I went thru the owner. So far so good.
The extra room and our own "splash pool" and washer/dryer and full kitchen were my deciding factors. If I wanted to stay in park with our crew of 7 it was gonna be so expensive and cramped!!
Windsor Hills sounds great...hopefully it is! Now I have to conquer the "flying" there part...we have never flown as a family before ( I have only flown twice in my life, last time was a good 10 years ago!) I need desperate help in that department now!! LOL
Any helpful tips for flying with 4 kids?
Becca
and her gang.. ds-12,dd-9,dd-4,dd-2 and hubbie too
Tips for keeping people of ANY age happy during flight: Audio books on an MP3 player!
Your 9&12 year olds might be able to share an audio book (obviously depends on the kids taste in books), and your 2 &4 year can for sure. So you'll only need 2 ipods and 2 splitters for the headphone jacks (about $5). You can get a 1gig mp3 player for about $30 (there is even a $62 mickey mouse shaped one, though it didn't get great reviews).
Then borrow audio books from your library and put them on the mp3 player (remove after your trip to comply with copyright laws). 1 gig will hold about 12-16 hours of audiobook...more than enough for most any plane round trip.
I can highly recommend Peter & the Starcatchers (Peter Pan story) for the older kids (nothing bad in it for the younger, but might be a little over their heads). There are actually 2 books already in this series, and more to come. Another great one for the older kids is Kingdom Keeper (set in Magic Kingdom)....the 2nd in this series comes out in August.
For the younger, you could go with several short stories, even Disney stories, or maybe go for a longer book if they have the attention span. The wizard of oz series (more than just the story from the movie) is super cool (so long as the kids are ok with wicked witch). Other ideas...Charlotte's Web, Dr. Dolittle; Mary Poppins (there is more than one book); Pinocchio; Little house seris; etc etc.
There are also places to download audio books that are in the "public domain"....my favorite is
http://librivox.org/ and they're FREE! The quality can vary, so always listen to a few minutes before you commit to it, you'd hate to find it a bad copy on the airplane! The whole series of Wizard the Oz are available here....search by Baum, Frank
Once you arrive, many of the newer rental cars will have an aux jack in the stereo to be able to plug in an ipod, so you can all listen in the car. For this, I recommend Disney music....a great way to get in the mood (like you need help, lol). We ALWAYS listen to Walt's
Disneyland opening speech on our first morning as we drive through the gates.....it brings tears to the eyes and yet sets the mood perfectly! "To all whom come here, welcome".....and of course the Welcome song is another special one we love.
Aribelle...the audio book addict.
