Toddler Travel Archives - asthejoeflies

Mar 17 2018

6 potty training tips for traveling with young kids

One monkey wrench that often gets thrown into traveling with young kids is potty training. Some families, even ones that love to travel like ours, might take a break from traveling around potty training time. An accident at home can be very annoying, an accident on the road can be all that and more. We’re in the middle of potty training my son and considering he literally just lost his underwear (I searched the house, no idea where it went), I’ve got concerns about traveling with this kid while potty training. (Note: This is what happens when you put dad in charge :D). But sometimes as a family you have to travel while potty training, or maybe you just want to. So here are some of my best potty training travel tips, and I’d love to hear yours in the comments! Note, the portable toilet seat I recommend below is an Amazon affiliate link and may pay me a small commission.

1. Know your child’s personality

This first tip is both common sense parenting and a caveat. No two kids are the same, so take everything this website (and others) says with a grain of salt. Only you know what works best for your child when it comes to amount of praise, rewards, need for scheduling, and degree of sarcasm necessary. (Joking.) But make sure you tailor your potty training strategy, whether at home or on the road, to what makes your child tick. This obviously becomes much easier when you’re potty training a second or third child, but you can still bear this in mind with the first.

For example, different children need different amounts of reminding and scheduling. Every kid probably needs to reminded to go to the bathroom when you start potty training, but children learn to tell you they need to go themselves at different rates. That’s just one of a million examples of how a child’s unique personality will require a unique strategy. So make sure when you’re employing any travel strategy to bear in mind your child’s personality.

2. Start early (both age-wise and before you travel)

I delayed potty training my then three year old daughter because we had a big trip to Disney World coming up. My reasoning, which I still think was fairly sound, was changing diapers would be easier than worrying about timing toilets. That delay proved unnecessary for two reasons. First, Disney World has incredible bathroom facilities for kids. In retrospect, this should have been obvious to me. Secondly, I’ve heard recently that people say that 20-30 months is the ideal potty training time. The reasoning goes, “the kid can’t hold it yet, so if you have them go regularly, they get used to it, and they figure it out.” Or some mess like that, IDK. So I could have potty trained my daughter long before the trip.

We’re trying that with my 2.5 year old son and aside from the aforementioned disappearing underpants, potty training is going very well. We’re also at least a month out from any large trips, so he should be potty trained in time for wherever we end up traveling in April. If you just started potty training but need to make an emergency trip, I’d recommend just reverting to diapers for a little while to prevent stress. If it’s an emergency trip you probably have bigger things to worry about anyway.

3. Use diapers for long stretches and to prevent bad accidents

I’m sort of over pull-ups as a concept, at least at home. I think children, especially young ones, understand more viscerally what is happening when they wet their underwear. However, I think diapers, pull-ups or otherwise, should still be part of your potty training travel strategy. A couple of examples to illustrate why:

When the seat belt sign is on, you just don’t have any idea when you can get to the bathroom. A diaper prevents you from having to try to navigate an airplane toilet in bumpy air.
In foreign countries, you may not always be able to reliably find a bathroom.
On road trips you don’t have to stress about waking someone up from a nap.

Obviously, when potty training you will be bringing an extra set of clothes (preferably two) in your go bag, but diapers will minimize your stress since you have a backup. Things like jet lag and overall exhaustion are tough for adults to handle, so I like to take the stress off a child in the middle of potty training.

Do pack a ton of plastic zip lock bags, though.

Potty training young children can be stressful, even moreso if you're traveling or on vacation. Here are six potty training travel tips to help you and your family make the most out of your trip. — Naps are great, you don’t want to interrupt them

4. Use timers to keep on track

One thing about travel is that it can be stressful. (Related: Family Travel Conflicts). There can be so much going on that parents might not even have the mental bandwidth to remember a potty break. I find timers to be super useful both at home and on the road. Technology is great and frankly I need the assist to keep everything straight in my head, especially on the road. A bonus, in my experience, is that kids love timers. You can download the fun apps or just let them pick the ringtones or whatever.

Either way, timers help keep you on a schedule which helps prevent accidents. Obviously this may not work as well on a plane when there is drink service, lines, turbulence, etc., but that’s why you combine this with the diapers.

