Tips for a Disney Road Trip

Our family always does road trips when we vacation, and over the years I’ve come across a huge variety of tips (some hits, and some misses) for road-tripping with very young children. I’ve shared a lot of my favorites in these posts:

Kids Road Trip Activities

Road Trip Organization Hacks

Travel Products for Kids

Tips for Traveling with Preschoolers

Every time that we’ve taken a trip I’ve tried something a little different and that’s true for our upcoming Disney Cruise trip too. We’re driving to the port, it’ll be the longest road trip that we’ve taken so far, so I wanted to make sure that my daughter stays entertained on the way there. I feel like I’ve nailed down the organization piece and making sure that she is able to use everything independently, it’s the entertainment piece that seems to be the biggest challenge.

Part of this is to be expected, I mean, how long can I really expect a six year old to sit in one place and be happy about it? I’ve always made sure to have fun new things for her to do in the car – but she wants to do them all in the first 10 minutes of the drive! So this time I’m packing up different Dollar Tree items (Disney themed of course) to give her at the beginning of each hour of our drive. Everything is wrapped, so she can’t see what it is until it’s time to open that specific package. I’m hoping that this will keep the excitement up and give her something to do for at least 5 minutes of each hour – until she resorts back to the tablet.

I’m also planning to put some of her favorite Disney Princess Barbies, Disney books, markers, and a favorite doll in a new Minnie Mouse outfit in a basket so that she can play with those as she pleases. As for the items that I’ve packed up, we’ve got everything from Minnie Mouse stress balls and squishies to a Frozen dry erase board, princess workbooks, princess art kits, and bead sets. If they weren’t from the Dollar Tree then they’re from Five Below or the Target dollar spot – so I didn’t break the bank on any of them.

I’m hoping that she’ll be just as excited to play with all of it on the way home. I’m also crossing my fingers that she’ll be so tired after a busy week of playing hard that she’ll just sleep a lot as we’re driving! I will definitely pop in with an update after the trip to let you know how it works.