A Travel Series, By Kimberly Teichrow { part 3 }

Welcome to part 3 of my travel series on Disneyland – I’m hoping that by sharing our family’s experience, you’ll feel a bit less overwhelmed with planning your own family’s vacation – and be able to tailor to your own family’s personality. Check in often and follow our family’s experience, including a selection of our favorite photographs!

Planning Ahead: “What to wear (bear with me)”

Matchy matchy is not typically in my vocabulary. As a photographer, I tend to shy my clients away from uber-matching outfits. I feel the same way about my boys, and particularly when packing for our 2010 trip to Disneyland during the Spring Break season. Then I thought about it: Spring Break crowds. Swarms of people. Keeping tracking of my 2 boys. It would be so much easier to pick them out of a crowd if I could easily recall what they are wearing. I began to view the outfits as more of a security measure, than a fashion statement.

L-R: Red/Blue day, Brown Day and Solid Green/Blue with Subtle-Designs Day!

I don’t claim this idea as my own. Some families go whole-hog with the outfits, custom “Thompson Family Vacation 2010” shirts in a bright, sunshiny yellow, khaki shorts and tennis shoes – all 15 of them. This is certainly a fun and festive way to keep track of your troop, but not necessarily an extreme you need to go to, in order to keep your flock from getting lost in the crowds.

Camo-Day, versions 2010 and 2011!

Since both of our trips took place in March, the timing was such that local stores had spring t-shirts and shorts out, and on sale. One store in particular had a great deal on mix and match shirts, 2 for $10. We needed to stock up for summer anyhow, so I wasn’t too worried about picking out 3 sets of coordinating shirts for the boys. They already had matching shirts from other events (our Aikido dojo, and Seattle Mariner’s t-shirts), which gave us 5 days worth of fresh shirts – and the odds were in our favor that we could repeat an outfit at least twice. At least I was hoping the stains would be kept to a minimum. I wasn’t concerned with coordinating shorts – as that wasn’t typically something I’d look for the first-scan through a crowd. If you plan on adopting this idea, think about outfits that you'll be able to remember, and recognized at a glance.

I love the colors of this photo -
simple, and less cluttered than if they'd
been wearing busy shirts. 

The happy accident that happened by coordinating the boys’ outfits, is that our family photos turned out even better than if they’d been wearing over-cluttered t-shirts with logos or cartoon characters.

Here are a few more ideas on crowd safety for your youngsters:

Business Card – I tucked a business card of mine in each of the boys’ pockets each day. I’d written out my husband’s name and cell number as well on the back, just in case my phone wasn’t working or got lost. We talked to the boys about what to do if they got lost, and made sure they knew where the business cards were.

Dog Tags – literally! I saw another great idea on our 2011 trip. One mother of two younger kids had her contact information engraved on little dog-tags, and had clipped them onto her children’s shoes. You can order these online, or find the kiosks at either a pet store, or even larger grocery stores.

Phone photo – Finally, each day once we were dressed for the day, I snapped a photo of each child with my phone. That way, in the event that one went missing, I had a current photo of what he looked like, as well as what he was wearing. You can certainly accomplish the same thing using a digital camera, or even having a Disney photographer take your picture at the beginning of the day and keeping the Photo Pass handy (more on the photo pass later!).

Thankfully, I didn’t have to use any of these precautions, but I felt better knowing our bases were covered.

Previous Article: 

Part 2 – “Wings or Wheels – how to get there”

Up Next: Part 4 - 

Planning Ahead: “Buying Tickets”

Kimberly Teichrow, staff photographer for True North Parenting, lives in Bend, Oregon with her family. They love to take adventures, and Kimberly loves to capture them through her lens.