5. Try to keep your home routines as much as possible

Another thing the timer can help you with? Maintaining home routines. We try to keep home routines the same as much as possible when traveling, since traveling introduces so many new variables. Potty training is no exception. Routines help kids feel comfortable. They prevent potty issues as well as behavior issues.

When you’re on the plane, if your child goes potty once an hour, try to get them to go once an hour. At your hotel, same thing. And when you’re out and about town, try to do whatever you do when out and about your hometown. Routines don’t prevent disaster, but they help.

That also means if you use a portable toilet or toilet seat at home, bring it on the road too. Public bathrooms can understandably be strange and daunting to young kids, so bring what they’re familiar with from home to make them comfortable. (Looking for a portable toilet seat? Try this one!)

6. Don’t stress the small stuff

I’m a big offender, but it’s really not worth stressing about the small stuff, especially when traveling. Kids feed off their parents energy and if you constantly stress about anything, especially potty training, they will just feed off that negative energy. Go into your trip expecting a few accidents: they’ll likely happen. That’s okay! Just make sure you keep doing what you were doing at home and supporting your child positively. (Again, I need to remind myself of this often).

Remember, potty training is about winning the war, not any individual battles. Prepare yourself accordingly before you travel.

Final Thoughts

Like I said at the top, I totally understand not wanting to potty training while traveling. I definitely have avoided it when possible, but sometimes it’s not possible. Overall, just like at home, patience and firm guidance should win the day. If you have any tips for potty training while traveling, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

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Feb 25 2018

Flying Alone with Preschoolers – Tips and tricks for a successful trip

In my last post, I detailed my (mostly) successful experience flying alone with my two young children, which went much better than my first attempt. If you’re flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers, let me share a few ideas about how to best set your family up for success.

Like I said in the last post, meltdowns on a flight often have a lot to do with luck. Still, I feel it’s good to prepare and set yourself for the lowest probability of meltdown. Here are seven suggestions I’d make to help making flying alone with preschoolers more manageable. As always, would love to hear your thoughts in the comments! If you hear echoes of the experience I shared in my last post, it’s because I’m not only a spokesperson for these ideas, I’m also a customer.

Flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers may sound scary, but with preparation (and a little bit of luck) you can have a successful and stress free trip! Here's some tips and tricks to help you achieve that goal. — Happy to be airborne

If you’d like to support the blog, I’ve indicated when I’ve added my Amazon affiliate link for certain products in the post (well, just one), would appreciate it if you used it. You can always find other travel products I recommend on my family travel gear page.

Seven ideas to make flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers more manageable

Pick a time to fly that works for your child
Pack light
Make life easy on the ground
Don’t stress out about the nap
Make sure your kids are fed
Break your flight down into twenty minute segments
Practice, practice, practice at home

1. Pick a time to fly that works for your child

First and foremost, I’d say pick a flight time that best sets yourself up for success. Yes, you’ll save a ton of money flying at 6 AM or 9 PM, but is that worth potential disaster? This rings especially true if your travel puts you alone with multiple young children, like my latest trip.

Like I said above, I enjoy traveling mid-morning. I can wake the kids up normal time, and we can either have lunch on the plane or when we land. Others know their kids will nap fine on the plane (either through experience or because they get consistent naps in car seats). If that’s the case, you can travel after lunch and have your kids nap on the plane. This worked like gangbusters for my oldest daughter, but my son doesn’t nap well on planes so I’ve adjusted.

Know your child and know when they will be at their best. To me, it’s super worth the premium to pay extra to fly accordingly.

Corollary my family and I use: Avoid connections if you can. Every layover just presents another opportunity for things to go wrong.

2. Pack light

Like most parents, I tend to worry about everything. This leads to a tendency to overpack – extra jackets, twice the amount of clothes needed, sunscreen, medicine for every disease known to child, etc. I can be guilty of this, but I work very hard to pack light, it just makes the airplane part of travel so much easier.

That means I only brought the essentials to Florida plus:

1 extra set of clothes
Medicine
Ponchos (it’s Florida and they’re light)
Swimwear
Diapers (I ended up having extra room)
Entertainment for the kids (coloring books, tablet which I forgot, etc.)

So in the end, I ended up with one carry-on sized suitcase (which I checked, more on that later), one adult backpack, one kids backpack, one stroller, and one shoulder bag (like a tote) for food.

That meant except for the short distance from the car to the check in desk, I could always have one hand on the stroller and one hand on my older child. That not only provided convenience, but I also didn’t have to worry about losing anyone in the crowded airport.

