Puddle Wonderful Learning: Disneyland Surprise 10 Day Countdown

By Tiffany Rudd

When we finally decided to take our kids to Disneyland for the first time, I wanted it to be a big deal. I wanted to milk the experience for all the excitement and fun I possibly could. I also, REALLY didn't want to hear "how much longer?" for a month before hand. :)

So, I decided to surprise the kids by telling them 10 days before we left. Just enough time to enjoy the excitement and anticipating, not so long that it became tainted with the difficulty of waiting SO long for something so fun.

I created this fun 10 gift countdown and it turned our 4 day vacation into a 2 week long party! I would highly recommend it if you have a Disneyland vacation coming up. I'll tell you all about the gifts I included and your can print the tags for free by clicking on the photos below.

Here are the gifts all wrapped, tagged, and ready to go. You'll notice that I included numbers for the older kids and the correlating amount of Mickey Mouse pictures on each for my 2 year old.

Of course you can use any 10 gifts you want. Most of mine came from clearance deals I kept my eyes out for since we scheduled our trip. Many of them were also things I would have purchased for the trip anyway, so really no extra cost. Here is what mine were...

10. The giant box full of all the gifts plus a big bunch of balloons and the first sign. This was how we revealed the fun surprise!

9. Mickey Mouse drawstring bags for holding car snacks.

8. New movies for watching in the car during the long drive.

7. Travel games.

6. Character notebook and pencil packs.

5. Disney giftcards I bought at Target. I got these with my redcard for 5% off and they were a great way to give each child a spending limit once in the park.

4. Minnie Mouse Dresses my mom made for the girls and Mickey t-shirts for the boys.

3. Photo mats and sharpie markers - for the characters to sign.

2. Reusable sticker pads for the car.

1. Car snacks.

The SURPRISE in photos...