Anyone surprised their kids with trip?

Looking for ideas/stories of success (and failures too so I guess we can avoid) of how people have surprised their kids that they were going to Disneyworld.

On a day where the kids have been extremely good, look at them and say, “Surprise! were going to Disney World!”. If they don’t just jump for joy and understand how lucky they are, leave them home with a sitter and Mom and Dad are going to have a great time on their own. I know when I told my family (9) that we were taking them to Disney World for a ONE time thing, they about fainted. Of coarse after that I couldn’t shut any of them up about asking are we still going and how soon. Good Luck and may all have a Magical time. BTW Were from ND and the sunshine of FL is unbelievable when it’s -20 at home.

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We just flat out told our kids… and expected them to be excited.

However, lots of people over here don’t actually KNOW about wdw anymore (including my own kids, which shouldn’t have surprised me!) so we had to youtube it for them. THEN they started teh countdown from 596 days… so yeah they got excited eventually :smile:

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We are in the process of surprising our kids now! It is our plan to tell them that I want to go somewhere warm for my birthday and then give them a Mickey snack while we are in the road ( not sure if it will be Mickey shaped cookies or what) when I can no longer stand it. Have a great trip.

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We surprised them with a trip to Disneyland a couple of days after school let out for summer. We didn’t tell them until that morning. We woke them at 5:30 in the morning and told them to hurry and get ready, we are going to Disneyland! I had already packed the night before for them. We had several other surprises along the way. My sister met us at the hotel and spent the trip with us. She jumped out scared the stuffing out of them in the lobby. Then we upgraded our room to concierge level. It was a lot of fun, but a lot more work to surprise them.

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If you want to see failures, google “Disney reveal fails” - some of them are hilarious.

No - but my wife tried to years ago. I don’t think I could keep my stupid mouth shut

We leave in 7 days and we are planning on telling the kids tonight. We’ve gone back and forth with when to tell them since we booked the trip in April. I was going to wait until the airport and then the night before. But it would make my life easier with packing and last minutes things if they know now. It’s my birthday as we will go out to dinner but leave a big present on the table for the kids to see when we come back. They will think it’s for me but it will be Disney stuff that I’ve already purchased plus a note for Mickey as well as a countdown calendar that I created. Hopefully I won’t regret telling them early.

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We surprised the kids last Easter which was a little less than two weeks from when we were set to go. We gave them each a new Minnie hat, sunglasses and a new swimsuit and asked them where they thought we were going. They didn’t guess. :rofl: They were excited when we told them, but not falling all over themselves or anything. I think, like someone else said, they didn’t really know what going to WDW meant. I told them two weeks out so my youngest (just turned 3 at the time) could get used to the idea of going on a plane etc. (the plane ride there was still a moderate disaster. Haha!).

We have another trip planned for this April and I’m going to tell them around 2 weeks out again. I’m sure they’ll be ecstatic this year because they ask all the time about going back to Disney. I’m not sure either of my kids would do well with a day-of surprise right now. DD6 is a real planner and DD3 needs time to warm up to things.

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My wife and I surprised our two boys once. They knew we were going, but didn’t know when. Picked them up from school one day and said we needed to head to hotel for the night because our flight for WDW leaves early in the morning. Our youngest was in Kindergarten at the time and cried because his show and tell was the next day and now he was going to miss it. He got over it though and they were excited.

Our last trip we surprised them with where we were staying. Originally we had booked at POFQ, but a deal came along for AKL and we jumped at the chance. We made it all the way to the room, into the room without them knowing and when they found out we were staying there and could see the giraffes and other animals, it was a great moment.

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We are going in may half term in UK 2018. We have to explain to kids why they have a rubbish Xmas present lol …and then doing a treasure hunt around the house finding the words we… are …going …to …Disney world in 6 months time. They have seen my planning books and see my head in them mist days… but I have told them we hope to go in 2 or 3 years time :slight_smile:
Been saving for 3 years for this 2 week holiday but have come across a hurdle after reading trip advisor basically booking flight tickets via a untrustworthy 3rd party. …they change ticket dates… sometimes don’t send e tickets…my worst nightmare. Sometimes tickets are cheap on a promotion deal we got them in July but sometimes they are cheap for another reason! Tickets supposedly arriving November but I am not expecting it but want them for Xmas so I know I can reveal the secret I have kept since I booked our villa in Jan 2017 lol.

Wish me luck

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We surprised our two sons (then ages 10 and 9) the morning we left. We has stayed at a hotel near the airport and had told the boys were were driving cross state to the nearest Six Flags. The morning our flight left, we broke the news we were going to Disneyworld. I had expected them to jump and yell for joy, but I was treated to stunned silence. After a few minutes of disbelief, we showed them the tickets and also told them we were flying out (It was their first plane ride) and that we would be there in a matter of hours. It was then that the laughter and shouting began!

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I considered surprising them, but to me the anticipation is half the fun. The kids had hours of fun You Tubing rides and googling hotels, etc. They helped pick restaurants, too, and looked through pictures of past trips.

In our case, my daughter was 4.5 and didn’t know the place existed. She knew we were going to Florida but that was it. We arrived on Main St. and she was happy with the Move It Shake It parade but had NO clue where we were. Then, once the parade passed we stood in the middle of the street and pointed towards the castle. She FREAKED out and thankfully we have it on video. She kept asking, is that Cinderella’s castle? Are we in her country? Are we going to see her? She was trembling, it was awesome :slight_smile:
We go back for our second trip in three week but no surprise for her little brother since he knows about it. I thought about keeping the trip a surprise but it takes so much to plan etc that I figured I’d let them in on a little bit of it this go round.

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My wife and I bought a Mickey stuffed animal, stickers, hats, etc. We told them we were going and we filmed it. They said ok. We looked at each other and then tried to explain it to them. They said ok, can we watch TV. My wife said, no you have to pack we are leaving tomorrow for Disney. When they saw us packaging, they got excited and finally believed we were actually going. Full disclosure, I told my kids I wanted to go hiking so we prepared to walk…I did not tell them that we will be hiking through MK.

Now a friend at work hired a guy on Fiverr to call with a Mickey impression to announce they were going and he said the kids were elated.

I’ve also heard of people just going and the kids notice once they pass the Disney World sign.

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We are planning to surprise our kids (5 and 7) for the 1st time next week. We have done the countdowns the past 2x so we thought this would be something different. They have no idea whatsoever! The kids have a coffee can that they call the “Disney Fund”, that they are constantly putting loose change in. Last week it was filled up so they asked if we could go now, little do they know we have been planning this suprise trip for over 10 mos.!! We plan on waking them up very early in the morning and telling them then that we are leaving for the airport to go to Disney!

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what hotel did you stay in concierge @carthy15? We’re thinking of a Disneyland trip in 2018.

That sounds like a great plan! record it!!

I’m going on June 10, 2020. That’s my twins 10th birthday. We are going to tell them I am coming home from work early on the 9th and we are going to take a long weekend at grandmama and granddaddy’s house. Before we leave, we will tell them they can open 1 present each for their birthday. It will be something Mickey or Minnie and probably have a Magic Band. We will point that out to them and ask when they want to go and make it seem like a spur of the moment deal where we say well let’s just go right now.

Here’s hoping it goes over well. I imagine their excitement and it makes me so get chills.

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There are quite a few threads on this board, (search for the term “surpris” with no e to account for variations) and suggestions all over the web. There are formatted announcement letters in “disney” fonts, there are sites that will call your kids with character voices.
We just carved our pumpkins, this year, so that reminded me of this: