Surprising the kids but one already knows...

[apwagner]

We are planning on taking our DDs, 10 and 13, to WDW in May. They will be missing the last few days of school for the trip so we can hopefully beat some of the summer crowds by going before Memorial Day. We told the girls we would be going on vacation but just to Daytona or Myrtle Beach not WDW since DH and I just got back from an adults only trip a few weeks ago. My DD13 got very upset about missing the last day of school for a vacation so we decided to tell her and now shes excited! All three of us really want to surprise DD10 with the trip but we arent quite sure how. Im thinking about just giving her the magic band when we are about an hour from Orlando and saying something like, "You're gonna need this." We have a 13 hour drive to get to Orlando and Id like to not tell her til we are close but I need ideas on how to do it creatively in the car.
Any ideas?

 

[DisneySOS]

If she thinks you are doing a beach vacation, get her a beach pail, shovel etc. and connect the magic band to the handle of the beach pail. Maybe even a Disney themed towel too.

 

[ZephyrHawk]

Have DD13 come up with the surprise and be in charge of it.

 

[disnut8]

This is what we did with our then "just recently introduced to her new family" granddaughter (our son proposed to her mother on the trip). She thought she was just going to Florida to meet her new family and she did but she didn't know we were all going to Disney World (half the family lived in Florida). So, we packed her into the car, my son diverted her from all the billboards and once we pulled onto World Drive, I turned back and said, "*name*, remember when we said you would be going to Disney World one day?" She said she did. I said "today is the day!"

 

[Hibiscus]

At age 10, I would have enjoyed the anticipation & planning the trip with my sister more than I would have enjoyed being surprised.

 

[apwagner]

This is what we did with our then "just recently introduced to her new family" granddaughter (our son proposed to her mother on the trip). She thought she was just going to Florida to meet her new family and she did but she didn't know we were all going to Disney World (half the family lived in Florida). So, we packed her into the car, my son diverted her from all the billboards and once we pulled onto World Drive, I turned back and said, "*name*, remember when we said you would be going to Disney World one day?" She said she did. I said "today is the day!"

This is the sweetest story!

 

[apwagner]

At age 10, I would have enjoyed the anticipation & planning the trip with my sister more than I would have enjoyed being surprised.

Good point. Maybe we can surprise her for Xmas or her birthday. Then she gets some surprise and gets to help plan the trip!

 

[palmtreegirl]

At age 10, I would have enjoyed the anticipation & planning the trip with my sister more than I would have enjoyed being surprised.

Me too

 

[JustCallMeMommy]

We didn't tell DD where we were going for her 10th birthday trip....at all. We wanted to see how far we could go before she figured it out. She knew we were going on a surprise vacation, and we were flying. She KNEW there was no way we could be going to Disney since we had a December trip planned (this was October). I have pictures of her holding the luggage with the ME tags clearly visible, but she didn't figure it out until we landed in Atlanta to change planes and the gate agent asked about our connection in front of her. It was fun!

 

[Sunnywho]

same here, I also wouldn't have wanted to be the only one not to know, but that might depend on the kid's personality

 

[rainboots]

We are surprising the kids at Christmas, for our trip beginning Jan 30. Then we can do some fun stuff to build excitement, but they aren't counting down for 250 days like I have been!

My plan is to wrap a big box that has no lid, so when the wrapping paper rips open, helium Mickey balloons float up w/ magic bands, ear hats & gift cards tied to them.

 

[Mainemama]

This past summer, we planned a very last minute trip connected to a trip the kids knew about. It was so last minute, we decided to just drive to Disney and see when they noticed. Well, as we partly expected, one of our big kids handled this well (they were both asleep through the gates, when we thought they would figure it out, but woke as we arrived at the Yacht Club. Disney is displayed on that sign.) our middle kid said, "well we can't be at Disney", and then happily changed gears to have a WDW day. Our oldest was so mad.... Though we never had said where we were staying that night, she believed we were staying somewhere else. She was happy in the end, but the first few hours weren't pretty. She was 10, by the way. For our upcoming trip, we will be gone for Christmas, which we know may upset our oldest, until she gets her mind around it. So, we are going to tell her first, and ask her how she wants to surprise the youngest two. We do want them to know before we leave, as it is a really big secret to keep! Probably going to tie it into a birthday surprise for our middle kid.