Prepping the kids for WDW

[Katzateer]

What traditions does your family have to get the little ones psyched up for a trip to WDW.

Our favorite when the girls were younger- we would have a parade of Disney characters. All the happy meal toys and stuffed animals would wind through the kitchen and family room in a parade path. They would play with them for hours.

And of course watch Disney videos.

[merciantinkerbell]

:joy:This 'big kid' doesn't need any extra psyching up!! and we don't go until October 2014. Hubby thinks I need calming down

[Dopey's Girl]

We drove down (YUCK! I'm so not a good car rider!) so our tradition was to go to target to help pick out snacks and little toys to help keep us from killing one another in the car.

We also used to look at the AAA triptick map to see what kinds of fun roadside attractions we wanted to see on the way down.

[Kairi_7378]

We did a countdown chain. Each day had a message from a character on the inside with a Disney sticker. Thankfully we did not start this until 50 days out because I had trouble coming up with messages after a while :-)

We read the Imagineers' Guides to each park, and had our son pick out his top few things that he wanted to do. Our park itinerary included a list of must do's for Mom, Dad, and DS.

We read (another WDW site) and picked out photos of snacks that looked interesting. This made it easy for us to use our snack credits in the best way, and also made sure that we were trying some of the more unique offerings.

Of course, we watched Disney movies, too. We also tried to watch videos or read stories about the different countries in Epcot to try to give the WS a little more context.