We just played it safe and got my dd's hair braided on the ship. It was, I believe $1/braid? She only wanted a few, so it was not too expensive, maybe around $10 for the 8-10 of them (4 or 5 on each side). We wanted to do a headband effect, but there was not enough time. Boy am I glad we didn't! It took forever to take out the 10 braids we had, I can't imagine a whole head of them!