Posted this on a different thread yesterday...
My boys are now teenagers, and are up on exactly when the next trip to WDW is (29 days and counting), but we used to enjoy surprising them when they were younger (although we usually gave them a day's heads up).
One of the first times, my oldest son was playing in a youth football league, and we had secretly made plans to go to WDW over Thankgiving. As luck would have it, his team made the finals the weekend before Thanksgiving, and won. When we asked him what the pro players say after they win the Superbowl he said "I'm goin' to Disney World!". We said "great, we'd better get home and pack". About halfway from the field to the house he said "what are we doing this afternoon?". I said "I thought we'd already agreed that we're getting ready to go to Disney World". You couldn't pry the smile off his face when he realized it was true.
About two years later, we'd schedule to go to WDW the day after Christmas. After we opened the presents, the kids asked what the plan was for the rest of the day. At that point we handed them their stocking with the tickets inside and said "after you look at those, we're going to clean up this mess and start packing." Again it took a while to sink in, but they proceeded to bounce around the house for a couple of hours once it did.
When we went on the
Disney Cruise a couple of years ago, the boys knew in advance, but didn't know we made plans to meet up in Cozumel with a family whose kids and ours are the same age and have been friends forever. We got off the boat in Cozumel and took a taxi, telling the boys we'd heard about a nice place where they could swim and snorkel. When we got to the resort, we walked to the pool and their friends (who also were clueless) were swimming around. I said "as long as we're here, maybe you could hang out with your buddies". Needless to say, they had a whole lotta fun that day and still talk about it as one great surprise they never saw coming.
I'm still such a kid when it comes to wanting to spill the beans early, though!