Car Trip Packing and Survival About This Page:

[LegoMom]

Originally Posted by kjkjmommie

Not sure if this will help or not. But I spent 18 years as a single mom ( first DH was killed 3 months before second DD was born) so traveling with 2 DD along meant planning well. 2 things I did was I let them make mega car bingo... with items they thought of that we might see, this let me play with them too. The second things was I gave them each a coin/token holder like you get a Chuck E Cheese, I filled it up with quarters that they could spend as soon as we got to the hotel, which meant games snacks what ever they wanted... I had NO VETO power. The catch was arguing cost a quarter as did the most dreaded question " are we there yet?" after forking over a few quarters.... that I got ... they were so good. This worked for many trips. Hope it helps you too.
Laurie
DD - 24 married
DD - 26 applying to law school YEAH!!!

THIS IS THE GREATEST CAR-TRIP IDEA EVER!!! I am SO happy to have found this thread! I have three DSs, ages 11, 8 and 6. The last time we did a big road trip to FL they were much younger, and overall it went pretty well. While we are out of diapers and the toddler-crankies stage, we now have the argument stage. MOST of the time they'll be fine, but if they do manage to get going, it makes for a miserable ride! I LOVE this idea and WILL be putting it to use!!

Thanks!!!!

[Chays52]

I’ve been dreading the 18 plus hour road trip for the Chicago area with a 4 year old but thanks to all of this great advise I feel I can tackle it with more confidence.

Now we aren’t leaving for months but I decided to keep my eyes open for little items for the car. I found a number of great things at Michael’s Craft store. I raided their $1 bins and found the following:

Small Clip on Bubbles in 2 packs (Ok these are for the world more so then the car)
Disney and Diego Card Games
Tinkerbell Sewing projects and lacing cards
Barbie and Disney Princess “Paper Doll” Magnets
Lots of little journals and notebooks in many themes and styles
Goody bags w/ Markers and Disney themed drawing pages (Doodle Kits)
Small Frisbees (looking fwd to breaking these out at a rest stop)
Disney Jump Ropes
Generic Version of the Magna-doodle
Build a Bear Post It notes – that work like paper dolls.

And lots of other great stuff not only in the dollar bins, but also in other aisles as well.

I also did 2 projects for the trip.

1) I bought one of those clip boards that you might see an inspector carry – the kind with storage. The kind I bought was from Rubbermaid so it’s plastic and has rounded edges. I found a roll of self-adhesive magnet sheets and a small poster board designed for dry erase markers and put that on top of the magnet sheet. I now have a magnetic and dry erase clip board with storage.
2) I took the same poster board and magnetic sheet and applied that to the top of a kids lap tray. The kind of tray that has 2 storage cups on each side. Make sure the lap tray is wide enough to work with your car seat if you child is still in a car seat.

I hope she likes all of this just as much as I do.

[darthminnie]

One thing that worked really well with our family with our first drive down from CT (at the time Kids were 11 and 4)..

I went to the Dollar Store, picked up a BUNCH of 'gifts', some were games, books..ect. I wrapped them in wrapping paper and put them in a huge Disney Gift bag.

Through the 22+ hr trip, I handed out 'gifts' for;

Good Behavior
Correctly answered Trivia
And other reasons...

Ok, got to admit, that there were time where I wanted to smack the kids upside the head with the wrapped gift....but I didn't.

We are doing it again in a couple of weeks, they are now 17 and 9...we shall see how this trip works....lol

[rlb38]

We always packed a cookie sheet. This worked great if DD wanted to play with her magnetic stuff but also served as a hard surface to play with Polly Pockets , colour or have a snack.

Hope you have a great trip.

[MsQT]

My husband and I went to WDW in 2002 for our honeymoon and have been back several times since. We've been bitten by the Disney bug! We have only flown down to Orlando from southern Wisconsin once and prefer to drive. We are both teachers and find that driving down allows us time to chat and talk about the everyday things that we somehow don't "have time for" during our busy school year. I look forward to keeping this same tradition alive someday when we take our children down to Disney World!

[racordatha]

WE are WDW bound in November with a group of 14. The Kids ages are 16,10,9,6,3,and 1 These ideas are great 1 thing i did with my son years ago while traveling I did a map or list of the exits or towns we would past and to get to our destination and as we went along you mark them off. It would visually let him know how much further we really had to go.

[charli555]

We are less then a month away from leaving Philly to DRIVE to WDW. We are very excited about this road trip. I know we are nuts. It is so much cheaper for 7 of us to drive than fly.

