Help with "THE SURPRISE"

[CB2@disney]

Hello all. ( a little background first) I am a single mother and so going to Disney can be a strain. My son loves it though and so do I. Because of this I try and get us there every 14-18 months. My son knows that I've started the planning process of our next trip but he has no idea when it will be. I've told him that it won't be this year. Technically it will be this year because we are arriving on Dec. 31st and staying to Jan 8th. I feel bad fibbing but I want it to be a surprise so I'd like to continue to keep him in the dark about when we are going. Here is where I need your help...I'm having a hard time of thinking of the best way to pull off the surprise. I was thinking about using is as a Christmas present somehow since that will give him 6 days to countdown and be excited about going. I can't spring it on him, he'll need the few days to get use to the idea of traveling and everything. Any and all ideas are welcome...and advise too if you've done this before. I'm hoping by starting this far in advance I can make it really special. Thank you in advance for your responses.: sohappy:

 

[bcoachable]

For us, we did not want to wait until the last minute to tell our kids (plus we couldn't keep a secret that long!!!!).
So... we found a Google web site for word scrambles, you know the ones that scramble words you put in to the web site, and the kids need to unscramble the words. They then have circles over certain letters to spell out another word?
We used restaurants here in town as the scrambled words in the first part of the puzzle to keep the secret a little longer... Maybe you have something creative or family specific that you could use for your first words in the puzzle?? Then we used "We are going to Disney" as the solution to the puzzle.
Worked pretty well for us.
I Have seen some pretty cool surprises on you tube! You might check there for some ideas as well...

 

[Trouble]

Yay! Surprises are the best! Make sure to youtube search Disney World Surprise - a ton of videos come up, and there might be some ideas there.

Other Ideas:

Wrap some of his presents in wrapping paper that have sixes on it, then spring a Mickey themed present at the end that said "6 days" or something.

Make one of his presents a countdown calendar

If there is a friend that can do a Mickey Impression, maybe have them make a phone call and announce that Mickey will be seeing him on New Years

Good Luck! Be sure to keep us updated. So excited for you

 

[UKDisneyAddict]

We suprised our kids on Christmas day last year with a giant Mickey Mouse Balloon wrapped as a present. He had a sign around his neck to let them know when they were going (see my trip report for pictures).

If I were to do it again though, I would not do it Christmas day. I felt that they couldn't take it in and were distracted by the other presents waiting to be opened. I would do it Boxing day, saying that we must have missed a present.

Also, I recently helped my friend surprise her kids with a treasure hunt. They had to find clues around the house. The prize was a dvd that my friend had recorded telling them that they were going to Disney World.

Please let us know how you do it.

:sohappy:

 

[Blueskyze]

I surprised my 6-yo son a couple of weeks ago with a package in the mail from Mickey. He already knew that we were going on our trip, so it wasn't a surprise in that way. He is currently obsessed with the number 100, so when it was 100 days until our trip, he found a package in the mail addressed to him from Mickey. Inside was a stuffed Mickey in a jedi costume, a DVD of Mary Poppins (which he had been wanting), a Mickey t-shirt, and a hand-written note from Mickey. He was ecstatic! He couldn't believe that Mickey had even signed it "See ya real soon!" just like he always says on the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show.

I'm going to do another package shortly before our trip, with pirate stuff in it, to let him know he's going to get to to the Pirate League while we're there.

Please let us know what you end up deciding to do!

 

[cornandacobb]

Before they got too big, I used to lock my kids inside the checked baggage and not open it til we got to The World.