Traveling with Little Ones – An Introduction

An Introduction – Traveling with Little Ones – Our WDW trip 2007

It’s “Little Ones Travel Time” at Walt Disney World so eleven of us are heading down to the World to introduce our little ones to the Magic. I’m Laura and my husband Steve and our two sons (ages 2 and 4) are making the trip with our friends Dawn and Joe and their son (age 1) and daughter (age 4) and our friends Diane and Ed and their son (7 months old).

Steve and I along with the other adults in our group are all Disney veterans, having been to Walt Disney World several times as well as Disneyland and Disneyland Paris. We’re all close friends (plus Steve and Diane are bro and sis) and have traveled together in the past so it only made sense that once we had children, a group trip to Walt Disney World was in our future.

We began planning our trip in February – early enough to take advantage of good airline prices from the Northeast. As a true believer that planning the trip is half the fun, I promptly purchased the latest Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and Birnbaum’s WDW for Kids by Kids for my DS(4). Even though he cannot read yet, he loves to look at the pictures and hear me tell him about all the things we are going to see.

We also went onto the official Disney planning website and ordered the free maps. (see pic) What excitement when we received them in the mail! They are beautifully done (they look like treasure maps) and we pour over them and point to all of our favorite attractions and things that we think would be of interest to our boys.

Basically my little guy is interested in anything that he is tall enough to ride that goes “superfast”. During the last several months we have been introducing as many Disney movies as we can so that all the characters/attractions will be familiar and of interest to them. We also purchased matching shirts for all in our group from the Disney Store this summer so we can be “goofy” and wear them on the same day. Lastly we hung a calendar for our DS(4)s’ bedroom and the countdown began. Now with only a few days left before our flight, the excitement has reached new heights.

I’ll be blogging here throughout our trip mainly with information about how our traveling with such little ones is going. We have read many of the posted suggestions on this site and others, now it’s time to put them to the test. We will no doubt have to adapt our plans to accommodate everyone’s needs, so I hope to share what we’ve learned from our experience.

We have plans for a few special meals together – breakfast at Cinderella’s Royal Table (MK), lunch with the Little Einsteins at Hollywood & Vine (Studios), the Hoop De Doo Revue, & breakfast at Chef Mickeys at the Contemporary Resort, but are leaving a lot of room for spontaneity.

Some think that traveling with babies and toddlers to WDW is exhausting and a waste because they are not likely to remember it. We, however, think it’s perfect. It’s a place we all know well – it’s comfortable. We know how to navigate and get around and get what we need. We’ve seen 95% of what’s there so we don’t have the “have to see it all” mentality. We’re happy to watch the crowds go by as we talk and play and do everything or nothing together. That’s the real point of our trip. Enjoying watching our children experience something special together will be in our memories for a very long time and what better time to do that than during The Year of a Million Dreams.

Check back to see how our first day went – see you real soon!

Laura Fox