Tips for Traveling with Kids: Eight Honest Survival Rules

I love traveling with my kids. It is, however, a very different experience than traveling with adults. Kids slow you down, whine a lot and come with baggage, both literally and figuratively. I have countless stories, but that time our one year old took off my husband’s glasses and snapped them in half on the plane ride TO the vacation, then stayed up all night despite a spin around a bad neighborhood in a rental car comes to mind. My baseline for declaring a trip a success is that the kids’ behavior was tolerable. It will not be all rainbows and lollipops no matter what you do, but it will be worth it. These are the eight tips for traveling with kids we have learned over the years to make us less likely to have a Kate Gosselin moment.

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The Quick Take

Traveling with kids is worth it, but only if you stop pretending they’re tiny adults who will marvel at a sunset. The whole game is managing the gap between the trip you booked and the trip your four-year-old will actually let you have. Here’s the short version before we get into it:

• Go slower than you want. Longer trips beat crammed days. Build in a do-nothing day.
• Have a loose plan for each day so you’re not negotiating dinner with a hangry toddler.
• Bring screens (fully charged) and pack less than every list on the internet tells you to.
• Spend strategically on the things that buy back your sanity, and lower your expectations across the board.

1. Pace Yourself

I come from the “you only live once, but try to pack in enough living for three lives” school of thought. My husband is cut from a different cloth. I have spent our relationship dragging him and everyone else around to the point where no one is having fun anymore. But hey, at least we saw those two cows at that farm, right?

Torturing my husband is much more enjoyable than torturing my kids, because they are not shy about letting me know that they don’t like to be waterboarded. We have never kept our kids on a super strict schedule, but they are used to eating three meals a day at normal times and going to bed at 8:00 p.m. We can stretch this by a couple of hours, but they have a breaking point.

I try to mitigate a Chernobyl-like outburst by taking a longer trip as opposed to cramming too much into each day. When we go to theme parks, we don’t do more than two days in a row at a park without a break day. On the break day, we sleep in and typically don’t do anything except swim and hang out at the hotel. If you have the luxury of time, stay a couple of extra nights and do things at a pace your kid can handle. If your kid is not having fun, you won’t either. Guaranteed.

This is doubly true at a place built to wear you out. Our full theme park travel tips for little kids get into the gritty details, but the headline is the same: half a day on, an afternoon off, beats a full day of meltdowns every time.

2. Make a Plan

Making a plan is really important. There is nothing worse than trying to decide where to eat dinner at the end of a long day when the kids are hangry and everyone can barely stand the sight of each other. Make a tentative plan for each day of your trip. You don’t need to plan every second, but a general idea of what you want to do will go a long way. The internet is replete with tips for traveling with kids to every destination on the planet and beyond (if you are going to space). Go into your trip armed with information.

If you are visiting a theme park, make a touring plan and check crowd calendars. Even if you are limited to visiting during busier times, a crowd calendar can suggest which parks to visit on which days to avoid the heaviest crowds.

Disney World is the poster child for “plan ahead or suffer.” A few specifics worth knowing before you go, because they’ve changed and the old advice floating around the internet is wrong:

• Dining reservations open 60 days in advance. (If the blog you’re reading still says 180 days, it’s old — that window changed.) Disney resort hotel guests get a nice perk: starting 60 days before check-in, you can book dining for your whole trip, up to 10 days out, in one shot.
• Skip-the-line access is now paid and called Lightning Lane. The free FastPass+ system is gone. Its replacement, Lightning Lane Multi Pass, lets resort hotel guests book up to 7 days ahead and everyone else up to 3 days ahead. Budget for it — it is no longer free.
• Park reservations are no longer required for standard date-based tickets, which is one less thing to babysit on a spreadsheet. (Some annual-pass admission types still need them — check yours.)

If you don’t put the bookable stuff in place before you arrive, you will find yourself enjoying a vacation on par with that of Tom Hanks in Cast Away. For the deeper version of this, see our take on which Magic Kingdom extras are actually worth it and our broader Magic Kingdom tips.

3. Give Them Screens

This may be an unpopular opinion, but the people on the plane will thank you. To be clear, my children almost never see a screen at home. I genuinely dislike them when they use them. Both of them look like they need a session with Jeff VanVonderen after five minutes with a tablet. I can plainly see screens are terrible for their brains. It may make them tweak, but it also keeps them quiet. As long as you don’t take it away. Make sure that sucker is charged.

Two boring details that save the day: download the movies and shows before you leave so you’re not at the mercy of airport Wi-Fi, and pack a set of kid headphones and a battery pack. A dead tablet at hour two of a four-hour flight is its own kind of emergency. If you fly an airline that makes the whole ordeal easier on parents, here’s why we keep flying Southwest with kids.

4. Make Your Activities Kid Friendly

At this point in our lives, we plan every trip we take with the kids with their interests in mind. I learned early on that they are the Michael Jordans of ruining things about which I am excited. For example, we once chartered a whale watching boat in Cape Cod. Within minutes of the boat pulling away from the dock, whales breached National Geographic style. People in surrounding boats screamed with excitement like the whales were tossing crab legs and lobsters onto the boats. Meanwhile, our kids were on the floor of the boat pushing around toy cars and asking to go back to the house to swim. We spent the next four hours fighting the urge to toss them over the side. We should have left them at home.