I am packing each of the girls (3) their own special bag decorated with their fav disney characters. They have a binder with car games (laminated for re-use), coloring pages printed from the net, paper for journal writing, magnetic board games, puzzle books, reading books, and the electrnoic devices. This way they have their own special bag for their own use on the way down.

Anyone know where to get the travel neck pillows inexpensively? I saw a place online for around $12.00. That sounds reasonable but I don't want to find out I could've gotten them cheaper elsewhere. Any tips for driving down would be great.

FYI. We are driving straight through w/ 3 adults taking turns. Thanks again.

[MsQT]

Love the individual bags for the girls. I haven't made the trip from Wisconsin with kids (yet! ), but one thing I love to do on road trips is to keep track of the license plates you see along the way. You can print off a map of the U.S. and color in states you find or just keep a written list. Just an idea. Hope you have a safe trip down! Oh, check on AAA site for the Fuel Finder. It will find the cheapest gas in any area of the country. You just enter a city, state or zip code and it ranks several stations by gas prices. Great with the prices being so high lately!

[charli555]

Originally Posted by MsQT

Love the individual bags for the girls. I haven't made the trip from Wisconsin with kids (yet! ), but one thing I love to do on road trips is to keep track of the license plates you see along the way. You can print off a map of the U.S. and color in states you find or just keep a written list. Just an idea. Hope you have a safe trip down! Oh, check on AAA site for the Fuel Finder. It will find the cheapest gas in any area of the country. You just enter a city, state or zip code and it ranks several stations by gas prices. Great with the prices being so high lately!

Thanks for the AAA tips. We found the license plate game on momsminivan.com great site or traveling with kids- including husbands, the biggest kids of all! I will be printing out a US map to go with the game, great idea and educaitonal too!

[MsQT]

Originally Posted by charli555

Thanks for the AAA tips. We found the license plate game on momsminivan.com great site or traveling with kids- including husbands, the biggest kids of all! I will be printing out a US map to go with the game, great idea and educaitonal too!

Of course I would bring in the educational idea! I'm a first grade teacher! I have to agree that traveling with DH is a lot like taking along a child! Have a great trip!

[charli555]

Originally Posted by MsQT

Of course I would bring in the educational idea! I'm a first grade teacher! I have to agree that traveling with DH is a lot like taking along a child! Have a great trip!

I hope you enjoy your trip. You are in my thoughts for a safe journey. Let us know how it goes! Have fun in WDW.

Lizz & Family

[kim looman]

There are many great ideas posted on this thread! We live in Holland, MI and we drive to Disney almost every year atleast once in our van. It is 22 hours and just to encourage all of you, you can make it and it will be fine! We have two boys (now 5 and 11). We too use the roof carrier so there is more space in our van to move around. Our DVD player is a great thing, but our boys enjoy keeping track of where we are, what state we are in, and how many hours we have driven. So I put stickers on the ceiling of the van for our youngest to take off each hour we drive on the road. My husband prints out maps of our route and puts them in a binder notebook so they can follow our roads and path and add stickers to their own maps. My oldest also kept track of our gas expenses and milage in a special spreadsheet my husband made for him. Along with other games, we all try to do the Disney Alphabet game and list characters for each letter of the alphabet. I have also done the small gifts from the dollar stores and give them a small gift to open hourly or when we stop somewhere. We keep a snack box available for the boys as well as drinks too. Hopefully these ideas can help someone else too. It is a long drive, but well worth it and we make it the best we can as a family.

[luvducks05]

NO JUICE OR SUGAR!!!!!!! Drink water only and eat salty items like crackers and beef jerky..... makes for less potty stops and the kids aren't as hyper......
I am embarking on a trip to WDW by car from upstate NY in November (myself, husband, mother in law, and 3 boys age 15, 9, 3) , and have made the trip before. I WILL NEVER GIVE JUICE OR FRUIT SNACKS AGAIN ON A CAR TRIP!!!!!!

[andy2215]

Kim,

The keeping track "games" listed in your mesg. are really interesting. We will try to utilize them in our trip to WDW in coming Dec.

Thanks!!!

[agnes1956]

Don't know if someone has mentioned this or not because I haven't had a chance to read the whole thread yet. When our kids were small I packed little treats for them in small brown paper sacks, trying to teach them the big cities we drove through. My DDs would ask for their treat bags before then and my DH would be on their side. The treat bags worked though as relief busters.
If people are driving in warm weather you sometimes pass parks. We would enjoy a picnic. Sometimes we had the fixings for meat-ball subs and somethimes when we passed a grocery store we would buy food for a lunch. My children were small and we would play a game of catch ball with them to run off some of their energy.
Hope this two hints are of some help to someone.