3. Make life easy on the ground

So why did I check in my bag? Because of Disney’s Magical Express, which delivers your luggage straight to your room. In general, I’m a believer in making life easy for yourself on the ground at your destination at the least, at both departure and destination if possible. I didn’t have to worry about my suitcase and I just got my kids on the bus and was at Coronado Springs in an hour (though again, we definitely got very lucky this time around, it can take up to two hours).

Becky Pokora of sightDOING.net expressed a similar idea on Episode 75 of the Saverocity Observation Deck podcast. Towards the end of the podcast she mentioned she almost always hires a car at her destination just so she can mostly guarantee she’ll get to her lodging with as little stress as possible. When you save a lot of money on travel via hacking, you can afford to splurge a little to make life easier on the ground. In my mind, this goes double when you’re flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers.

4. Don’t stress out about the nap

Yes, most toddlers and preschoolers need a nap. They also need to assert themselves and their independence. In my opinion, fighting with your toddler about napping on a plane isn’t worth it and may even have the opposite effect. I’m sure you have fought with your child about napping at home, imagine doing it in a very public, very confined cylindrical tube 30,000 feet in the air.

Some kids will be self aware enough and decide they want to sleep themselves (my daughter). Others will just never sleep and end up overtired the next day (my son). Some kids will eventually get so overtired they flip out for a time until they eventually pass out in your arms inside the lavatory (both my kids).

I liken this to calling the bank when you get “pending” for your credit card, which I no longer do. If you start insisting your child take a nap on the plane, you’re inviting them to throw a tantrum early. Yes, they may eventually throw a tantrum if you don’t make them take a nap, but your insisting gives them two opportunities to do that instead of just one.

I’m sure many people disagree with me, and that’s fine. I’ve just found stressing about the nap not to be worth it. On both flights, I calmly asked my son if he wanted to take a nap, he said no. I replied by trying to reason with a two year old about the importance of rest, he said no again, and I just let it go. Luckily he didn’t tantrum and we survived.

Obviously, this strategy needs to be adjusted for longer flights, but we managed for five and a half hours including the delay, and you can too.

5. Make sure your kids are fed

Do I love bringing macaroni and cheese (with broccoli mixed in) onto a plane? I most decidedly do not. But I knew Jetblue wouldn’t even have “real” food for sale on my flight, so I needed some sort of substantial sustenance for the kids. If I hadn’t woken up so late I would have added ham.

The two most consistent reasons my kids, and I think most kids, get cranky are still lack of sleep and hunger. While I’ve established I try not to stress out too much about the former, I definitely prepare for the latter. I reserved an entire carry on bag for snacks, the macaroni and cheese, milk, etc. I even bought easy mac for the ride home. Spend that extra time and use up that extra space to make sure your kids won’t be hungry on the plane, and ideally, not just loading up on chips and pretzels. Trail mixes are great for protein if your kids will eat them.

I brought treats for my son (aforementioned Reese’s Pieces), and doled them out over time. Another very effective technique for toddlers is putting tiny snacks into a pill box (Amazon affiliate link) – it really drags out the whole process!

6. Break your flight down into twenty minute segments

I got this idea from a fellow writer at Traveling Dad, Jeff Bogle (from the fun parenting/travel blog Out with the Kids). I recommend checking out this post about breaking your flight into twenty minute segments (despite him disagreeing with me about the nap time thing!).

The basic premise: bring activities, food, entertainment, etc. that can be doled out to your toddler in 20 minute segments (minimum). Whether it be coloring books, a TV show, or a snack in a pillbox, prepare to have a variety of activities for your child.

The idea sounds simple and it is! I’m not a very organized person but I still managed to get on that plane (with very little luggage) with over ten twenty minute activities. My activities included the aforementioned pill box, a coloring book, a sticker book, the mac and cheese, multiple TV shows, and more.

Mixing things up will prevent the kids from getting bored, and planning in this fashion will prepare you to entertain them on the trip even if you’re a bad planner (me). Bring some candy for yourself, too.

7. Practice, practice, practice at home

If you can’t handle your young kids at home, you’re certainly going to struggle up in the air. So if you don’t get put in 1 v multiple situations at home, put yourself in them. This goes double for whichever parent spends less time taking care of the kids.