I genuinely enjoy watching the kids have fun, and I seriously dislike the sound of complaining in a high pitched tone. Theme parks and water parks are our jam right now. Plan things they will enjoy. They will only be excited about characters and bubbles for a short time in their lives. Embrace this phase. You can’t get it back.

If you’re not sure what actually lands with little kids, that’s the entire reason we write the “by age” guides — like the top Disneyland attractions for toddlers. They save you from booking the grown-up dream that your kid sleeps through.

5. Take a Night Off From Parenting

If you are going on a long trip, consider a date night. Grandparents are ideal, but if they aren’t with you, a perfect stranger will work. There are babysitting agencies that run better background checks than I ever have on any of our local babysitters. Dinner at a pace that is not at the speed at which you would consume your food if the restaurant just caught fire is refreshing. Your kids will probably benefit from a change of scenery in their caregiver for a couple of hours anyway.

A night without them is cheaper than couples therapy and a lot more fun. If you want proof that some trips are flat-out better as adults, read our Waldorf Astoria Chicago review — a place we firmly believe you should leave the kids at home for.

6. Don’t Always Go The Cheapest Route

I am constantly on a personal mission to get the best deal. My love for saving money was a major reason Put on Your Party Pants and Keep Them on Until 8pm was born. However, getting the best deal is not the same as doing the cheapest thing possible. It is about getting the best value for your experience.

Vacation is amazing. Don’t sully its good name by making it unpleasant. If given the choice between taking a private car or public transportation with kids and luggage, private car all the way. TSA PreCheck is a godsend — herding small children through a security line is hard enough without taking everyone’s shoes off. If you can swing a larger hotel room where you can avoid your children from time to time, do it. Can you afford front-of-the-line passes at the parks? Definitely get those. At Disney World that’s Lightning Lane now; at Universal it’s still Express Pass. You get the point.

I am not advocating for blowing an insane amount of money or racking up credit card debt just to travel, but I am a big proponent of looking for the best deal to maximize your time and sanity. Points and miles are how we cover a chunk of the cost — and you don’t even need a fancy card to start. If you’re newer to the game, our guide to earning travel points without a credit card is the place to begin, and our roundup of how to save money on Disney trips covers the good, the bad, and the ugly.

7. Don’t Overpack

When we began to travel again after our kids were born, I researched tips for traveling with kids related to packing. It was not uncommon to see lists with over a hundred items. I packed two packs of wipes for a weekend trip, because what if our child suddenly starts peeing 45 times a day on this trip? Spoiler alert. You don’t need all that crap. Your kid doesn’t need all that crap. The more you bring, the more you need to drag through the airport while juggling children, then trip over in the crowded hotel room. You know what your kids require to get through the day. Bring. That. The end. You can always run to a store or the hotel gift shop in a pinch. Don’t add unnecessary stress.

If you’d rather pack from a list written by someone who has also overpacked two packs of wipes, we have destination-specific ones built for actual humans — like our minimalist Disney packing list and the ultimate theme park checklist for minimalists. The whole point is bringing what you’ll use and nothing you won’t.

8. Lower Your Expectations

Traveling with kids is great, but it is also hard. You need to lower your expectations and adapt to enjoy the experience. Otherwise, you will spend the entire trip asking yourself why you didn’t just stay home and light a pile of money on fire. Kids don’t have any concept of what you spent on this trip, and young kids in particular will not appreciate it. This should not stop you from having a good time.

Final Thoughts on Tips for Traveling with Kids

Vacations are stressful.  This is a first world revelation, but I am OK with admitting it out loud. In addition to contributing to hair loss, vacations are the source of special memories for our entire family. Travel is important to kids too. When you travel, focus on the fun times. Your toddler will be a cynical, thirty-something with his or her own kids in the blink of an eye. Make a plan, get a good deal, and settle in for the ride.

FAQ: Traveling With Kids

What is the best age to travel with kids?

There’s no perfect age, only different flavors of hard. Babies are portable but sleep-dependent. Toddlers are delighted by characters and bubbles but melt down on a schedule. Older kids remember the trip and complain less but no longer think bubbles are magic. Our honest take: the “characters and bubbles” window is short and worth catching, just keep the days shorter than you think you need to.

How far in advance should I plan a Disney World trip?

For Disney World specifically, dining reservations open 60 days out, and resort hotel guests can book Lightning Lane Multi Pass up to 7 days ahead (3 days for everyone else). Park reservations are no longer required for standard date-based tickets. So you don’t have to plan a year out, but you do want your dining and any paid line-skipping locked in once those windows open.

Is it okay to give kids screens while traveling?

On a plane or during a long transit day? Yes, and your fellow passengers will silently thank you. We barely allow screens at home, but travel days are an exception, not the new normal. Download everything ahead of time, bring kid headphones and a battery pack, and don’t take the tablet away mid-flight unless you enjoy chaos.

What should I pack when traveling with kids?

Less than the internet tells you. Bring what your kids actually use on a normal day, plus a little buffer, and trust that stores and hotel gift shops exist. We keep destination-specific minimalist packing lists for exactly this reason — start with the minimalist Disney packing list if a theme park trip is on the calendar.