Tell Kids ahead of time? And stroller question

[mommycrawford]

Definitely bring the stroller!...it will be a lifesaver, if only used at the end of a long day!

My daughter has usually been aware of our trips, but when she was six, I had her do a mouse book (Angelina Ballerina, Anatole, etc.) themed scavenger hunt with each clue having a letter on it: they spelled out MICKEY. She didn't immediately put it together, but when she did, her look was PRICELESS! ...We left the next day!

It will be magical no matter when you tell, think of what would be easiest for you:

will she be all over you until you leave if you tell, or just excited?

 

[Lupeix]

We are going in 3 months, DS is almost 4 and doesn't know he is going but I planned on building anticipation anyway, I am enjoying doing it sooo much.

We watched the NY fireworks live from MK together (we are in the west coast so it wasn't crazy late), as I hoped the next day he asked if he could go to see Cinderella's castle and the fireworks. I told him maybe, and that only boys that do very well at preschool can go to Disney World, so we will have to see what the teacher says at the end of the year. Then I asked him if he wanted to know more About MK and slipped the vacation planning DVD.

He has watched MK several times since then and slowly after seeing the other parks once is starting to ask to watch Epcot again. He has asked about a couple of shows, and I have shown finding Nemo the musical to him in youtube. He also asked about BTMR and I told him he is not tall enough to go and to get taller he needs to eat vegetables and now he is eating broccoli!

My plan is every time he asks if we can go, I still will tell him that we have to see what the teacher says and then ask him if he wants to watch the DVD. I am planning to tell the teacher and ask her to tell him the day of school before we leave that he has been a very good boy and maybe getting a special trip. He loves her, so this is going to mean a lot to him. Then right after we get home I will have some sort of present to unveil the surprise. Can't wait to see his face, he is going to flip!

I hope to hit the right combination between anticipation and surprise!

I think I am also going to use this to get him to try more vegetables LOL

 

[bethy]

I really feel it's wonderful to tell them in some special way *ahead* of time for all the reasons already listed.

The exception is if you are frequent Disney visitors like us - then it's great to do a surprise trip once in a while. We've done a surprise trip one time and it was fun. I would like to do it one more time before the kids are all grown and gone.

 

[delfinavacano]

We are not telling our kids. Instead, we have been prepping them for months for a "Camping trip" (I've shown them Ft. Wilderness on Google Earth) in Florida and that we're going to visit grandma while we're there. So that's all they've been thinking about, and they're super excited about camping and they know it's going to be a long drive. (We live in Houston.) They are prepared with tablets and DVD players and coloring pages for the long drive and then when we pull into AKL Kidani they'll be super surprised!

The first time we went they didn't have an idea of what WDW was, so we didn't really tell them. (One was an infant at the time.) The second time we did tell them, but this time we didn't think we'd be able to go and we really WERE going camping! So we just kept on with the camping story.