Taking care of the kids alone at home obviously gives you a practical advantage. You get used to being outnumbered and the tightwire act that ensues. You also get the experience of not having a safety net to back you up. I guess you have the kindness of strangers but you potentially have that on the plane too.

But probably the best reason to take care of the kids alone, aside from making your partner happy and more relaxed, is you get to know how you parent the kids. To state the obvious, this knowledge will be invaluable when you’re in a solo situation with the kids. Especially one that has the potential to be high stress.

Also, hanging out with the kids alone is fun. Practice!

Final Thoughts

There’s no surefire way to ensure flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers will be smooth, but there’s lots of ways to reduce stress. These are tips that have worked for me. But every family and every child is different, as you no doubt know if you are a parent.

So, I’d love to hear it: what works for you and your kids when you’re traveling alone with no backup? Or if you haven’t tried it yet, what scares you the most about traveling alone with your little kids? Let me know in the comments!

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Feb 24 2018

Flying Alone with Preschoolers – my latest experience

About a year ago, I told myself my attempt at flying alone with preschoolers or toddlers probably sufficiently broke me to the point of avoiding traveling alone with the kids. I jest. But here we are, a year later, and I decided to have another go, this time taking an entire vacation with my older two children (5 and 2.5). I thought I’d just share a bit of my experience and some rudimentary tips for trying to survive being alone with small children in a small cylindrical tube.

A couple quick notes before I get into it. First, I chose Disney as a location because I thought it would be easier. A Disney hotel reservation offers a lot of benefits that make life easier when you get on the ground. I figured with stuff like Magical Express, I wouldn’t have to worry about hauling luggage or a rental car on the ground. Plus, at a rate of $145/night at Coronado Springs, a moderate hotel (that I could pay for with points too) it seemed like a no brainer. Also, I scheduled the trip to coincide with when my parents were visiting friends in Florida, which obviously helped a ton. They agreed to stay at Coronado as well and spent some time with us in the parks.

Flying alone with preschoolers can be tough, but it's definitely doable. Here's my latest experience taking my five and two year old down to Florida. — Staying at an on site Disney hotel made life a lot easier

Finally, props to anyone who has done this, especially those who have to sometimes. A friend of mine took her two under four year olds all the way from Thailand back to the States. My mom likes to remind me she did the same with my sister and me to Hong Kong. If you want to fly alone with young kids or are in a situation where you have to – know that people have tread that path before and excelled at it. Or at least survived it.

My experience flying alone with two preschoolers

Woke up late, oops

I booked an 8:30 AM flight outbound and a 10:30 AM return because I’ve decided that for short domestic flights (< 3 hours) it’s best for my kids to avoid naptime. Like anti-clockwork, my alarm didn’t go off at 6:00 AM so my wife woke me up in a panic at 7:00 AM. My wife and I tag teammed to make some mac and cheese and we made it out the door by 7:15.

We got to the airport by around 7:40, even with rush hour traffic, and dropped our bags off at check in. Since I had two kids and only two hands, I didn’t want to deal with rolling a carry-on through the airport. (Alas, I think that will be par for the course now until all three are old enough to carry their own stuff).

We found a cute little play area in Terminal C where we hung out before heading to the gate. After arrival at the gate we of course had to return to the play area where we left one of our dolls. I like to board late when I’m alone with the kids because they’ll be on the plane long enough, so we hung around the terminal and were some of the last people to board.

A bonus two hours on the plane

Again, like anti-clockwork, when we boarded the plane in Boston, we happened to be in the middle of a mild snow and in freezing temperatures. Jetblue in Boston taxis to a de-icing pad instead of de-icing at the gate. That combined with a bunch of other delays that I can’t even really remember meant we did not have wheels up until 11:00 AM.

2.5 hours on the plane while the flight was still on the ground! To be perfectly honest, I worried a lot about whether my kids (well, mostly the two year old) would lose it at any minute. Oh, and in my rush out the door I forgot our tablet. So how did we survive?

Well, for starters, free TV on Jetblue helped a lot. Between that and my phone (and multiple portable chargers), the kids mostly stayed entertained. I also came equipped with a bunch of coloring books, snacks, and the aforementioned mac and cheese.

We spent a lot of those two hours talking about planes, why they get delayed, the whole deicing situation, watching TV, coloring a little, watching TV, eating candy, watching TV, etc. I refused to bust out the mac and cheese because I knew I had to pace us. Finally, we were on the runway and taking off, and I did a little cartwheel in my head.

