for me (e.g. DTW-AMS) because the flight is long enough that you can actually get something approaching a decent night's sleep.

If you are thinking of doing this, my recommendation, strangely enough, would be to book a connecting flight through a northern city. That way, you have more flight time to get your snooze on.

 

[mrscoobs]

We have done a red eye (SEA-MCO) with a 12 yr old and 8 yr old and found the experience to be fine, though we cheated. We were leaving on Sunday, we had everyone packed on Friday. Woke the kids up as if it were EST in Cali, referred to time in EST (made it a game), went to bed early, then took the flight on Sunday so they were already a little stuck on the new time. Coming back, we let them stay up till their PST bedtime watching a movie and they were fine the next day, back to their normal schedule.

 

[mill4023]

We did the redeye in May from Portland, OR to Orlando.
The idea was that our 14 month old would sleep and not cry. In that regard, it worked great. She slept the whole time.

We decided we won't do it again though when we go again next spring. I just cannot get comfortable enough to sleep on a plane. We had a 4 hr flight from Portland to Atlanta, then about a 1 hr flight to Orlando. We arrived in Orlando around 8am. We were so tired that we really didn't do anything that day except go to the hotel and nap for a couple hours.