Here are some tips on How To Entertain Your Kids On Drive To Walt Disney World. Our drive from Alabama was 10 hours!
- I go to the Dollar Tree and buy new coloring books, stickers, small toys, etc. Every hour they get a new toy to play with.
- I go by the library and stock up on kid’s books. (Make sure you don’t lose them!)
- I bring a selection of Disney movies and let them take turns picking movies
- I load the iPod with Disney music and play it over the van’s speakers
- I bring their DS and Leapster
- We stop for lunch at either McDonald’s or Chickfila. Somewhere we know there is a playground.
- Make themed bags for traveling to Walt Disney World
How do you keep your kids entertained as you travel?
Learn more about traveling to Walt Disney World and the perks of using a Disney Travel Agent.
Hansel says
Thank you for these ideas, I’m planning to take my kids on a road trip next week. They’re all excited!
Mark Morton says
This is post is really helpful and would gonna try this on our weekend long ride!
kayla says
I’ve never been brave enough to road trip with my two little ones! I can only step away from my job at Dish for a small time, so we always choose to fly in order to get the most out of the vacation. However, any time travel and children are mixed, it is sure to be a trying task! Waiting at the airport is never fun, so we try to be as prepared as possible to keep their boredom at bay. We’ve started planning the flight when the children would usually be taking their naps, so they are automatically prone to be tired and fall asleep en route. At home, our usual nap time routine starts with putting on Harry Potter. Away from home, all we have to do is tap into our DVR events using our free Dish Remote Access app and we can watch it anywhere. Whether it is the whimsical music or dark cinematography, there is something to that movie that puts them right to sleep! By the time we reach our destination, they are awake and ready to adventure!
Jean says
My kids love the disney cd’s that have songs and a story. They have a 15-20 narrative of the Disney movie that includes voices from the real movie. We have all the toy story story CDs and now Tangled. They are $5 each on amazon or Walmart and the kids love them . It really keeps them entertained.
Katie says
We drive every time we go to WDW. It is about 20 hours from here in Michigan. We stop just past Atlanta & stay at a hotel with a pool. It helps the kids burn off some energy & sleep better that night. I always pack a ton of snacks, goodies,etc. The best thing I packed last time was headphones. Each kid had their own set to plug into the dvd players or their Nintendo DS. It was a sanity saver for me.
Emily M says
Disneyland is 18 hours from us and we’ll be traveling with 4 under 5! Eek! We are taking a long slow road trip, though and visiting family on the way down. These will be really helpful ideas to use to keep my older kids entertained in the car. Thankfully, the babies will be able to watch them (they will be 10 1/2 months old and we have a van, so they ride backwards and look at brother and sister :-) )
Katie says
Awesome idea about stopping for food at a place with a playground! We are surprising our 3 kids with their first trip to Disney in September for all 3 of there birthdays. Carley will be 6 on Sept. 24, Camden will be 5 on Sept. 19, and Colton will be 1 on Sept. 12. We are driving from NH and it will be about 23 hours total but we are stopping the first night. I can’t thank you enough for all of your helpful hints!
Kristin of Couponing to Disney says
I bet they will be so excited!
rose says
All those are great ideas. In addition to small games and books I like to carry my Ipad with me. I work for DISH Network and have TV Everywhere with them. When the kids get tired of playing games or I just want some quiet time. I will hook the Ipad to the back of the seat and put on their favorite TV shows. I have access to all my DVR recordings and my TV so it gives them plenty to watch and keeps them busy for awhile.
Liz says
Love all the ideas – one someone told me and we used last time was to wrap up small presents/snacks and pass them out once an hour. We’ll be driving about 22 hours over two days. We have four children and it worked great last time. The kids are excited to “Open” a present and then it keeps them busy at least for a little while.
Lindsay says
Well, my son is only 2 months old, so I don’t have to worry about entertaining him, just keeping him fed since he sleeps in his carseat, well, like a baby! However, we live 10 hours away from my family, 4 hours away from my fiance’s, and if we want to go anywhere outside of the town we live in, its at least a two hour drive, even going to the cabin. (We live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so its pretty rural.) However, we already talk about what we do to entertain him. We plan on taking the train whenever possible from Milwaukee to my hometown so that we can have a little more room to spread out and play with things like games and books. In the car, we plan on packing the typical things, but we’ve invested in an external hard drive that plugs into our laptops, as well as a laptop charger that plugs into the outlet. The external hard drive has all of our dvds, music, and pictures on it so that we can sit there and watch movies, listen to music, or look at pictures of the people we are going to visit with and talk about all the fun we will have. My fiance and I actually already do this! However, we don’t plan on stopping except to use the restroom or get gas because we always travel at night and we prefer to get the pain of traveling (I’m not good at it) over quickly. Also, we have traveled with little ones before, and everyone always enjoy having a child that is super excited to see them when they finally get there!
Lauren says
Where did you get the charger for the laptop I have been looking for one for years?
