We’ve finally pulled the trigger on taking the thief family to Disney World. We’ll be going for 9 days in October. The question now is when to tell the kids? My wife wants to push it out as late as possible - not letting them know until we’re actually packing. I’m thinking once school is out for the year. Complicating matters a bit is that we won’t be going on our annual summer vacation to New Hampshire, which is sure to make them curious and disappointed. We could with some effort keep is quiet right up until the day of the trip - slowly & discreetly packing everything out of their sight. They’re currently 10, 8, & 6 years old, all girls if that helps. Telling a subset of them is not an option - none of them can keep secrets worth a damn, and it’s really too much to ask.
Ideally they should wake up on the Tea Cups ride. 
I say a week. It’s not as though they have jobs or real commitments. You picked absolutely the best time to come, by the way.
What’s the argument for not telling them immediately? I don’t get why this is even a question.
What am I missing here?
I agree with this. I’m not selecting “they have a right to know,” because obviously they don’t have a “right,” but you’re taking a really exciting trip and it will make them happy to know about it, yes? Half the fun of a Disney vacation is planning it together - figuring out where to eat, reading about what there is to do and deciding as a family what activities will take priority, so on, so forth. Just tell them.
As soon as possible. Get them involved in the planning. Let them start thinking about what rides they want to ride (and which ones they don’t), what meals they are interested in doing, if they want a day at a waterpark.
There are a lot of things to do at Disney that require planning and reservations. There are some disappointments as well (height restrictions) that it might be best to explain now.
You are going over Food and Wine - if you want a sit down meal, you’ll need to make reservations for it. I think its 120 days out now.
I’d wait a week. Maybe I’m wrong, but five months seems like a long time for a six year old to wait for something. I’d worry that the excitement would turn to frustration as time drags on.
Telling them right now removes the chance of them finding out accidentally and thus ruining your grand reveal.
Tell them now. Don’t be my parents, who told me we were going to watch my dad play in a golf tournament when I was 6 and I was sullen and pouty until I saw the Matterhorn.
I wouldn’t tell 'em until you pull into the parking lot. Make a game out of seeing if they can guess the destination. Oughta keep 'em busy in the car…
Seems to me you lose an incredibly valuable bargaining chip over the summer if they don’t know. “Oh, you don’t want to eat your broccoli? Maybe Timmy down the street would like to go to Disney instead of you.” “How badly do you want to see Mickey? Really really bad? Then why hasn’t the car been washed this week?”
i say wait til you’re about to leave or on the way there. my parents did just this to me and my brother when we were kids. they pulled us out of school making us think we were going to the doctor or something, and we ended up at disneyworld. it was a great surprise and i still remember it fondly.
Back in the fall, I was in line at a store behind a woman who was telling the cashier all about how she and her husband had planned an entire Disney trip, leaving the next day, but hadn’t told their kids yet. They were just going to pack them into the car and start driving until, I guess, someone started asking questions. As it’s at least 9 hours’ drive from here to Orlando, the kids would eventually have to notice that they weren’t just going to grandma’s for the weekend.
The evil side of me thinks this is an utterly brilliant plan, but I would’ve hated it as a kid because I’ve always been a compulsive researcher and half the fun of vacations was getting to read and reread my parents’ AAA guidebooks beforehand. I also don’t think my sister would’ve cared much for it as she’s a bit fond of routine and needs a bit of time to prepare for change.
I’d wait until it was a bit closer to time, maybe a little while before you would normally take your family vacation, but I’d still tell them well beforehand. Though I think it would depend on your kids – would they be pestering you daily from now until October if you told them now or would they get excited for a week and then sort of forget about it until it was time?
Depends on the kids and their ages. Ages 10+ may want to read up on the attractions and plan what they want to see. Ages < 5 may not be able to handle having to wait. If you know your kids, the right choice will be obvious.
I voted for “after school is over,” which is probably when we’re going to tell our kids. Although we have another reason for not wanting them to know — my wife’s cousin, who lives with us, is supposed to move to Hawaii this summer to live with her uncle, and if she hears about the Disney trip before she’s gone, it’s practically a guarantee those plans will fall through. But I’ve been debating whether to just tell them we’re going to Florida to visit Grandma and Grandpa, and them tell them about the side trip to Disney after we get there.
What JessEnigma said. My mom took me to DisneyWorld when I was 13, and we had a ton of fun planning the trip, reading all the guides (go left!), etc. It really helped maximize our fun that weekend.
Tell them after they’ve been.
“Wow, Grandma’s new house sure was different. It’s fun having a grandma with all those rides in her backyard.”
“Ha ha! We tricked you! That wasn’t Grandma’s house: that was Disney World.”
(Just kidding: I think you should tell them straight away.)
Torture them.
“Hey kids, we are going to Disney World”. Kids jump about with excitement, squealing
“Whoa guys. By we I meant your mom and me. Uncle Chester will be watching you two”.
I voted a month before the trip. October is still a looong way away. If you tell them now they’ll get all excited and then get angry and disappointed that it’s taking so long. Making a 6-year-old wait half a year for something fun seems like torture to me.
But, I agree with Dangerosa and others that they should be involved in the planning (to an extent) and be allowed to learn what their experience will be like before they go. A month seems like about the right amount of time to work up a good amount of excitement and keep them engaged without stretching it out too long.
(Not being a parent myself and not knowing your kids in particular, of course, the above is based solely on my possibly false assumptions of what kids are like and how they act.)
My epiphany was Taronga Park Zoo. You tell the kids you are going 3 weeks in advance and on the day it is pouring rain or over 100 degrees (or both in Sydney) so you are an asshole when you decide not to go.
Don’t mention it at all and on the day tell the kids, “let’s go to the zoo!” Wow, aren’t you the fun spontaneous dad.