Surprise last minute trip? Was it a good experience for you?

[thatduffgirl]

Hi everyone!

I *might* be getting a nice bonus in December and my DH has some time off in early January that we were going to spend going to my inlaws. If this bonus comes through, I was thinking about surprising him and the kids (ages 3,7, and 11) with a last minute, surprise trip.


In my imagination, this sounds like a WONDERFUL idea for everyone, but I wonder, is it worth it?

Have any of you done this before? Was it a lot of stress trying to do everything last minute, and to surprise everyone to boot? If you have had either experience (either last minute or trying to surprise a family) I would love to hear your insight. Would you do it again?

 

[barkley]

honest to god-this is the way i live my travel life! my kids (dd 12, ds 9 1/2) drive me crazy with anticipation over trips.


so....dd is now (under threat of trip cancelation) let in on the surprises (once they are a DONE DEAL)-BUT, prior to that here's what we've done-


a wdw trip immediatly after xmas include gifts from santa of new clothes, and pjs and such (all disney related) along with one box for the family to open from 'mickey' with the video, tickets and special invite to come and visit).

a disney cruise around the time of dh'd bday included a gift to him wherein mickey invited him to join him on board-along with '3 of your closest pals


and the best (still have friends who found this 'evil'-was when a trip was planned just before a school vacation (note teachers were in on it)-as the the kids said their gooodbye-i casualy mentioned 'tell mrs. x you'll send her a post card from wdw'-the kids looked at me like i was crazy-but the teachers would say 'yeah tell mickey hello for me'-it was the best reaction, finding out you were leaving that night or the next day-it was well worthe 10 or 12 hours of

 

[Zoemakes5]

Did that as a christmas gift one year, though it was just my fiance and I at the time, no kids.
If there's any time of year to do a last minute WDW vacation, it's January, since the crowds are at their lowest. They tend to also have some pretty good deals. Though, because it's one of their slowest times, the hours tend to be shorter and they don't have fireworks each night. It also tends to be a good time for them to do ride renovations and shut downs. Just FYI.
But, I'd totally do it. I do all the planning myself anyway, so the surprise wouldn't be all that tough. You could actually make ADR's now, planning around a good weekend or something, and if it didn't work out in Dec. you could cancel them. That way you'd have that piece of it done.

 

[glass slipper girl]

I've done both a last minute surprise trip and a well planned in advance surprise trip for my kids. Our kids very first trip was a surprise. We had been planning for more than a year to go in May of 2004. The kids had seen the planning video and we'd bought the sing-along videos and such so they had an idea of what it would be like and they were very excited about going. My then 3 year old talked ALL THE TIME about WDW and exactly what he would do first. In October of 2003 my parents bought an RV. It had always been their plan to retire and travel in an RV so this was the start of it to be able to do some short trips before fully retiring. After a weekend trip in October and a longer trip over Thanksgiving, they decided that one upgrade they had thought they wouldn't care about actually was important to them so they started looking to have it added on. Dad found out that a place in Kissimmee could do it for them and had availability to do it at the end of the year. The company he has been contracting with (he's technically retired but has his own consulting business and has been consulting for this one company for the last 2 or 3 years) is closed for the week between Christmas and New Years so he decided it was perfect timing to go to Florida and have this thing added on to the RV. SInce the kids were so excited about WDW they decided to give us a trip as a Christmas present. They told me about it on November 30th so I could start planning. We left for Florida the evening of 12/26. So I had less than a month to plan our very first trip and to plan it for the absolute busiest time of year! Thankfully I had already been doing research for the spring trip so I had a head start! The kids knew we were going on vacation but they didn't know it was to WDW till we got there. Of course we had the most underwhelming reaction ever from them. Since we were still going in May we bought APs and went to DTD on 12/27 after dinner to pick them up and be ready for the MK bright and early on 12/28. We told the kids after diinner...had the video camera running and everything. DS 21 months was too young to "get it" but with as excited as DS 3.5 was, we expected him to FLIP! We sat them down, gave them things to unwrap (a present Santa forgot to leave for them) and they had Disney sweatshirts, mouse ears and Disney Dollars. We asked where they thought they could use those and DS 3.5 says (maybe Disney World?" We said yes and that he was going IN THE MORNING and would eat eggs and sausage with Pooh just like he had been wanting to do for a long time! We didn't get the reaction we expected...he said "Disney World? Ok. ((((pause)))) Can we go to the pool now?" Of course the next morning when we were on our way to the park they were over the top excited and just could not wait to get through those gates. The trip was fantastic and we all had a great time! Thanks to planning with TGM, we went with a good plan. No trouble getting ADRs (or PSs at the time) for places we were interested in but they weren't the tough to get places ("brunch" at Crystal Palace and Chef Mickey's, dinners at Ohana, Cape May, Rainforest Cafe, and Prime Time and lunch at Nine Dragons).

