Trip Preparation: Creating a Countdown
Like any other passion in life, vacationing at Disney spills over into other parts of our life especially conversationally. This has opened up many relationships for us as we’ve moved numerous times. Each of these families have given us new ideas and new places to try on that next vacation or things to look forward to when the kids get older or we go vacation on our own. It was one of these families that gave us the idea to create a countdown to our vacations, an advent calendar of sorts. The Spencer family from PEI are avid Disney vacationers and would create a countdown with Mickey Ears for their kids to use as their trip got closer. I couldn’t wait to start this tradition with our own family once the kids got old enough to participate. On our last vacation our daughter was 3 1/2 and our son was 15 months so 30 days before hand we put our countdown up on the garden doors and each morning one child got to tear down a character off the garden doors. We are now close to a month away from our next trip and the time to create another countdown has arrived.
We chose 30 characters to use for our countdown. They have to be characters they will be interacting with on our vacation. Either through character dining, rides or meet and greets. We also did 15 characters that are male dominated and 15 characters that are female dominated. This vacation we will be going to the Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. At the Magic Kingdom we’ll be going on The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and the Seven Dwarves Mine Train, so we made sure to include Winnie the Pooh and Snow White. At the Animal Kingdom we’ll watch the Festival of the Lion King and do the meet and greet with Goofy and Pluto at DinoLand U.S.A.. At Hollywood Studios our day will be filled with Disney Junior characters and Star Wars droids so they had to be on the countdown wall. By steering the characters around the experiences we expect to have we try to create excitement around those we will meet and suppress the ones we won’t.
To find the images I head to Google and type in the character I’m looking for plus black and white. For example: Snow White black and white. Search under the images section of google. Open the image up on a new tab and then click copy. Open a new document in Word or Pages and paste the image. When you have all the images you want proceed with the second part of your arts and craft project: cutting. Cut the images and then find a place you feel comfortable tapping them to. Maybe a low window, garden doors, cupboard doors, anywhere you’re not concerned will be ruined by tape. I try to do this while the kids are asleep so they come down the next morning to the surprise of the countdown. When they’re older I’ll let them help out but for now this is a project on it’s own without having to add in small hands using scissors. This is a project, it takes time and effort but is a lot of fun for the 30 days you use it. Doing this countdown reminds me of a school project, it can be a lot of fun if you pick away at it for a couple of days, it’s daunting if you do it all in one night. Either way you’ll create a lot of excitement in your home as your vacation approaches.
Happy Planning, Friends.
