With DVC how do you surprise your kids?

[Madhatter family]

Since we have DVC, we have obviously made many trips to WDW. We took a year off this year and the younger kids were pretty disappointed. So we are really wanting to surprise them next year with a trip.

But how do you surprise your kids when they know the route to WDW?

We are either 20 hour drive or 2 hour plane ride away - so it would take some pretty impressive sneakiness to pull this off. I'm at a loss unless we just break down and tell them at the airport or pick them up from school with the car loaded and tell them about 3 hours into the drive. ETA: the kids will be 9 & 10 at time of trip

Anyone able to surprise their multi-trip kids?

 

[AmyB2006]

You want them not to know until you're arriving on property? That might be kind of hard if they know the way at that age.

I like picking them up with the car packed and saying ... "We're on our way to Disney!!" That would be a surprise for sure, just not on property.

 

[BEASLYBOO]

But how do you surprise your kids when they know the route to WDW? ?

Other than binding, blind folding and gagging them, which might be frowned upon by other cars, passers by and the police/sherriff's, you certainly don't want to end up with Mickey in stripes!

I think you need to start at home! I would make up a story about going somewhere else, a somewhat unattractive and boring location, really put it on thick! Then on departure day I might surprise the kids with Mickey pancakes for breakfast or Mickey cookies once in the car! Or some sort of car game, like Mickey trivia!

My son, almost 3 at time of purchase, he's 16 now, a bit jaded for lack of a better word! He can drive to Disney now so there's no fooling him, but he knew the route when he was 4 once we'd gone several times! He still loves it though, now he's thinking of that trip alone with his buddies, whom we've brought we us so many times. He has to be 18 for that to happen!

They grow up fast, enjoy them!

 

[juncker]

I see a couple of options:

1) Drug the kids so that they wake up in WDW (just kidding)
2) Head to Orlando by going through Nevada (probably not practical)
3) Head to Orlando, but tell them that you’re only going to Legoland and Gatorworld instead this trip because Disney is so expensive. If they behave well you can tell them that they may be able to also get a trip to Ripley’s.
4) How about making up a story that some long lost relative died down in Orlando and they need to go to the funeral? Sorry, no time for Disney on this trip.

How I’d really like to surprise my kids would be to have Mom and Dad get in the car and tell them that we’re taking an adult only trip to WDW this time and that Aunt Edna will be watching them this week. Surprise! … and then we leave without them.

I really shouldn’t enjoy mis-leading children as much as I do, but I love the idea. Maybe I need to check with Santa or the Easter Bunny to see what they have to say on the subject.

Good luck and may the farce be with you....

 

[jakenjess]

We've had this exact scenario before. It was the last day of school, and we had told the kids ahead of time that right after school we were going to Boston to spend a couple of nights. About halfway there we stopped and broke the news that we were going to Boston, but to the airport to fly to Disney! They were really surprised -- it worked out great. Good luck!

 

[sweetdana]

So I tried this with DD6 at the time, we lost all the excitement. planning? we usually have. The count down, the can we go to Y and Y, the I am going to get C and D's autograph.

Though I would surprise her again, I would do it with enough time to enjoy the planning part of the trip with her.

She was like what.. we are going tomorrow, okay..

Instead of the Doing the DW dance every day for 30 days before.

 

[sgtpet]

There is no suprising my kids. It is almost an expectation now. My daughter, 9, told my mother that it is her job to go to WDW.

 

[lodge]

Drive at night, when they fall asleep in the car. You'll be arriving late, but perhaps they'll be so groggy that wherever you tell them you are, they'll buy it, then wake up at WDW. It worked for us as kids and we loved the AM surprise (not Disney though).

 

[sarahk0204]

When my kids were 7 and our friends' kids were 8 and 11, we surprised them. We drove, so the night before we left, we took our kids out for ice cream and had them do a word puzzle where they had to answer questions and fill in the blanks with the first letter of the answer. The phrase they spelled was "Disney World", and when they turned the piece of paper over, it said something like, "that is where we are going tomorrow". We got up at 3:00 AM and started our drive to Disney.

Our friends flew, and they don't live in the same city as we do, so their kids didn't know that we were on our way to WDW. Our friends made some sort of excuse that they had to drive to another town to do some shopping. They got halfway to the town when their younger daughter noticed the suitcases in the back seat!

So, surprising at that age is doable, but I don't think you can keep the secret until the plane lands or you drive through the WDW sign!

 

[lucyem]

We managed to surprise our kids this past new years. Like you we have a long drive (23 hours) but grandma lives 3 hours into the trip. We told the kids we were going to see grandma and packed the car for an overnight. They never noticed the other suitcase in the back which had all the disney specific stuff in it. Granted we knew we would not get far past grandmas exit on the highway, but at least it was a surprise. To say they were thrilled was an understatement

 

[JWG]

We tried surprising our, then, 4-year old in 2010. It was her 4th trip since we were DVC members. It worked, sort of.