The well planned surprise trip was in May of this year. It started out as that I would take DS now 6 and we would go for a long weekend just the 2 of us for Star Wars Weekend as he was starting to be a Star Wars fan and I thought he would enjoy meeting the characters while they were still "real" for him. DH was fine with that but my mother thought it wasn't fair to leave DS4 at home. I said DH could not take time off right then and I couldn't do it alone with both kids (little did we know at the start of planning that I'd be 4 months pregnant on that trip either!). So Grandma decides she will join us so DS 4 can go too. We left the evening after DS 6's last day of kindergarten. We picked him up from his last day and I told them we were meeting DH for lunch to "celebrate." Graduation had been the week before and the last week was "fun week." So we had lunch with DH and at the end he said "you'd better hurry or you'll be late. You still have to pick up Grammy before you go to the airport." DS 4 said "why are we taking Grammy to the airport?" DH responded "didn't you know? You are going to WDW today!" That time we did get the reaction we were looking for. LOL They didn't believe it till I showed them the luggage in the back of the van. They called my Mom from my cell and said "PACK YOUR BAGS FAST! WE'RE GOING TO WDW!" You've never seen 2 more excited kids arriving at the airport! That was lot's of fun to get to do...but it was hard for me to do all the planning and keep it a secret from them...worth it in the end, but hard!

 

[Karel]

We decided one year to do a Thanksgiving trip - and planned it four days before we left. We didn't tell the kids.

We woke them up early Monday morning for their first plane trip ever.

It was one of our better trips because there was no expectations. The hardest part was finding restuarants because everything was booked. At one point, I called Dining and said 'give me anything you've got for dinner'.

I couldn't keep it a secret from my husband though. He hates secrets.

 

[Not so Dumbo]

If you've been there before and know your way around the parks, then I'd say why not, sounds like fun.

 

[sukhakuli]

Glass Slipper Girl, that was such a cute story. It's funny how we plan on our kids to give us certain reactions, and then they go and do the opposite.

Most of our trips have been last minute, I think this is the only one that we have tons of time to plan out. My husband's work only puts the schedules out a few months in advance, so we would never know until pretty last minute when we could go. It always worked out just fine. We may have missed CRT last time, but that's not a make or break for our trip. Even if you do almost no planning, and don't get ADR's, you can still ride the rides and see the shows and fireworks, and that's the best part, IMO.

 

[CindyAnn]

Hi Thatduffgirl. Since you were planning to spend that time with the in-laws, I think you might want to include your husband in the planning, and make it a surprise for the kids. He may feel the time with his parents is too important??

We surprised the kids twice - once at Christmas for a trip which took place about 2 weeks later, and once in November for a trip that started about 2 hours later. Both were very successful, but the children had to be given hard evidence (passes, car rental info, hotel info) before they would even believe us the second time, lol.

 

[minniebeth]

We had an opportunity quite a few years ago to go to DL from the east coast in ONE day...my DH was called out there on a last minute business trip and was told he was welcome to bring his family expenses paid.
I didn't even have time to think to say yes or no, it was a given that it would be yes! We had 2 very young children at the time. I put together the "essentials" and were totally spontaneous with the rest... WHICH IS NOT ME AT ALL! I am a compulsive planner.
We had to be flexible and kind of winged it, but it was great fun, probably worked out better with such young kids.
When a great opportunity comes along, sometimes it's just meant to be!

 

[Melissa]

I love the idea of it but for most adults I don't see how it is feasible, I'd love it if Dh did that for me but both he and I have commitments and work stuff that the other one could never know about so the scheduling would not work. For kids I think it is awesome, our dd has been to WDW multiple times and she is only 8. All our trips have been great but the one she talks about most was the one when she was 4 and we had her do a scavenger hunt and unwrap clues about an hour before we left for the airport. She loved it so much we are doing it again in November. She knows we are going in May but will have no idea about our Nov. trip, until she does her clue hunt and finds the final thing, We have invited DH's mom and we will hide her with the final clue. Can't wait!