A bag lunch and surviving the rest of the flight

I had originally intended the mac and cheese to be lunch for the kids at the time of our descent (which should have been around 12:30 PM). But after they survived the long delay and we took off, I decided that we’d eat lunch right then and there, at 11:15. The kids mostly held it together the whole way.

Obviously, avoiding meltdowns has a ton to do with luck. My son had been quite difficult the week before we left so I was pretty nervous, having read a bunch of stories about how all the kids who get kicked off the plane are in terrible twos or threes. Yikes. If I could point to one thing besides luck that saved my bacon, it was a decision early on in the delay to dole out ONE Reese’s Piece to my son every twenty minutes. He bought into it and I managed to get through the whole flight giving him only a little bit more than a Halloween sized pack.

A stress free transfer

When we finally landed, having that Disney hotel reservation really paid off. We just waited for our stroller, squad goals-ed our way through the airport to the Magical Express, got onto the bus (more TV) and went straight to the hotel. An hour later we were in our hotel room, two and a half hours later we were in Pandora at Animal Kingdom. Disney transportation doesn’t always work smoothly, but when it does it is straight up spectacular.

Final Thoughts

Did part of me root for a meltdown to happen so I’d have something more interesting to write about? I’ll never tell! But hopefully this post reassures anyone out there flying alone with preschoolers that even when things go wrong, you can have a great flight! In my next post, I’ll write about my best ideas for minimizing the risk of having a bad flight experience with your little kids. Until then!

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Feb 15 2018

Daring to Disney: When a Disney annual pass makes sense

Trying to figure out whether an annual pass makes financial sense for your Walt Disney World trip? Are there times when it’s better to buy one than individual tickets? This post will explain what you need to know to make the best financial decision for your Disney World vacation.

Update: With the new 2019 ticket prices going into effect as of 3/12/19 and the new annual pass prices going into effect 6/18/2019, this is an update of my article from 2016 about how an annual pass often makes financial sense. Since Disney World has gone calendar based, I can’t account for every single ticket available. What I’ve done is used the median ticket price for calculations. I’ve updated the Annual Pass calculator with these median prices – add in your trip lengths and options to see if buying the Disney Annual Pass makes sense for you! The annual pass has gone up a LOT, so it’s starting to make less financial sense. Scroll to the bottom.

So I mentioned in my last post that I saved money by staying off site, but I should have saved more. It’s downright shocking to me, but it would have made a ton of sense to buy an annual pass on my Disney World trip. Haley Bach (a Disney Expert who is going to be on the next episode of the Observation Deck!) summed it up perfectly with this tweet:

@asthejoeflies 😱 yeah, ticket math often makes an AP a good call.
— Resist Vote Vaccinate not feeling calm rn (@BachFancy) January 11, 2016

So what ticket math would make an annual pass a good call? I think I read somewhere that if you are spending at least 12 days in the parks over a calendar year an AP is probably worth it, but to me, it’s even less than that. Towards the bottom of the post I have created a simple tool that you can use to calculate costs for your own situation if you want to skip ahead!

What you get with an annual pass

The basic Disney annual pass is called the Disney Platinum Pass and costs $1191.74 (after-tax) for a 366 day period (so you can use it from 6/18/2019 – 6/18/2020, wait, do you get 367 days in a leap year!?). Here’s what you get:

Unlimited admission to the four Walt Disney World theme parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom)
Park hopping privileges (you can go to multiple parks in the same day)
Free theme park parking
Free Disney Photopass downloads
10% off merchandise
10-20% off dining depending on location (excludes quick service, thanks Haley!)
Various discounts on lodging

Let’s take these one by one before we go through the ticket math, in order of importance in my mind from least to greatest.

1. Lodging and dining discounts

For discounts on lodging and dining, my guess is take it or leave it. There are often sales during off periods available to everyone of up to 30%, I read online AP discounts are usually up to 30% as well on hotels. My guess is during peak times you’re probably looking at paying close to the rack rate anyway, it’s just simple supply and demand. I’d love to hear people’s experiences in the comments though. Dining discounts can add up, Disney annual pass holders have had a running 10% discount for a few months. Penny pinchers bringing their own food obviously might not save as much with an annual pass.