We managed to get all the way there without her figuring it out. But, the response was You Tube fail worthy. She was not shocked nor surprised. The response was more equivalent to, "yea, this is what we do - what's the big deal?"

We've created a monster.

 

[AmyB2006]

We tried surprising our, then, 4-year old in 2010. It was her 4th trip since we were DVC members. It worked, sort of.

We managed to get all the way there without her figuring it out. But, the response was You Tube fail worthy. She was not shocked nor surprised. The response was more equivalent to, "yea, this is what we do - what's the big deal?"

We've created a monster.

There is no suprising my kids. It is almost an expectation now. My daughter, 9, told my mother that it is her job to go to WDW.

OMG, I about died reading these two responses. Sooooo funny. LOL

 

[crazybones27]

We surprised our children last year for our May/June trip. They were only 2 and 4 at the time so it was a little easier to surprise them. We drove down from NJ and the whole way our daughter kept asking where the heck we were going. I forget now what we told them, but it was a believable excuse. For some reason at that time they both came up with the idea that we were going to Chuck E Cheese. Literally 19+ hours these kids thought they were going to Chuck E Cheese no matter how much we told them they weren't. We finally arrived at the entrance to Disney World and the kids realized we were going to WDW and we got a "Yay!! But what about Chuck E Cheese?" . Needless to say it took another 2 hrs to convince them we weren't going to Chuck E Cheese . Unfortunately we realized they had been so many times before that we could no longer get away with surprising them lol.

Our children have their own calendar that hangs under ours. Each day our children love to mark the days off. The other day I snuck a Mickey head on the day we arrive this month. I drew it on there while they were asleep to see how long it would take them to realize. They found it the next day and gave me such a surprised look because they knew what it meant. While I'd love to keep surprising them by getting all the way to the gates these little moments are wonderful too .

 

[Madhatter family]

Awesome ideas here thanks! I'm not sure if we will be able to completely surprise them - I'd be glad to make it to about Tennessee if we drive. Going through the airport would be a lot tougher and we'd probably just have to tell them when we got there... I don't think drugging them would go over so well in our local airport

 

[Coach81]

We had never went for Christmas.. so a few years ago we did a "scavenger hunt" with the conclusion of the trip announcement!

 

[stmize]

My kids are teenagers and have been every year since 2003 except 2004 sometimes twice a yr so surprising them would be telling them we are going to Wdw but actually go elsewhere. In 2003 they were 3 1/2 and 6 and got excited and still didn't quite understand where we were going in 2005 after that it was like were going again lol. Mom loves it this yr dh and I did Wdw and the dream in jan left them with grandparents. And in sep we are doing Wdw again without them but in nov we are doing Wdw dream and Wdw over thanksgiving and my kids are already getting excited. This will be their first dcl cruise. I said all that to say it would be hard to surprise my kids they know the way.

 

[Firebug]

My wife goes to conferences for her job often, at least once or twice a year. I also go to training classes at times. These trips are usually in different cities. We sometimes use these trips as mini vacations. This worked as excellent cover when we planned a surprise trip to Disney. We told the kids that mom had a conference in Florida that we were going join her at. I believe we told them Tampa. Where we lived at the time it was a two and a half hour drive to the airport for a early flight to Florida. Luckily, for us both girls fell asleep in the rental car from the Orlando airport. They didn't wake up until we were parked to unload the luggage in front of the Animal Kingdom Lodge.

FB

 

[marynvince]

My wife and I travel a lot for our jobs. As it happened she was flying home on the morning we were flying out to Disney. Took my 5yo to airport to pick up mom and then I would be leaving for a business trip, and he would come home with mom. Met mom at gate and sprung the Disney trip on him, it was pretty cool.

 

[velrox]

by making a "fake" Mickey email account and sent an email from Mickey to us the day before we were leaving. He needed our help to solve a mystery and then we did a scavenger hunt around all the parks. I would plant things at certain spots and they would get clues to go to places or on rides. Finally, at the end of the week, they solved all the hunt requirements, I bought a price at the Emporium and asked the store clerk, explaining everything about a scavenger hunt, to hold it for my boys. I sent my boys over to that person to redeem the prize from Mickey and the clerk had it packaged up with lots of stickers and a certificate she filled out congratulating the boys.

To this day, they think that periodically Mickey emails with missions for them. They were probably 6 and 9 1/2 at the time.

Another time, I had a flight attendant give my son a message as we walked off the plane, but he was young then. Now they would know the MCO airport.

 

[rocketriter]

We stopped trying to surprise our kids. We found that the "Eek! Ooh!" pleasure of a surprise that lasts 10 minutes was empty calories compared to the extended pleasure of our entire family planning together (yes, even the very young ones) for several weeks before the trip.