 

[minniebeth]

I love the idea of it but for most adults I don't see how it is feasible, I'd love it if Dh did that for me but both he and I have commitments and work stuff that the other one could never know about so the scheduling would not work. For kids I think it is awesome, our dd has been to WDW multiple times and she is only 8. All our trips have been great but the one she talks about most was the one when she was 4 and we had her do a scavenger hunt and unwrap clues about an hour before we left for the airport. She loved it so much we are doing it again in November. She knows we are going in May but will have no idea about our Nov. trip, until she does her clue hunt and finds the final thing, We have invited DH's mom and we will hide her with the final clue. Can't wait!

I Love the idea of the scavenger hunt! That is such a fun idea!
DH and I are thinking about planning a trip for next year after the holidays but having it be our family Xmas gift (no other gifts besides a few each from Santa)...that would be a great activity for them to do that morning to find out what their gift would be!

 

[conciergekelly]

We picked up our kids early from school and told them they were going to the Orthidontist .They didn't notice where we were at until they saw the low flying planes above the car near the airport. They went crazy! It was fun!

 

[SqueakyMouse]

We surprised the kids with our fall break trip last year. They honestly thought we were going to visit friends in relatives in Atlanta. I got a little nervous when we were less than 30 minutes from the city, and everyone was still awake. Fortunately, all the kids fell asleep; and we were able to keep cruising south with no questions asked. Since I am the trip planner in the family, it really didn't matter that the rest of the crew had no warning of our excursion. It ended up being one of our best WDW visits.

 

[thatduffgirl]

Hi Thatduffgirl. Since you were planning to spend that time with the in-laws, I think you might want to include your husband in the planning, and make it a surprise for the kids. He may feel the time with his parents is too important??

We surprised the kids twice - once at Christmas for a trip which took place about 2 weeks later, and once in November for a trip that started about 2 hours later. Both were very successful, but the children had to be given hard evidence (passes, car rental info, hotel info) before they would even believe us the second time, lol.

That is an excellent point, Cindy, I didn't think about that, but we will be spending Christmas with them so I think that will be okay...I'll fish around and get a feel for that.


It was really funny, we were in the car and were going to take the kiddos to Chuckie Cheese as a surprise. I turned around and said, "Surprise! We are taking you somewhere fun for dinner!" and my six year old yells out, "Disney World? I knew it!"


Can't wait to actually do that!

 

[thatduffgirl]

I Love the idea of the scavenger hunt! That is such a fun idea!
DH and I are thinking about planning a trip for next year after the holidays but having it be our family Xmas gift (no other gifts besides a few each from Santa)...that would be a great activity for them to do that morning to find out what their gift would be!

A scavenger hunt is a great idea? Any tips on how to pull that off? I am kinda drawing a blank.

Seriously, this is getting me so excited! Wouldn't it be awesome if we all got surprise vacations like this? Well, maybe not, I like to plan it...

 

[Melissa]

The first scavenger hunt we did was simple b/c she was 4. I wrapped up some sunglasses, a single use camera, a plastic airplane and after each thing we'd have her guess what we we going to do that afternoon, the final thing was a Mickey figure being only 4 she didn't get it til we unwrapped Mickey. Now she will be just 9 and is really into the movie National Treasure so we will do something more complicated with clues and all. she won't be expecting it at all b/c she has always wanted to go to FL. for her b day but as a rule my Dh can never be gone in November so it was never an option.

 

[pezpam]

As long as your husband is sure he'll have that time off and it won't cause huge problems with the inlaws, go for it! It's hard to keep the secret, but it does cut down on the craziness if your kids are the type to get worked up for weeks before WDW.

I did a surprise trip with DD and it was wonderful. I picked her up from school the last day before vacation and headed out. (I have NO idea how I managed not to tell her before then - I about busted several times - but it was worth it!) At some point, she realized we weren't headed home. "Oh, I thought we'd go out to dinner." "Oh, ok." Then she realized we were pulling into the parking garage at the airport. "Yeah, I thought we'd go to that place you like here at the airport." "Oh, ok." It wasn't until I pulled the suitcase out of the trunk that she realized what was up. She grinned all the way through the airport. And yes,we did eat at the place she likes at the airport.

One other time, I managed to keep it secret until the plane had taken off. She knew we were going to Tampa to see my grandmother, and we were, but she had no idea I'd added time at WDW to the vacation. The look on her face was priceless.