Road trip countdown tickets :)

[GentleOceanWind]

I read about this concept on another website (minivanmom.com maybe?) and decided to give it a special Disney twist.

Prepare "tickets" to give to your dc at the onset of your trip. One ticket can be redeemed every half hour or hour (whatever works for you), for a little goody to keep the kids occupied. This will give the kids a sense of control and much better ability to cope with "how much longer" the drive will be.

My Disney twist (and maybe someone else has already thought of this first ) is to use the free Disney Mickey head paint sample cards as their tickets. I'm going to do tickets every 30 minutes (one of my dc is only two, I think this will be more manageable for her), and I plan to hold up a specific color Mickey head at the time intervals. The kids will have to look through their ziplock baggies of Mickey tickets to find the matching color to redeem for their treat. After the trip, we'll use the "tickets" for color matching and shading games (which I did with my ds when he was a baby 7 years ago, he still fondly remembers his Mickey match game).

Here is a list of the type of goodies I'll be giving them for their Mickey Tickets:

Bagged snacks (healthy but yummy stuff I've divvied up into ziplocks)
Organic 100% fruit juice box
Library books
Library DVD's to watch on our van player
Small sticker books
Magnetic playsets (letters on a small cookie sheet for my youngest)
A puppet show (performed by me over the front seat)
Playdoh (to be used on the cookie sheets)
Sparkly pipe cleaners for making creations/jewelry
A sing-a-long
A meal/snack/stretching break outside the vehicle
Printable travel games from www.minivanmom.com (battleship, road bingo, etc.)
Disney coloring books and crayons
Printable Disney travel journal (from Stephens amazing page)
Velvet art with markers
Library books-on-tape
A mama read-aloud story

I'm printing up the list of goodies and will have it along with the goodies themselves in a travel bag in the passenger seat area with me. My dc usually do pretty well on road trips but I wanted to make this one extra special considering the destination. Let the Magic begin asap!

I'd love to hear any more ideas, other suggestions for goodies, anything that helps your family on the drive or flight!

 

[HeidiPA]

We usually have little wrapped gifts (dollar store type things) and snacks that we give out at intervals, but I've never heard of the ticket idea. That's cute and I really like the color coded match-ups. My oldest daughter will be travelling with friends, to help with their baby - I might have to steal your idea to use with my younger 2. Sounds like fun.

 

[Brer Shay]

This is great! We're planning our first driving trip to Disney in June and I'm just beginning to think about how to handle the road trip. Thanks for the ideas.