How do you entertain everyone during your Disney car trip

[Jmoore215]

Hi everyone, car trips are fun huh? but they can get boring fast. The whole point of taking a car trip is to connect with your family, because on plane rides, everyone may be in different areas. That said, how do you keep your family entertained during car trips. Here is an example, anyone ever played spot the car? What creative games does your family play?

 

[hvivona]

We watch movies, sing disney tunes, play I Spy, sleep, travel connect four, read.

 

[the Fidge]

Mad libs are fun too!

 

[2Monkeys]

I 2nd the Mad Libs! We play the ABC game, and I usually get the kids some kind of new activity book or movie. There are also a couple of threads that have some great links http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=429399 and http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=226819.

 

[littleteapot]

We take a couple 1300 mile trips a year. We invested in personal DVD players. We don't watch much TV/video the rest of the year, so this is a huge treat for my kids. We generally only buy videos right before one of these trips. My dh is "drive it straight through" kind of guy and I can't read in the car for fear of nausea. The movies allow the trip to be a kind of treat for my kids and not a chore for dh and I. We generally only stop for potty breaks, sleeping, and the occasional "extra" snack.

We store the DVD playerss in the big suitcase we only use for our mega-travel. When traveling around town, or on less than 5 hour trips, we listen to audiobooks. We love the Little House books, the Focus on the Family radio theater dramas, Adventures in Odyssey, anything read by Jim Weiss the Story Teller, Hank the Cowdog books read by the author, the Story of the World volumes on CD by Susan Wise Bauer and lots of other things we check out from our library.

Three of my children can draw in the car (one gets sick) so I bring sketch books, pencils and crayons. Pipe cleaners in lots of colors make excellent building/entertainment material for the car.

 

[the Fidge]

We love adventures in Odyessey!!

 

[AllesonWonderland]

Our kids watch movies and read, color etc. One thing I read but haven't tried was give the kids a roll (or two) of quarters when your trip starts. Every time they fight/whine/complain etc. they have to hand over a quarter. Whatever's left at the end of the trip is theirs to spend on souvenirs.

 

[momof5boys]

a 3rd here for mad libs,however since most of my kids are teen or preteen they are getting alittle "colorful" Hard not to laugh when they read them out loud. This time it will be DVD's and gameboys. Lots of times one kid plays and the others watch!

 

[pbharris4]

I buy a few DVDs they haven't seen and save them for the trip (so it keeps their attention). We also do Color Wonder, books, and there are DVD games from Disney they play on the DVD player (there's a dog one and a princess one). Take along Winnie the Pook computer, IPod, etc. DH and play Name Something..Like Name all Brands of Cars or Name 80's Big Hair Bands or something like that. Little Trivia card games. This last trip went pretty quickly in the car.

 

[mnasmom3]

DVD player, iPods, handheld game systems, whiskey lmao: of course, I'd never drug my kids) We drive through the night so they sleep a lot of the trip.

 

[*KeepMovingForward*]

We made the drive from NJ to Orlando once. Although I would never do it again (just too long and wastes valuable vacation time for us-not to mention we found out my DD gets car sick on long rides), we did find MANY things for our kids to do on the drive. Yes, they have Ipods and Nintendo DS and laptops and all that. But they get bored on that stuff fast. I did invest in separate DVD players for both kids and made sure they had the capability of hooking up their home game systems to it (Game Cube, PS2). I bought a power converter from Amazon and the kids were able to plug into the converter, which then plugged into the car cigarette lighter. This kept them happy and quiet for hours. We also brought travel games that came in their own zipper case with fold out boards like Scrabble, Yahtzee, Battleship & Connect 4. When my husband was driving, I would go in back and play games with the kids and he did the reverse when I was driving. A cheap thing we did too, was I bought a bunch of those Invisible Ink activity books at our craft store and that kept the kids happy with all sorts of activities. We also watched movies.

 

[trennr]

We have a 10-12 hour drive ourselves...Our Kid's are pretty good about napping in a moving car.

They have there own music and Game Boy's...but usually we just talk...see who can spot the most different state tags...Red Truck...Yellow Car what ever...ABC game is fun too.

It'll be a cold day in heck when we purchase a DVD Player...those are for whimpy parents!

 

[devotedchristian]

It'll be a cold day in heck when we purchase a DVD Player...those are for whimpy parents!

I'm a Whimp!

 

[*KeepMovingForward*]

I'm a Whimp!

Me too!

 

[jenrein]

We have a 24 hour trip. We have ipods, dvd players, and Gameboys. I also printed out a TON of activity sheets thanks to the link posted in the stickys. I also bought a bunch of new coloring books and 3 boxes of crayons. I dumped the crayons all together in one box with a lid. It helps that we are stopping in VA to visit my sisters and the kids are really excited about that. So that is about 8 hours into the trip and then we will finish the following day.

 

[katiesmom2]

We have a two and a half day drive.

I make up my own travel bingo using clips of restaurant, hotel, gas station logos found online. Then my two kids watch the signs and play along. They have a blast!

They also did Color Wonder, watched movies, listened to music.

 

[sunny1016]

What are mad libs????

 

[Sooze]

What are mad libs????

These are short stories that have blanks in them. Someone in the car asks others to fill in the blanks according to a type of word (noun, adjective, number, color, food, etc.) The people responding have no idea what the final story will be. Once all of the words are filled in, you read the completed story, and since many of the words are out of context, it makes for a funny story! It's also an excellent review for parts of speech! I'm a 2nd/3rd grade teacher and I use it all the time in my class. You can buy them at any book store in the kids' section. Or you could probably search on line and find some free ones to print.

 

[Sooze]

Here's a great idea I got from my sister:

Before the trip, print up "tickets". I made some of my own using the table tool in Word.

Every 30 miles (or more or less depending on the length of your trip), hand the kids a ticket. When they accumulate 5 tickets, they can turn them in for a prize. I went to the Dollar Store and stocked up on fun little what-nots. I even wrapped them in tissue paper so they could "open" their prizes. Then whatever the prize was usually kept them busy for the next hour or so.

When the kids would sleep, it would be extra incentive, because when they woke up, they got to collect the number of tickets of miles we traveled while they were sleeping.

It was fun, and it really made the time fly by!

Have a great trip.

Oh.. and I'm a whimpy parent too!! 15 hours with no DVD=cranky mommy and daddy! Watching DVD on the way to the grocery store=not a good idea!!

 

[sunny1016]

Sooze...thanks!!