16+ hour road trip... What to bring?

[TamiTaylor]

I hate these posts but I'm going to be a hypocrite and ask anyways.

We are driving to WDW at the beginning of June. We are taking 2 cars and have 5 adults and a 3yo. We plan to split the driving into two days.

So far I have:
-bucket full of snacks ***PLEASE REC SOME SNACKS***
-bought a child's travel/lap desk for J for things like snacks, puzzles, iPad, coloring, etc
-toddler size travel pillow
-blankets
-pull-ups (he's potty trained but I think I may put him in one just in case)
-games -***PLEASE REC SOME PUZZLES/GAMES/ETC YOUR KID LIKES IN THE CAR***
-iPad
-portable DVD player
-chargers
-extra cups for J
-water bottle


What else do I need to bring to keep all our sanity in the car?

[Ashley&Scott]

Snacks - pouches, goldfish, Cheerios, string cheese, yogurt tubes

Bring headphones for J. Put all of your dvds in a cd case to save space.

Don't forget sunglasses, you might want a sunshade too if you don't have one.

[broadsheet]

Melissa and Doug Water Wow books. M&D also makes some "secret decoder" books with invisible ink that I'm going to try out too.

Snacks: whatever your kid normally eats with some special treats in there. Just accept that your car will get trashed.

[jeaniebueller]

I don't know if you are opposed to this, but I would actually pack sandwich stuff, not just stuff for snacks. Eating fast food on road trips like this gets old and sometimes when you are driving through the middle of nowhere, its nice to be able to pull together a quick meal.

[NandaB]

A trip that long sounds terrible, lol. But I would hit up the dollar store for some small new (and therefore exciting) toys. Also a few new books with flaps or things to slide my kids also got easy eye spy books for Christmas that have pictures of what they are looking for I stead of just words. We got ninja turtles and paw patrol

[countthestars]

snacks: yogurt raisins, pirate's booty, granola bars, fruit, almonds/trail mix, oreos

toys: magnadoodle! water wow, reusable stickers, maybe a lacing toy like this: www.amazon.com/Mickey-Mouse-Clubhouse-Wooden-Lacing/dp/B00P2SKZK0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1463409579&sr=8-3&keywords=lacing+toy

[NandaB]

Oh yea, those m&d reusable sticker pads are cool, but my kids also love regular stickers and a little spiral notebook of their own

[jennistarr1]

Here are my typical road trip adult snacks
Grapes, 4 bananas, 4 apples, 4 oranges
Big bag of pretzels
Some kind of gummy candy like gummy bears or twizzlers
string cheese
PB Crackers
Beef Jerky
Reeses

this combination seems to hit all the spots for em

[TamiTaylor]

Bump

[cmarie11]

Get yourself a pill organizer like this one. Fill it with cheerios/goldfish/m+m's/fruit snacks. Kept DD entertained forevvvvver.

I know some people get cheap toys from the dollar store and wrap them up, and pass them out every hour. 

[wavepool]

I made bags of toys, lots of new dollar store things I could toss or lose and not feel bad about. We'd get out one bag at a time, and I put all the bags in a basket on the floor board. Kept the car less of a disaster zone.

[water*drop]

DD plays on her leappad in the car, but she's actually pretty content to just stare out the window a lot of the time, too. I also have a stockpile of those cheap books about the Disney Junior shows on hand, and I give her new ones for road trips. They're nice because they follow along with episodes exactly, so she can easily figure out what they're about and "read" them to herself. Some of them have stickers in them, too, so that extends their novelty.

[water*drop]

OH! And this may not be necessary if your cars are small, but we have a minivan, and we keep one of those trash grabber things in it for the passenger to use when one of the kids drops a toy and starts freaking out about it. It sounds stupid, but it's so much nicer than either listening to them scream about not being able to reach their toy or having to find someplace to stop to retrieve it for them.

[eponinepontmercy]

DD watched Paw Patrol DVDs for almost our entire drive to Disney (Delaware to Florida, split over two days). The DVD player has been a godsend. We bought it after she talked for 4 hours straight on our drive to the beach last summer.

Someone recommended we get a box or something to rest her feet on so they weren't dangling the whole time.


water*drop, that is genius. We have a minivan, and DD drops stuff all the time.

[jln]

We drove across the country - from OR to TX - when DS1 was 3. We drove about 5 days. Luckily DS1 was pretty content just watching movies, so that made it much easier. We also stopped at fast food places that had playgrounds a couple times a day, usually. I also bought all of the toys just before the trip so it was stuff he'd never seen, which made it more exciting.

For entertainment:
Color wonder clipboard
Tablet with movies
Magnets on a cookie sheet
Hot Wheels on a lap desk

For snacks I had:
Goldfish
Raisins
Pretzels
And other random bags of whatever he picked at the has station. He enjoyed doing that.

I also bought a large cereal container at Walmart and lined it with a small trash bag. When we needed to throw something away we just lift the flap and then seal it. It kept our car clean and made a difficult trip that much easier.