How to surprise kids?

[DisneyMomChristine]

I'm having some trouble coming up with the "perfect" way to surprise my girls with our May trip. They will be 4 & 6, it will be for their birthdays and it will be their second time going. I don't want to wake them up at 4am for our flight and surprise them then...that's sure to yield grumpy results. LOL. So, please share how YOU surprised your little ones, and hopefully I can figure it out! . PS, has anyone told their kids IN the Disney store while picking out a dress to bring for BBB? Kinda leaning that way...

 

[scrapjackie]

I too am struggling to come up with the perfect way, so I will be following your thread!

My kids are 6 and 5 and we are going in April- for Easter. Thinking of tying it into the easter bunny somehow, but not sure. My problem is that we are driving and if my daughter knows we are going to disney for a 20 hr drive she might drive me insane! SO I have to think of someway to tell them we are going on a trip, but not where!

 

[JustAustin]

When we took our five year old for the first time for his birthday, we surprised him on the morning of our trip. When he woke up, we sat him down in front of the tv and showed him the Disney planning DVD. We had already watched it many times together, but always told him that we couldn't do a Disney trip that year, that our vacation would be to somewhere else. Well, that morning while watching the DVD, we told him that we were going to go after all. It took a minute for it to sink in with him; I think his exact words were "For real?" And a few hours later we hopped on our plane and were in Orlando.

However you tell them, enjoy your trip! One of my favorite pictures from Disney is the smile on my little one's face as he saw the castle for the first time.

 

[MomTo3PrincessesInNJ]

We've done it twice.

The first time the girls were 6, 3 & 18 months. We set them up for an early rise by telling them we had to take H to the airport for a work trip. We had them go to bed early and dressed them in their airplane clothes after their baths (they wore long sleeve Cinderella t-shirts and black leggings. I told them they were new PJs and they never asked any questions.) I used a wrapped box filled with Disney rincess balloons and a sign that said "We're going to Disney World RIGHT NOW." I had the 6 year old read the sign to her sisters. The 4 year old was NOT impressed right away, she said she was tired and didn't want to go on a plane ride. But that is her personality. She wasn't even excited the 2nd time and we didn't wake her up at the crack of dawn!

The second time was last month The girls were 8, 5 & 2. We decided to take the family to Disney to celebrate our 2 oldest daughters birthdays (the oldest actually turned 8 during the trip). We told the girls we weren't having their usual HUGE joint birthday party (DD1's bday is Dec 15, DD2 is Jan 9) beacuse we just moved into a new house. Instead we had immediate family over for brunch & cake. I got them each a new Cinderella dress since we had an ADR @ 1900PF on DDs birthday. In the card I had an invitation to join Cinderella and Prince Charming for dinner @ 1900PF the next night. DD was confused -- asking how we were going to go to dinner in Disney World the next night and then we told her that she better hurrry up and pack because our flight was leaving in 4 hours! As usual, our middle daughter was not impressed. She was mad that she couldn't wear the Cindy dress right away. Oh well, you can't win them all!

H & I asked the girls if in the future they wanted to know in advance or be surprised, and all 3 said surprise. Looks like we'll have to keep coming up with ways to surprise them!

I have to say, we'll never do the early flight again. It was well worth the extra nights stay at POR to arrive at MCO, go to the hotel, & sleep before heading to the parks the next day. Our flight left around 5p and we were in our room by 10p.The next day we were well rested and ready to go!

Good luck!

 

[MandiC]

We surprised our kids at Christmas, we had a picture of Cinderella's castle with "We're Going to Disney World!" on it made into a puzzle. Split the puzzle between two presents and had them put it together.
Maybe you could tell them at Easter? Do an egg hunt with one egg containing something to tell them you are going?