How to Watch Movies on Long Road Trips

[MandiC]

Does she *really* like watching movies? I say this because we brought a portable dvd player with us last summer on a road trip to Ottawa, ON ( 16 hours there, 18 hours back, we drove straight through both times...18 was pretty miserable...my patience waned about hour 13 ) and my kids watched about 20 minutes of a movie before we were left listening to it while they played on their ipods/leappads/tablets. We played a few car games, but mostly they just played on their electronics and wanted nothing to do with the movies. They like movies at home, but I guess not so much on the road...and remember the children's dramamine! Found out the hard way my oldest gets car sick when she is playing with/watching electronics in the car.

 

[Gumbo4x4]

Does she *really* like watching movies? I say this because we brought a portable dvd player with us last summer on a road trip to Ottawa, ON ( 16 hours there, 18 hours back, we drove straight through both times...18 was pretty miserable...my patience waned about hour 13 ) and my kids watched about 20 minutes of a movie before we were left listening to it while they played on their ipods/leappads/tablets. We played a few car games, but mostly they just played on their electronics and wanted nothing to do with the movies. They like movies at home, but I guess not so much on the road...and remember the children's dramamine! Found out the hard way my oldest gets car sick when she is playing with/watching electronics in the car.

Our kids have gotten a LOT of use out of the DVD player, but not lately. They'll be 11 & 15 this year and we may not take it with us this year. Last year, they didn't turn it on once (STL to Orlando & back complete with an 8-hour delay due to a police emergency). Year before on our trip to PCB, youngest watched ONE movie the entire trip.

That said, it was a Godsend when they were younger.

 

[jvz82]

I say invest in a cheap portable dvd player!

This thread made me remember being a kid and driving to Disney. Took us 27 hours. My parents would take one of those little TVs with the built in VCR and strap it to the top of a cooler with a bungee cord, plugged into the cigarette lighter. Things have sure come a long way, lol.

 

[TiggerTrigger]

Another vote for getting a portable DVD player. Before getting a vehicle with it built in, we would always take our portable and it made the road trip sooooooooooooo much easier. It's also a lot easier, from our experiences to keep those with a solid charge vs. tablets and such.

 

[AZMermaid]

We had tne portable DVD player headrest thing and it started giving us issues after like 3 trips. We dealt with it (basically, it would only,play perfectly pristine DVDs) for a few more. This year, we bought headrests for our iPad and downloaded a few movies from Amazon and Disney anywhere. That worked well!

 

[DanaRylan]

I use Vudu to buy movies. You can download them to your iPad.

 

[HeyKoolaid]

We get a lot of movies from our local library. That might help reduce the expense and help you find something new to watch.

 

[MouseOfCards]

We are driving to Disney in a couple weeks from Michigan. Having done this many, many times before DD was born, we know the drive takes 18 hours if we limit stops, and we're doing it all in one go.

I'm looking for suggestions on watching movies in the car; specifically, letting DD watch movies in the backseat.

Here's what we've got:
- A Honda CRV that doesn't have any kind of DVD players installed
- An iPad that does NOT work with data, only Wi-Fi (we have four movies downloaded to watch on here from past road trips, but obviously Netflix is out due to the whole no-data thing)
- I also have a Chromebook and we own an external CD/DVD drive for it

Is my best plan to buy some more movies or TV episodes on iTunes? (This may not be an option as I think the iPad is low on storage space.)
OR finagle the DVD drive with the Chromebook for her?
OR should I just go buy a $50 portable DVD player at Wal-Mart?
OR... something else I have't thought of?

Another option: you can also purchase a wireless travel router like this one, currently selling for under $16 on Amazon (there are other models/brands available):

http://www.amazon.com/HooToo-Wirele...ie=UTF8&qid=1459581918&sr=8-1&keywords=hootoo

You connect a USB storage device (e.g. USB memory/flash drive, or USB hard drive) to the router, then connect from your Ipad to the router via wifi, and can access movies, music, photos, etc. from the USB device. It essentially increases the storage capacity accessible to your Ipad. You can store hundreds of movies (converted from your DVD's), many videos downloaded from y..tube, music, and family videos and photos onto a USB memory stick and have fun accessing them on your Ipad. We own one. Does NOT require Internet access.