Ideas for getting kids excited about Disney? What are your ideas?

[ARAITHEL]

I have been working with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law on our vacation for September 2012 to Disney. I am a self proclaimed "disney veteran" and have basically got the whole thing figured out. We will be taking my DD (12) who has traveled to Disney two or three times and my nephew (9) and niece(11). To get them excited about going on our trip I purchased a lot of Disney pins online and a lanyard. We love to do pin trading, so I decided to send them each their own lanyard and one pin in this month in the mail. Each month up until our vacation in September, I will send them one Disney Trading Pin. I think this will really help them get excited about their trip and they will have 9 pins to trade when they get to the WORLD!

What do you do to get your kids excited about going to Disney? I think for some children it's really hard to get their minds around, especially if they have never been to WDW before.

 

[sherreis]

For our first trip we made a paper chain 50 days out and hung it in the kitchen. The boys loved tearing a link off every morning.

 

[PrincessTiffany]

Really, I have never had to get my kids excited to go to WDW. We just say, "we are going to Disney World!" and they are excited, even after 8 trips.

 

[LetsDoDisney!]

We do the paper chain too, my son loves to see it get shorter and shorter (as does his mother LOL!). I also need to get out our trading pins. We didn't find one that we needed to complete a set last year so we'll look at that online to see what we're looking for etc. and reminisce about the hunt during last years trip (we actually didn't realize we didn't have the Dale pin until we were leaving the park so it's something we can look forward to this year!).

OP you could print off the chain and cut it and send one to each child and let them make it and start using it - they may get into that!

 

[mjkacmom]

Honestly, I've found that my kids don't get excited for any vacation that far out. They've actually told me to please not let them know about a trip until it's much closer.

 

[Diz Kids]

I usually order the planning DVD from the WDW website and my kids will watch it and get excited about all of the things they will experience at Disney.

This year my DD (5) pulled out paper and some tape one day so she could make a countdown chain for the trip, so I think she is plenty excited on her own!

 

[drgsjh]

I've done countdowns. Last time I made a video of pics from previous trips as the way we told them we were going again and they watched it over and over. We have the Disneyland park music CD we listen to a lot.

This year I made up questions that everyone in the family has to answer for every day until we go - favorite ride in each park, what most excited about, etc. I'm writing down the answers. After this trip, I'm going to make them answer them all again to see if they change.

They help make their own autograph books, too.

As a military family, we generally can only plan vacations a few weeks out anyway, so we don't have a ton of time to anticipate.

 

[stich1fan]

We go a couple of times a year and always have a disney chain hanging in our hall way. Pretty much the day we come back from a trip we make a new one. We live for our WDW vacations.

We make things for the characters and make shirts and tons of other things to take on our vacation, that Disney is always on our minds.

 

[pjacobi]

Since the kids are nearly teenagers, the only way to excite them is to send them a TEXT message!

No matter how many Disney trinkets that send in the mail, you can't force anyone to get excited about Disney. Teenagers are a challenge!


-Paul

 

[dizneechic]

Honestly, I've found that my kids don't get excited for any vacation that far out. They've actually told me to please not let them know about a trip until it's much closer.

Funny you say this. We've done 3 surprise announcements, one 1.5 months out, one the day we were leaving, and this one was 20 days out. I finally asked my DS10 if he liked surprises and if there was a time frame he preferred to know in given we have now done this 3 times. He said he liked surprises but wished they were simpler like a note with breakfast and 2 weeks is the perfect timing. Too far out and the time drags on and it's not as exciting, and the day of he was just mad we woke them at 4AM.