2. Park Hopper

Park hopping is great, but to me it’s usually more of a luxury than anything else. If you are staying for a week, like we did, spending one day per park is definitely enough. If you’re thinking about getting an annual pass, then you definitely have the time to spread things out and visit one park per day. I’d say the only exception is dealing with the Magic Kingdom and young children: taking the ferry or monorail across the Seven Seas Lagoon adds like 15-20 minutes to your commute each way and makes going back home for a nap really annoying. The luxury of park hopping to Epcot for dinner is very tempting. But I still think it’s a luxury (more on that later).

When does a Disney annual pass make financial sense? Compare the features your family needs for your next Walt Disney World vacation and save money on your travels with this free tool. — Disney’s professionals probably wouldn’t get the hand in the picture

3. Photopass downloads

Free Disney Photopass downloads are another luxury, but you can glean a lot of value out of this benefit. Unlike Memory Maker (subject of my next post), you don’t get automatic downloads of your friends and family pictures. However, that’s pretty easy to circumvent – anyone who is linked as family and friends to your My Disney Experience account effectively receives your Photopass privileges. You can download their photos as if they are your own.

If you don’t want to make people your friends and family, grab a Photopass card (say, from a character meet and greet or something). Scan the same Photopass card for whatever photos they take. Then link all those Photopasses to your account and for a little extra work you should be able to download everyone’s photos (in theory at least).

4. Free theme park parking

If you’re saving money by staying off site, free theme park parking is huge – $25 a day adds up quickly. Doesn’t mean anything if you’re staying on site, but it adds up quickly if you’re trying to save money by staying off site. Sometimes it might make sense for at least one person in your party to grab the annual pass just for this benefit.

Why the math on my ticket meant I probably should have bought an annual pass

Of course, getting admission to all four theme parks for a year is great. And that’s where the ticket math comes in.

Here’s a quick tip that a lot of first time Disney goers might not know: as long as you have at least one unused day left on your ticket, you can use the value of your ticket to “upgrade” to a more expensive ticket at any time. Put a pin in that and we’ll get back to it.

Anyway, let’s take a look at my costs compared to an annual pass (note these were prices from Jan 2016):

Item	Our Trip	Annual Pass
7 park days	$335	Included
Park hopper	$65	Included
Parking	$120	Included
Memory Maker/Photopass	$169	Included
Total Cost	$689	$749

As you can see, with all the things I ended up tacking on to my tickets, I spent only $60 less than I would have spent if I had gotten an annual pass. That year, I visited Orlando again for FT4RL4, so bought another ticket – that cost more than $60. So you can see how ticket math can really hurt you. And even if I hadn’t visited a park, I probably would have gotten close to $60 back with the dining and merchandise discounts.

I would have spent less money if I had bought an annual pass in 2016.

Is an annual pass the right decision for you?

Should you get an annual pass? In my case, I think we should have bought at least one annual pass. There are also some pretty easy rules of thumb.

You should almost always buy an annual pass if:

You plan to visit the parks on three separate occasions in a calendar year
You plan to visit the parks for at least twelve days total across two trips

However, if you want to mess around with some calculations yourself, here’s a simple tool I made. You can input trips you plan to take and ticket types you plan to buy, along with Memory Maker and parking. At the bottom of the table, you’ll see how much you will save with an annual pass or how much more you’ll spend. The tool is in beta so please let me know if you see any errors! You can either click the link below or I’ve embedded the tool at the bottom of the post.

Update 10/16/2018: Since I obviously can’t account for all of Disney’s variable pricing, I’ve done my best to take the AVERAGE ticket prices for the year. So this Annual Pass calculator tool should be in the ballpark, but if your number is close, you might want to throw your actual dates into Disney World’s website.

Disney Annual Pass Calculator Tool!

If you want to go deep down the rabbit hole, check out this very amazing and very in depth spreadsheet made by Touring Plans forum user JJT. It includes a bunch more options plus info on ticket discounters.

Note: Only use the tool if you’re not a Florida resident, since Florida residents get discounted rates on everything.

Upgrading your ticket

As I mentioned above, as long as you have one unused day on your ticket, you can upgrade it to a more expensive ticket. This includes adding park hopper options, water park options, or even upgrading to an annual pass.

If I had figured all this out about the annual pass before I had gotten to the parks I probably would have upgraded to an annual pass on the first day. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this until day six, meaning I had already paid $120 for parking.

