Four Ways to Involve Kids in Vacation Planning
Even as much as I enjoy planning myself, I love getting my kids involved and hearing what they're excited to do and see on vacation. Rather than plan everything and cross my fingers that it works out, this helps me get their input and iron out what our priorities are for the trip.
So in the spirit of having all the family involved, here are a few ways to include kids and make family vacations more fun for everyone:
Kid-Focused Vacation Destination Guides
Watching Destination YouTube Videos
Disney Movie Marathons and Disney+ Park-Related Shows
Presenting “This or That” Options
Kid-Focused Vacation Destination Guides
With a quick search for “(destination) for kids” on Bookshop or your local bookstore website, you’ll see that there are a number of vacation guides that are written specifically with kids in mind. You can swap out any destination and see what’s available. Our kids have loved using Birnbaum’s Walt Disney World For Kids guide, which has ride reviews by other kids and pages where they can write in their notes about what they most want to do in the parks.
Watching Destination YouTube Videos
Tap into your kid's love of YouTube videos! YouTube is a great way to explore a destination together, and there are plenty of travel vloggers out there posting on all sorts of destinations. YouTube was a tremendous help when making our plans for visiting Atlanta last year and helped us discover activities we might have missed otherwise.
And if you're headed to a theme park and don’t mind ride spoilers, YouTube has a TON of ride-along videos, too! Watching ride-along videos helped my younger daughter consider in advance how she felt about riding the bigger, faster rides.
Disney Movie Marathons and Disney+ Park-Related Shows
Our family does weekend movie nights often, and when we’ve got a Disney trip in the future, we will either revisit some of our favorite movies or watch something new. The kids will usually share if there’s a character they’re looking forward to meeting in the parks and we’ll be sure to catch that movie before we go.
One pleasant surprise is how many park-related shows there are on Disney+. We loved watching One Day at Disney and The Imagineering Story. My younger one devoured The Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom episodes, and when we visited she was so excited to see some of the animals in the show. She even had a long conversation with one of the Animal Kingdom cast members when we saw baby gorilla Grace who was featured in the first season!
Presenting “This or That” Options
When it comes to talking about vacations with younger kids, newsletter reader Jessica had a great suggestion to keep things simple. “Now that [my kids] are six and three, I give them simple choices. Like 'Would you rather swim in a pool or go to a beach on vacation?'” Too many choices can be overwhelming for younger children, so offering just two pre-selected options to choose from keeps it at their level and also makes them feel involved in the fun.
These are just some of the ways you can easily include your kids in planning your next family vacation.
