Driving to the Most Magical Place on Earth

I will be honest. The drive from New York to Disney World is a looooong one. BUT! It was not bad at all considering we were with a toddler and preschooler. Even my hubs, who drove the whole way, said that while it was boring for him, it was not terrible.

Before the trip, we kept reminding our littles that we are going to Disney, but that we will be in the car for a couple of days to get there.  Luckily, they are used to long drives, as we generally take about a 6 hour drive upstate every summer, but obviously this one was going to be a lot longer. My oldest did ask why we were driving and not flying, but he didn’t care either way.

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Originally, our 2 year old was going to still be rear facing, but we made the decision to have him forward facing for the trip (don’t @ me!) In my perfect world, they would both be rear facing until they were adults, but alas, they are both now forward facing.  This honestly made the trip a little easier, because the youngest one was a pain in the butt to get into rear facing, and he was happy to be able to hold his brother’s hand once we turned him around, and watch the drive.  Since they were both forward facing, they were able to watch movies on the headrest monitor (I bought this one a few years ago, but plan on upgrading to 2 monitors for this next trip.) They also had movies on their tablets that I made sure to download before the trip since I wasn’t sure how well tethering off of our phone’s service would work once we hit the more isolated areas on the drive.

For the car, I got these backseat car organizers to keep things like DVDs and toys more portable. BONUS! This one has USB charging docks, which worked great for keeping their tablets charged!

In order to keep them from being glued to their tablets for the whole drive, I also made road trip kits to keep them entertained.  These included:

• Duplo. I filled little plastic bins with Big Briks (Duplo alternatives) blocks (these Duplo alternatives match up perfectly with Duplo), and a Big Briks baseplate glued to the top. I do NOT recommend Legos as they are way too tiny and too much of a choking hazard, especially when you’re strapped into your seat. Plus, you don’t want to risk stepping or placing your knee on one of these bad boys -_-
• Color Wonder. Amazon has these Color Wonder Stow & Go cases that you can fill with the Color Wonder coloring pages and markers. Makes transporting them very easy!  
• Books. You can’t go wrong with picture and board books!
• Toys. My littles are obsessed with trains and cars, so I made sure to pack some for the trip.
• Pipe Cleaners. I got these to keep the littles entertained. It was a bit of a miss last year, as my youngest kept trying to eat them -_- but I will try again this year.
• Water Activity Pads. I got these Melissa & Doug Reusable Color Pads. You fill the brushes with water, and they can “paint” the books with water and the color emerges! Once they are dry they go back to white and they can paint all over again.
• Wooly Willy. I got the littles the Wooly Willy pads, but honestly forgot about them during the trip. I’ll be packing them again this year.
• Threading and Lacing Toy. I got these Montessori styled threading and lacing toys for the little. The 2 year old was particularly taken with them! Just watch out for the inevitable tangles.
• Travel Lap Tray. These trays were AMAZING. Because of these trays, we didn’t have to stop to eat as the littles could just use the tray to keep their food on. This saved us SO MUCH TIME! We were able to just eat in our seats while driving MESS FREE. Just a quick wipe down after they were done eating and the trays were good for coloring or resting their tablets on again!

I put all of the kids’ activities in this super adorable Mickey tote bag, which I then used whenever we went to the pool. (Unfortunately, this bag is not available anymore on the Shop Disney site.)

How do the adults stay entertained during this trip? Well, I personally watched movies or played games in the background while talking to the hubs. Poor guy had nothing to watch except the road ahead.

Stay tuned for Disney Post #3 about our stay at Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside!

xoxo
VC

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