How to entertain yourself and spouse during a long drive

[LovesTimone]

When DH and I travel (which is often) We take turns with the music, and just talk about whatever, if we talk about work its gets it out of the way for the rest of the trip. On the way to Disney we listen to Disney CD's and talk about past trips, movies and rides. Sometimes he will ask about ADRs and what on the menus or a ride that we haven't ridden in a while.
When the kids were little it was different they would be "are we there yet"
so we would play fruit and vegetable which the first person says green - grapes then the next person green - apples and so forth. or when they got older we played movie lines - Men speak of love when it is convenient for them and at other times it is a bother. ---- What's the movie - Robin Hood.

Have fun
Enjoy the trip

 

[DisneyDoc5]

great thread and ideas! We are driving from Michigan to WDW for the first time with DS's 10,8, and DD 5 (I always said we would never do it because we would have to stop off in Georgia and get a divorce!) - BUT, if we want to see the sunshine state this year, it was going to have to be by car! I will be getting some off these awesome ideas this week! We literally traded our vehicle in early to get one with a dvd - pathetic!

Off course, eating keeps us busy, so each kid will have their own bag with goodies, water, a few individual activies, their Nintendos and Leap Frogs, etc. Hubby will listen to me ramble for hours about whatever Disney subject I want to fillabuster (sp?) on at the moment, then XM radio comedy, Disney music of course! Still debating about driving straight through or stopping - love to hear input on this from people who have done both.

(still debating about a 'pee jar' - DS 8 gives us no warning and it's always a lights and siren emergency - thankfully DD and I can 'budget' the bathroom break times a little better!!!)

 

[Fantasmic23]

Well, I first want to wish you a big congrats on your FIRST Disney vacation!!! And leaving in 6 days?!? You must be out of your minds with excitement! I'm so happy for you!

The first time we drove to WDW (From Connecticut), DH and I listened to the radio and CDs (while the kids were in the backseat with a Nintendo DS and a portable DVD player). Of course, we had to take turns with the CDs because we have very different tastes in music. We fared a little better with the radio, especially when we discovered a radio station that played nothing but 80s tunes. For about two hours we were like, "Remember this song?" "Remember when they played this video over and over again on MTV?" Prince's "Little Red Corvette" reminds me of that 2008 trip because we heard it twice while driving down to Florida and once on the way back.

This past February when we made the drive, the radio/cd player wasn't working , but we had the iPod and the portable iPod player. We had more variety as far as music was concerned, but DH didn't want to listen to any of the stories I had downloaded.

Big Disney Nerd that I am , I've already started putting together a Disney-themed playlist for this November's trip. DH kind of likes to "rock" while he drives, so I don't know if "When You Wish Upon a Star" and "The Second Star to the Right" (among others) is going to go over well, but we'll see.

Have an awesome time! Safe driving.

 

[toy]

We spend imaginary money. If we won the lottery we would...

We chat about the last trip and how to make this trip better.

We make fun of family members. (totally safe with us- we dislike the same ones )

My husband enjoys books on tape (ipod) while I sleep or process pictures from the trip/last trip

I buy movies for several months before we leave and only allow them to be played during the trip

 

[MickeyMomOfThree]

We always drive from New York. We listen to tons of comedy on XM radio. We also will stop at Cracker Barrel Restaurants and get books on tape. They have a rental system like Redbox where yo ucan rent at any location and return to any other. Also, Redbox is good, there are lots of Walmarts right off the freeway if you want to just listen of course. I could talk to my DH for hours so we talk a lot about old memories, past trips, whatever. I also Facebook and DIS and tell him what I am reading about and that gets us talking.

Have a great trip and enjoy the ride!

 

[StitchFanZ]

FYI, the library has lots of books on tape for all ages. I usually check out several and we are good to go. I don't know the ages of your kids but we have really enjoyed the Hank the Cowdog, Hardy Boys, the Redwall series, The Edge Chronicles.
One good thing about books on tapes is often the library only has the first few books in a series on tape. Once your kids are hooked on the series then they have to read the rest or you can choose to make them read alouds for some variety.

 

[bas71873]

We prefer to argue, that's why we fly!

HAHA. Us too!

 

[Doc CW]

Music really good music is how we do it. We alternate what genre of music we listen to after every CD, but this works out because we all listen to the same general style of music

 

[littlbugmom]

We typically don't drive longer than 3 or 4 hours but driving together is fun. DH and I have always enjoyed that car time because we don't normally have that much time to just talk about stuff. Trivia is fun, too. (sports trivia printed on Pringles potato chips....if DH got it wrong, I got the chip)


We like to listen to old music and sing along.

We discuss The Young and the Restless and how if we were the writers, we'd do this, this and this.

We talk politics and religion.

Comedy cds are great! (we actually use our comedy dvds but obviously, just listen)


We talk about our retirement goals....our hopes for our children, gossip about our crazy inlaws (both sides), relive glory days, etc...

 

[BigEeyore]

Books on CD (free from the library, as others have said).
We download the books to the I-pod, and use headphones with a splitter so we can listen to the books without disturbing sleeping kids, or worrying about whether the book has inappropriate language, etc, we wouldn't want the kids to hear!

 

[ShannonMB]

I'm loving these ideas, and while I usually groan at the idea of a long road trip, we are driving to NC this summer and I'm actually a *tiny* bit excited after reading this thread! Keep the great ideas coming, I'm subbing.

 

[iwrbnd]

We turn the radio on and play name the band and song. Whoever names the band first gets a point and the same for the song. We can kill a lot of time with this and laugh a lot out of how competitive we get! Now, thanks to Guitar Hero/RockBand our kids are starting to get into the game!

 

[MamaJessie]

Between talking and music we really have a good time on our road trip down (up is slightly more depressing)

With 4 kiddos we don't always get time to sit and chat, so we hold hands and catch up on all those little insignificant things that don't come up every day.

This thread has somehow made me excited for the actual ride to Disney

 

[Syrreal]

We talk about other people. LOL!!!

Most of the time we will listen to the iPod, sing along with the music, talk. We don't really play games, but the Book of Questions thing sounds really interesting. I'm sure as DS gets older we'll have to come up with some new things to do, though.

 

[CuteAndFluffy]

I think for our next trip I'm going to pick up one of these Table Topics cubes. We've worked our way through the Book of Questions and need something new.

http://www.tabletopics.com/?gclid=CMPRqpHbzaACFcrY5wodSUtT0g

 

[monorailsilver]

My dh & I haven't been on a long driving trip since 2001.

But then & previous trips we would look at the names of towns, say Mechanicsville in PA & say "I think all the Mechanics live here." Seriously every year we'd drive thru for a car show & it would be the same joke. Now that I think about it, maybe we were delerious from being so tired!

We look at billboards & comment on them, again with the towns or roads that we go under/over.

Sometimes we are just quiet. I am usually the map reader & on the days of Trip Tics in a book it was a highlight when I'd say that I was flipping to the next page.

We would also try to find all the licence plates from all the states & would cheer when we found one from Ohio-we aren't from there but we have a running joke that the few people we know from Ohio (I am talking a max of 5 people so this is a disclaimer that I am not knocking the entire state), but the people we know don't leave their state. A few have chimed in on how far they had to drive to Indy or St. Louis or Nashville. Um.. yeah OK, we are coming from CT & we are about 60 min or more from the NY state line & we never complained.