But if you have a trip planned and you’ve already bought tickets but want to upgrade them, you can totally do it before you pay for all the parking and make it worth it. You can upgrade at the ticket booths at the park, but that of course would require you to pay for one day of parking. You can also do it at any Disney hotel or at guest relations at Disney Springs. I think if you bring your parking receipts they can be applied to the cost of the pass as well.

Final Thoughts

If you’re going to Disney World for close to a week, you should definitely think about upgrading to or buying an annual pass, especially if you are going to have to pay for theme park parking. The math often makes it worth it – feel free to use my table if you’re too lazy to do the math yourself!

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Can’t get enough Disney? Check out our Disney planning podcast, Disney Deciphered (latest episode embedded below)!

Other Posts in this Series

Flights, Hotel, and Car

Making Disney Dining Reservations

Saving Money on Disney Tickets

Using Touring Plans (the non-touring plan parts)

Optimizing a visit using Touring Plans’ touring plans

Saving money by staying off site

When a Disney annual pass makes sense

Touring Epcot attractions with a toddler

Touring Animal Kingdom with a toddler

One perfect day at the Magic Kingdom

Dining Reviews

Tips for parents of toddlers and infants

Things I wished I knew before I went to Disney

May 28 2017

Hong Kong Revisited: Breaking all the parenting rules in Hong Kong

Raising kids in America means being subjected to a large set of rules about what’s safe and best for your children. I semi-religiously adhere to these rules – car seat height and weight limitations, proper etiquette, acceptable tactics for disciplining your children, etc. etc. Most of these “rules” probably reduce statistical probabilities from like 0.5% to 0.4%, but I try not to deviate too much from the norm. Traveling internationally, however, generally requires breaking parenting rules. Or at least bending them. Even if the international standard of the country we visit matches the US, sometimes practically it’s impossible to follow all the rules.

On our recent trip to Hong Kong, I was surprised to find it’s become a lot more baby friendly than our last visit in 2014. The MTR subway system looks to be adding elevators to every single station unlike some other metropolitan cities (*cough cough* LONDON). It seems like car seats are being used more regularly, though they also seem ridiculously expensive. I saw a lot more strollers, too.

Every parent knows that sometimes you have to break parenting rules, especially on the road. Here are some of the rules we had to bend/break in Hong Kong. — It seems car seats are much more prevalent in Hong Kong now, though still nothing like the US

Still, like I said, practically, we ended up bending and breaking a lot of parenting rules on our trip. To me, it’s something that just happens on vacation and I’m okay with it. But feel free to judge me if you’d like – we all parent in our own ways. I’d also love to hear what family and parenting rules you bend or break when on vacation, overseas or otherwise. So check out my list and let me know in the comments!

Eating – eat whatever you want, whenever you want

I’d say in terms of strictness, I’d rank us above average amongst American families. It definitely helps that my daughter didn’t realize she enjoyed ice cream until she turned 4 (that’s not an exaggeration). She still doesn’t enjoy the taste of chocolate. But my wife makes sure they eat organic things or whatever and I try not to share my chips with them so we both do our part.

With toddler jet lag and the foreign environment, we got very lax about eating. Everything of course started on the 15 hour flight to Hong Kong. When our kids are cranky, the easiest way to placate them is with food and we did that in spades. Noodles on demand (from the airline) and crackers on demand (from us) meant that we fed our kids quite a bit. You have to make compromises to survive a flight like that so we did.

This continued in Hong Kong as we found our son didn’t have much of an appetite while jet lagged. That meant he got a ton of calories from crackers the first couple of days. Not ideal, but we did it to survive. At meals we didn’t make a big deal about “trying everything” until the kids were better adjusted. To be honest, my thinking went something like this: “Should he be eating so many crackers…….oh shoot he’s rolling on the ground better give him a cracker!” For my daughter: “Hmm…if I let her eat this sour patch kid she will let me close my eyes for two minutes.”

So yeah, all of our eating restrictions went out the window and I don’t regret it one bit.

Night time routines – we’ll do whatever it takes

Building on the food thing, general best practice dictates that people not consume food or drink after they brush their teeth. Crazy, I know. Well, one thing I decided after taking my son for a walk at 2 AM through the streets of Causeway Bay was that I’d do whatever it takes to get him to rest. So although I put him to bed at his regular time, I prepared myself for him to wake up in three hours. Same with my daughter.

