We’re going to Orlando with good friends and their 7-yr old son in June, and the adults have been planning it for about 3 months now. The 7-yr old doesn’t know yet. If he’d been told back in January, he would have spend the whole 6 months asking “Are we going yet?” and frustrated because “IT’S STILL NOT TIME. I WANT TO GO TO DISNEY.” He just can’t fathom 6 months. Things are either now, soon, or “ahh gee, that’s never going to happen.”
Make sense of a calendar? Of course. Be quietly patient about the long wait? Have you met a 6 year old?
:rolleyes: Nice.
Hold off as long as possible. They’ll be thrilled to go when the time comes and I doubt there’s going to be any resentful “But I wanted to help plan” by any of them. I’ve been to the Disney parks plenty of times and a couple with our son and have never done any “planning” beyond picking a time of year and day of the week to visit. Having a rigid schedule of when to eat and what attractions to see can be a real downer and create stress. Most kids I know would prefer the freedom to explore the park by going and doing whatever catches their fancy at the moment.
Plan for some down days between parks if you can. The parks are exhausting and it’s hard to do full days back-to-back. A down day hanging at the hotel pool can be very welcome.
We go to Disneyland about once a year on average. We’re all Disney geeks, and it’s still one of the highlights of the year for all of us; almost as soon as we get home we start saying “when can we go back?”
Last year, we decided not to tell the Kiddo (age 11 at the time) until we were ready to leave, figuring he’d enjoy the surprise. We had to alter that plan a month or so before the trip when he got an invitation to a friend’s birthday party for the Saturday we would be out of town. We sat him down and said "You won’t be able to go to Jack’s party…because we’re going to *Disneyland for **your *birthday!
He broke down in tears and told us he didn’t want to go to Disneyland, he wanted to go to the party at the mini golf course. It took 10 minutes before he was consolable. We did end up going on our vacation and having a great time, but we’ll know not to plan an out of town trip for that weekend in the future 
As for your kids, it all depends on how they react to surprises. If they love being surprised, don’t tell them until you’re putting them in the car. If they are the sort that prefer their plans carefully made (like mine apparently is), then tell them now and let them help with the planning.
I said immediately, not because they deserve to know, but because I can’t keep a secret to save my life.
I voted the day before, because I loved surprises as a kid, and that would have been crazy exciting. I also, saw recently my cousin took their two kids and didn’t tell them until the night before, and they loved the surprise and had a great time.
But, I agree with the others. It really depends on the kids. It sounds like your kids aren’t the best at being patient. You don’t need to be special needs to be a kid that wants things now and is driven crazy by the waiting. I was like that when I was a kid (I’m like that now, too.). Waiting for something exciting to happen was painful and seemed to take forever. I didn’t handle Christmas Eve nearly as well as my friends did. And, really, I didn’t feel like the anticipation added anything to the experience. Probably why I like surprises.
I voted on the day before. But, that’s probably a bit much. If I had to choose between you and your wife’s plan I would probably go with your wife’s idea. A little bit of time to get excited, and think about what is going to happen when there. But, not enough time for little minds to go over the edge.
I say immediately, they’ll enjoy the anticipation. Life’s short.
I like the way you think! 
Well, obviously it depends on how your kids will react, so you’re the best judge of when to tell them. But I voted “immediately”, based on our family’s experiences.
I have two kids, 7 and 4, and we go to Disneyland once or twice a year. I can’t keep a secret, especially good ones, so I tell the kids as soon as the trip is planned. We went last December and of course they are already asking when we are going again. I said, “Probably September.” I think they are happy knowing that there is a (tentative) plan to go again, even if it’s not for a while. They don’t bug me about it, although my four-year-old will occasionally say, “I CAN’T WAIT to go to Disneyland!”
During Food and Wine? In the past five years?
We’ve gone every other year at this time for a decade, and that has not been my experience for the past eight years.
I vote for telling them now. I’ve never understood this compulsion to spring surprises like this on children. My son looks forward to our vacations just like my wife and I do.
