How do you celebrate your countdown...

[LilTinks]

I have 2 daughters, 4 and 7, who have never been to Disney World (heck, I haven't been there siince pre-AK, and DH last went pre-Epcot). I'm planning it all myself, so no one else is getting excited besides me at this point!!! I chalk it up to the fact that they don't know how excited they should be yet!

A couple of things I plan to do...count down the days on a paper link chain, have postcards sent from Disney World inviting us to CRT (they don't know I got the reservation) and maybe getting one of the Disney characters to call over the summer.

What else does everyone do to get into the magical mood?

 

[tink_about_it]

Watch the video with them! Our first trip with the girls was in 2003 and they really had NO IDEA what they were getting into! Just wait! Once they get it, watch out! My kids can't wait now! Go to www.youtube.com and type in Disney World and you'll get the parade and some attractions that you can watch together. My 4 year old is always asking me to watch something from youtube since I showed her those.

 

[PAdisMOM]

We've been unofficially counting down since we had about 180 days left. On Sunday we were down to 19 days left!!! I am giving DDs a small Disney or trip related present each day from day 19 down to 0. This may seem like a lot, but they were mostly things I would have gotten for the trip anyway. Now I put one thing out for each of them in the morning with a little sign counting down the days.

Sunday I gave them each a small backpack to carry in the park. Monday they each got a wallet, Tuesday was a small squirt bottle, today was a disposable camera. Other items that I have coming up include glow necklaces, light up spinning toy wands (for the nighttime parades-found them on clearance sale at the Disney store), flavored chap stick, light up pins, travel size sunblock, DVDs (on sale for $2 at walmart), and an itunes gift card.

We have been having so much fun with this.

 

[maxtomsmom]

We also did a countdown, had a postcard sent from another diser (On the fairy godmailer thread), got a character encyclopedia at Amazon which has most of the characters. This helped them become familiar with some of the older stories, but you can still see the characters like Geppetto. If you get the Travel Channel, you can watch the videos with your kids. I also showed them the website with the pics. We also showed old photographs of our trips when we were little. We explained some rides were still there, but they added some great ones too!

This added to the excitement. We also kept it simple and not too much as we didn't want to hype it up so much to let them discover the greatness for themselves.

It has changed so much since you were there. Before kids we were there during the Millennium Celebration and it changed a lot since then.


Enjoy your trip.