By hook or by crook, I would get H as much sleep as possible. One night that meant standing up with him in the carrier. It meant co-sleeping with him every night (which I love doing by the way but he will have none of it at home, so haha sucker!). It meant giving him milk at night to calm him down. I may or may not have given him crackers at 3 AM one night, I honestly could not tell you. I definitely showed him a video (La Luna, I think) hoping he would fall asleep watching it (he did not).

A lot of this was because of his jet lag. As he adjusted, I broke the rules less and less. By the end of the trip I only would give him water if he woke up in the middle of the night. So it’s not like if I took a three week vacation I’d let my kids eat cookies in bed, but at least during those first few days of adjusting, I let a lot of the rules go. And that was just fine.

Escalators – that’s not how you’re supposed to ride

Our most egregious rule breaking probably were riding escalators. Yes, Hong Kong has a ton of elevators and the MTR has made big strides. But our home MTR station, Causeway Bay, did not have an operational elevator because the station was under construction (I think to improve handicap access hilariously enough). They posted agents at the escalators telling you to take your kids out of strollers before riding. They also said if you need help you could call a phone number and people would come to carry you up and down (I think this was for wheelchairs).

Anyway:

So our kids rode their strollers up and down escalators quite a bit the week we were in Hong Kong. Am I proud of it? No. Would I do it again? Most probably definitely. If it’s 2 minutes up the escalator versus 12 minutes wandering around trying to find an elevator, I’ll likely take the 2 minutes every time.

Car seats – we don’t need no stinkin car seats

OK, that’s not really true. I would have loved to have a car seat. But since we planned on taking the MTR for most of the trip, we did not bring one. We brought a mifold (portable booster) for M but knew that H would mostly be going without. Now I’d probably never ride without a car seat in the States. If I’m being honest, it’s more because I don’t want to get a ticket. Which is probably why they give tickets!

But sometimes taking a taxi was the only option and so we rode with H in our laps. And, oops, sometimes we forgot or didn’t use the mifold too, so M was without a safety mechanism as well. It’s not something we enjoyed doing, but it’s something we did to make the trip smoother. I understand that some parents would never ever do that and I totally respect that. I’m certainly not recommending you forego car seats just because you’re traveling, but just being honest in admitting that we did.

Why I’m comfortable breaking parenting rules and why I consider you to at least consider bending them

“Rules are meant to be broken.” While I don’t necessarily believe that 100%, I do sort of operate that way in my normal life. Heck, isn’t that what travel hacking is all about? But I’ve learned a lot while parenting, and one thing I’ve realized is my ultimate lack of control over my children and their futures. When Jess was pregnant with our first, I was nervous all the time. What if something went wrong, what if I am a bad father, what if what if what if? Now that H and M are running around in this world, I have the illusion that I have a greater measure of control than I did when they were in the womb.

But really, we don’t. Parenting rules? They are ways to decrease the statistical probabilities of something bad happening, but nothing can bring those probabilities to 0. Parenting in general? Parenting is a way to increase the statistical probability your child will be a positively contributing, functional member of society, but nothing we do can make that probability 100.

So I’m comfortable breaking parenting rules because sometimes that’s the best option. Everything in life is a give and take. Walk 20 extra minutes to find the elevator but maybe your son will be so overtired they won’t eat and that’s bad for their nutrition. Milk might hurt their teeth at night, but lack of sleep might hurt them more. We can’t control everything. So I’m comfortable when I need to bend or break the rules because I know I’m just doing my best to put my children in the best situation possible for them. And yes, I am well aware that traveling internationally with these little kids comes with a bunch of cons – but I believe the pros outweigh them.

Anyway, bottom line is, we can only control so much and sometime we need to make compromises. That’s something I encourage all parents to do whether they are traveling or not. Parenting means meeting our kids where they are, and sometimes that means bending hard and set parenting rules at the very least.

Final Thoughts

Like I said, I’m not telling you to break the rules all the time. I’m just sharing that sometimes when we are on the road we let some of the rules go by the wayside, and I’m okay with that. I don’t think that makes me any worse of a parent (though I’m sure some others might think that!). I’d love to hear people’s thoughts in the comments. Are there rules you break with your kids when you travel? Or when you’re at home? Let me know, and let’s have a mature discussion about it.