It may have been true years ago, but is assuredly not true today. In fact, there really is no quiet time at WDW these days, only crowded and very crowded. IMHO, this is due to parents pulling their children out of school in an effort to avoid the crowds.
I can’t tell you the number of times we see people doing the “restaurant shuffle,” going from restaurant to restaurant asking if they are taking walk-ups. You don’t want to be doing this. Even if you do manage to get into a restaurant, it’s going to be one of the less popular ones (which does not mean that it’s cheaper–just less popular).
(My family is going to WDW this August, which will be our fifth visit in the last four years. I made our dining reservations as early as possible–exactly 180 days out. FWIW, I made the room reservations 11 months out, and the associated cruise reservation was made 18 months out. If I were going in October, I’d be getting ready to make dining reservations right about now.)
P.S. I highly recommend the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, if you don’t already have it. One of the authors (Len Testa) is a member of the SDMB.
Both of my “grandma’s houses” were 2,500+ miles away when I was growing up, so 9 hours wouldn’t even have registered on the “are we at grandma’s house yet” scale.
Do something like this the morning of the trip, substituting “early” Christmas presents from Santa Claus with “late” back to school presents from Aunt Vivian.
I can see not telling them now, as it may distract them from school. But at the end of the school year, what’s the point in not telling them?
But as another poster said, I wouldn’t actually wait until the school year was completely over. I’d tell them a day or two before then (the kids are all going to be too distracted to do any real schooling those last couple of days anyway), so they can tell their friends.
I’ve been one. Known plenty of others. Quite honestly, your kids sound more like my 3 year old.
Of course a 6 year old, or even the older two, should be periodically excited about the prospect of the upcoming trip. But I stand by what I said: most kids of their ages would not behave in an adverse manner as a result of such excitement, nor would they do the temporal equivalent of “are we there yet?” because they’d know quite well that, yes, the trip really was still X months away. A parent of normal kids might have to live through several months of intermittent outbursts of “I can’t wait 'til October 'cause we’re going to DISNEY DISNEY DISNEY!!!” but that kinda goes with the parenting territory.
Hey, if you had particularly problematic kids, you shoulda said so in the OP. I clearly wasn’t the only one wondering why not telling them right away was even being considered. But that was why you were considering it.
When do you tell your kids about Christmas? If you have a kid who doesn’t understand that the Disney trip isn’t until next month, what do you tell them about Christmas when the glitter and hype comes out in September? (Or does WalMart start stocking the shelves with Christmas elves in August now?)
What are you trying to do? Avoid their whining about when will it be? Or surprise the heck out of them when they had been planning a tea party with their friend next door?
I say tell them at least a month in advance. Anticipation is half the fun. I don’t care what the stupid commercials are telling you.
I tell them about Christmas right away. And I tell them what they’re getting as soon as I buy it. Same with Birthdays, I tell them what they’re getting right when I buy it. Kids hate suprises. The anticipation of the day when they’ll get to play with the gift I just told them they are getting is half the fun.
My wife has a childhood story about how her father, after the prerequisite pleading, agreed to take the kids to Disney Land. So they load up into the car and drive the couple hours or whatever and reach Disney Land. Hooray! Everyone piles out and goes to the gate and her father sees how much tickets cost. Says “This is robbery!” and takes everyone home.
So, you know… I guess it doesn’t matter when you tell the kids, so long as they make it through the front gate. Oh, and Mrs. Jophiel still hasn’t been to either Disney park.
Uh, Firefly, you are really sounding like a jerk. First you call his kids special needs, when he was being obviously hyperbolic, and now you are comparing them to your 3 year old.
The kids don’t have to be problematic to think surprising them would be fun. Someone can be well traveled in parenting territory and still think that waiting isn’t as fun for a certain kid as a big surprise a few weeks beforehand and a burst of planning.
Not all kids like planning nor do they all relish the waiting and anticipation. Calling them special needs, problematic, or immature is needlessly offensive.
If I had kids, I’d wait on the off chance that the trip has to be cancelled. I know the OP has said that only an extreme emergency would cause them to cancel the trip at this point, but emergencies do happen.