Stacy Cobb says
My boys ages 6 & 8 love to do the sticker books where you match up the sticker to the place in the book. Some of those books also contain mazes and easy puzzles for them to work on. That keeps them busy for a long time. Then I have new books to read, lots of snacks, They get to pick out movies to take. I also put in small toys and surprises in their backpacks that they keep with them. I have lap desk tops so they can write and color as well. Of course they have the D.S.’s to keep busy. Sometimes I sneek a new game in if it’s a good sale. We are a 20 hour dive from Disney and have done it with a a 7 month old, A 2 year old and 8 month old and a 8, 6 and 1 year old recently. Every trip has been great! They are good travelers. The other years we flew to Disney.
To be honest I’ve thought about stopping and letting them play at a play place but I just want to get there! We don’t stop unless it’s a potty break or for gas or food.
Penny says
Try buying some craft kits. I bought a candy necklace kit for my four year old for our 3 hour plane ride to Orlando. She worked silently and patiently on it for about 45 minutes, then quite a bit of time eating it :)
RK says
I have an 18 month old, and while we have taken 1-2 hour trips with her since she was born, we have only taken one long car trip, and that was two months ago for Christmas. We drove from Houston to Tulsa, which is about 10 hours or so. Our strategy is simple: drive overnight and hope she sleeps through. This worked better on the way back than the way there. On the way back, she was asleep from around 10pm to 6am, woohoo. She woke up much more on the way there. Not fun.
Alison Carlisle says
one word…MOVIES!!
stephanie says
When going on a long trip, I usually scout for a fun & different park my kids can run around at. So many community parks are putting in those water play areas, its just great. If you map out your route, then scout for a park, you can bring a picnic along with you. Much healthier & cheaper than fast food. Plus you won’t get the sugar overdose!
When my kids were smaller & the wait was harder, I would stock up on freebie toys/clearance toys & then use them as small incentives throughout the trip. IE: if you have good behavior during the plan ride, you will get a surprise when we land. These types of incentives really kept them going & kept their behavior in check.
Dana says
We leave at 4am and pray that our preschooler stays asleep. ;)
Williamson says
We are 8 hrs. away from Disney!!! For my girls and even for the adults we play “Animal Farm”. Simply look for animals on your side, count them up, but if you pass a 18 wheeler your animal count goes to zero. We let both sides count flying birds! The first side of the car that gets to 50 or 100 wins a prize (like a candy, special drink, or treat) from the gas station or rest area. We also stop at rest stop and let the kids gather brochures to play with or write on. My oldest loves to draw funny faces. We watch movies, take along snacks, and small toys like most parents. The funniest part is playing “Spot Light on You”….simply pick a song off the radio, put on our head phones (this is a feature on our car, but I’m sure most car’s have a head phone jack/hook-up) by putting on the head phones, this allows the player to hear the music but not clearly hear their “MUSICAL VOICE”….Sometimes it’s a HIT and other times you MISS! All good fun heading toward the FL sun :)
Starla says
We made a long drive last year. I highly recommend headphones for the DVD player and Nintendo DS. It helped all of us keep our sanity.
Brenda D says
My kids are older now and “plug in” to ipod or watch movies on portable dvd or ipod. Dollar store goodies are awesome. I used to even wrap them. I would pack food that they would eat prior to our “lunch” stop and we would stop at a rest stop. We brought scooter, skateboard, plastic bat and ball, frisbees so when we stopped, they would play and run around. It saved us the $ of food that they wouldn’t want to sit and eat anyway and they were ready for a nap when we got back in the car for more driving.
Melissa G says
We take two 4 hour trips a year and have a just in the car stash of stuff that we keep; books, toys, small handheld games. We also bring along the leapster, some new books, and the biggest hit are books on tape(cd’s), also we have episodes of pbs cartoons on cd (word Girl) and this keeps them quiet for the duration of each cd. We also play I spy and can’t forget their pillow pets and favorite blankets! Lots of snacks too, grapes, cut up apples and pretzles.
siobhan says
Oh my parents have driven down 3 times, I drove with them twice and flew down on my own the other time. The other 2times we went we flew as well…. Its 18hours in the car. We always leave at night so we can “sleep”- I’m a terrible passenger, I need to watch the road just in case something is not seen by my dad like a deer or another car lol!
We kind of just wing it, my mom and sis will read/sleep and my dad and I will talk
We only stop for gas and breakfast. Otherwise we are just adding time to the clock and that’s the last thing we want. Honestly the $250 spent to not be in the car is so worth every penny to me!
Sharon says
Our family also takes long car trips- to visit family in Michigan (11 hours), and in Orlando (aren’t we lucky!- 21 hours which we do all in one day). To keep food and drinks cold, we purchased a car cooler that plugs into the outlet in car (what we used to call the cigarette lighter). We fill it with water and gatorade for the kids, so even when we stop for a fast food lunch- we can save money by not buying drinks. Each child has a little snack bag of granola bars, maybe a lollipop and some gum- so they can “treat themselves” to a little snack along the way. We have portable DVD players that only go into the car for these long trips- and we take with us every kids DVD we own… so the kids can take turn watching what they’d like. We drive a REALLY big car (see this post: http://momof6.com/2010/12/10/my-toolbox/sharons-favorite-things-the-right-car-for-a-large-sized-family/) so each “row” of seats get their own little DVD player that hooks into a case that hangs on the back of the headrest of the row in front of them. Each “row” also has a canvas box that holds paper, pencils, and crayons, and a few books. The canvas box has 2 cup holders which is nice, and the lid for the box can be turned over and used as a little tray when they are eating lunch.
