This is what happens when I try to put everything for our family of 4 in one checked bag! I’m great at underpacking for myself. Not so much for my 1&3 yo lol
Well, kids just need a lot of stuff. You never know when they’re going to have an accident, spill their milk all over their clothes, get airsick for the first time ever, decide they’re going to grow an inch overnight and eat ALL THE FOOD you’ve packed, etc. We took a 10-day trip to Kazakhstan in November and packed for the five of us in three carry-ons and individual backpacks and it was wonderful. First time we were able to do something like that and it was awesome. Just a few more years and the kids won’t need so much stuff!
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I am personally a “like items” in a cube kind of girl. I put shirts in one, bottoms in another, etc…
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I roll my in a packing cube.
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yep!
Im pretty sure its happening to me too!!!
I found a camera at one of the water parks and turned it over to a cast member. It looked like an expensive camera.
I’m glad to know that there are good people still around.
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I love this post! I had no idea the first aid stations would give you meds. Good to know!
Another “roll in packing cubes” person here! We just got them for our last family trip (first Disney trip) and they were a game changer. Each family member had two. They meant we could “unpack” and lay them out on the single shelf under the sink (not a lot of storage in Beach Club Villas!). We dumped the dirty clothes in an empty suitcase, at the end of the trip consolidated the leftover clean clothes into two packing cubes and the dirty into the other ones, and it made unpacking so much easier.
This was a good post. Glad to see it got bumped.
I think this is so, so true of EVERYONE, not just kids!
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microfiber towel FTW
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I personally pack a loaded first aid kit, with all the basic medications, superglue plus some doctor stuff. It stays in my suitcase always. Then we scale it down to pack into the parks. It has saved us more time and money than I care to remember. The more people in your party, the more valuable it is.
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Thanks for your frank assessment of the transportation situation. What did you use as your cutoff time to call Lyft? How long before you wanted to be there?
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Wow - nice to see the love on this post.
For the cut off time - it depended on the hotel and the park we were going to, but we planned it each night and agreed so there would be no early morning math or hemming and hawing.
So, for example, we decided that on late nights (after 10pm) we would walk out to the shuttles and if one was there, pulling up, or we could see it, we would get on but if not we lyfted.
In getting to parks, I would add 10-15 min to the estimate - a little time for the Lyft to get there and then to get from Lyft drop off to the gate.
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Not taking a bag into Universal was genius!!! The lines for lockers are chaos and the hotel was within walking distance if we needed anything!
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It’s funny b/c I had never used packing cubes before. I am a great packer and generally pack very lightly and efficiently, but packing cubes are game changers!!
My dad was always really into bags and he had a ton of these cubes. He passed away about a year ago and when my step-mom was going through all his stuff she found over 20 packing cubes in all different sizes. She sent them all to me and my husband and I used them a few weeks after for a trip and could not believe how great they are. We travel a LOT and will not travel without them at this point.
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But imagine what you could do if you rolled your clothes…wait for it…into a packing cube!!!
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It depends on what your goal is with packing. My goal is to never have to check bags unless I just feel like it, and to have minimal stuff to schlep around. I travel a lot and got tired of taking so much stuff, so I figured out how NOT to do that. It is very freeing to leave all of that behind.
One cannot get around the physical fact that cubes take up space, so I don’t use them. I bundle pack, which uses up every available centimeter of volume and also prevents creases. It’s also free. My daughter was so amazed by how much stuff could go in there, she did bundle packing as a demo for a class assignment in 6th grade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–ZrYtRjYfs
Don’t put any “suspicious” stuff in the middle, though. You don’t want TSA trying to unpack it, trust me.
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This bundle method is what I do for work trips, when I end up hanging up most clothes when I get to destination. Family trips are a whole other ballgame where we need the cubes just to stay organized and not lose things. We travel a lot, both collectively and individually, so the cubes were worth the investment and I often found them in clearance at TJMaxx, Marshalls, etc. The compression cubes plus rolling allow me to get a lot into a carryon and there’s not the risk of going over weight limit that way. The only only time I check a bag is when I’m bringing non essential things like a whole bag of food to Disney and I only do that if it’s a free checked bag like Southwest or with my credit card on certain airlines.
You must be nicer than me- I made the kids start doing their own packing from a very early age because I got tired of schlepping THEIR stuff around, too! 
They’re also frequent flyers. That’s how my daughter knew how to do it. Although I will admit when they were even younger we traveled with a nanny so that was kind of an easy out for me. In those days we had so much stuff, we literally had to count bags. Sometimes we were still wrong and left things at the airport.
I will check my bag on the way back, when I don’t care if it’s delayed. But never on the way out, even though it’s free. I just don’t like the hassle, the wait, and the potential for loss. I always have at least one connection, so the potential for adverse outcomes is fairly high.
We use packing cubes and those vacuum seal bags (the ones you can compress without a vacuum). In particular, we took all our rain coats, squished them into one of those vacuum seal bags and left it in the bottom of the stroller all week. Whenever if would rain, it was easy to get them out, but when we didn’t need them, they were in a nice, compact, self-contained package so we never had to worry about whether we had everyone’s jacket at every stop.
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