When we start out, each child has their pillow and a soft blanket to keep them warm (we usually leave for our trips at 1 or 2 am to get a lot of the driving done while they are still sleeping). And later after they wake up, I end up tossing the pillow and the blankets into the (already overloaded) cargo are of the car.
Sharon
http://www.momof6.com
Melissa says
We do books and color wonder books. We usually buy special color wonders just for our trip because they are something we don’t usually buy. We play games in the car like Eye Spy. We also play a game where we find the abc on signs and car tags
Rebecca says
Books on CD!! We have found quite a few the whole family can enjoy such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Chronicles of Narnia, and We also have shorter ones that come with picture books like Cars, Toy Story and a few Dr Seuss. It’s nice when we can all hear the story and discuss it, and it really passes the time quickly!
Laura says
Our travel time is 12 hours from home. We split the trip roughly in half over two days. Splitting up the drive takes the pressure off of us to make good time. Our new van has a built in DVD system that also uses wireless headsets. I love this van. We watch 5 movies each day… mostly Disney Movies! We like to also split the drive so the day we arrive at Disney World, we still have energy to do something. We all know Disney isn’t cheap. We want every minute to count and we don’t want to be sleeping in the first day.
Kathleen says
Sirus Back Seat TV – seriously ROCKS. A drive to anyplace from our house is a journey (it’s two hours one way to grocery shop). Sirus has only 3 back seat TV channels, but it is enough to keep my 8 year entertained for hours on end…Nick, Cartoon Network and DISNEY. It has all the same programs and I don’t have to have half a dozen cd’s crowding the van or getting lost/damaged along the way.
Mary says
We live 8 hours from Disney. We bring movies and I try to buy one new movie we have wanted to see so that we have something new.
We stop at rest stops on the way down so that he can run around.
I bring sticker books, look and find books, coloring books.
I also bring books on tape so he has something to listen to.
He has a tag reader and a leapster also.
This seems to make the trips much easier.
Barbie says
We live 4 hours away from our cabin, where we spend every other weekend during the summer. Our kids range in age form 16 year to 6 months. For the little ones we do the same thing as everyone else. We reward them with new toys from the dollar store and drive during nap time. For the older kids we let them each bring a backpack with things to keep them entertained and then we charge them for each time they fight, whine or complain. They have to pay us with additional chores and/or allowance. Those who make it without any charges receive $5.00.
Charity says
I appreciate all the hardwork you put into this blog. You do a fantastic job, Kristin. Blessings!! So glad you’re a part of my day!
Heather P says
We live in southern MS so it is about a 10 hour drive for us also. We split our drive in to two days to keep our sanity. My hubby usually works a half day on the day we leave so we drive to exit 142 on i 10 and stop for the night, we wake up early the next morning and we head to Disney World. We are usually there by 1 in the afternoon.
We pack dvd players, headphones and movies for each girl. Also pack books, crayons and coloring pages and lots of snacks. We also bring the DS’s and the leapster, ipod. Pretty much anything to keep them occupied. This year I am packing a book on origami and origami paper for my dd11. I also plan on buying them each a new game or movie, that they will not get until we are in the van on our way.
Amy says
We drive from Florida to Maine during the summer to visit family. We also choose to drive because it is more cost effective, plus we are a family of 7…who’s gonna pick us up from the airport! lol. We stay for 4-6 weeks (hubby flies home and works, we stay and visit) and it allows me to have a vehicle the whole time.
The trip itself takes about 24 hours. We’ve kept the kids entertained with DVDs, Nintendo DS, Leapsters, coloring, snacks, stopping at parks/playgrounds, and a few new toys which hold their interests longer b/c they are brand new. The first 3 hours was the hardest leg of the trip, after that it was smooth sailing. We drove straight through and will be doing it again this June!
Jen L. says
Our drive is about 16hrs. and My husband and I like to drive straight thru. We usually leave in the late evening so the kids usually are sleeping during this time. I also pack up the DS and they have their own mp3 players. We have a portable dvd player but they have only used this once and turned off the movie half way thru. We have a tradition of eating at Cracker Barrel on the way to Disney and IHOP on the way home. My daughter loves to read so she is always bringing a book along. I also bring along magazines. This year we are bringing a friend of my daughters and they are already talking on what to pack for the ride.
JennS says
I pack a disney back pack for each of my kids. I let them pick out a few toys to bring. I bring new coloring books,crayons,sticker books. I bring their leapsters,tag readers, books, etch&sketch. I bring dvds for the movie player. Lots of snacks too!
Jennifer in GA says
We are 6 hours from Disney, but the past 2 trips we have driven at night. The girls both sleep most of the trip, and if we are staying on Disney property we wake them up just before driving under the Walt Disney World sign..if we are off property we don’t wake them until we are at the hotel. They usually go right back to sleep…we find we make better time because there is less traffic on the roads too.