Here’s the list of travel tips my five-year-old twins – T1 and T2 – would write as their entry to the Virgin Australia ProBlogger competition. If they could type. And if they could sit still for long enough without getting distracted by Hot Wheels cars, Angry Birds or trying to ride their scooters indoors.
T1: Here’s the thing: travel can be pretty booorrring. And Mummy and Daddy are always grumpy about the journey. I think it’s because they pack SOOOO much stuff, they never sleep on the plane and on our last 12-hour flight they only watched half a movie the whole time we were in the air.
T2: Yeah, the last time we went on a BIG plane – it was seriously MASSIVE – we spent what felt like a week in the air. It was awesome. I watched Rio 2 over and over again and I didn’t have to go to bed. Ever. Until we got to our new land. Ing-Land, where we used to live, was pretty cool, but Australia Land is way better. They have Australia Zoo here, our school has koalas in the trees, it never gets cold and we love The Wiggles. It’s awesome!
T1: We love a bit of teamwork, so together we’ve come up with a list of how to survive travel with your mummy and daddy.
T2: Yeah, we know it’s going to be hard and not much fun, but give some of these a go and it might make it a teeny bit better.
Surviving travel with parents
T1: Trunkis are the coolest thing ever. I have dinosaur one, my bro has a Gruffalo one, and our baby sister has a cow one. But pulling them is haaard work. I found that if you let go of it and carry on walking, at some point Mummy or Daddy will realise it’s missing. They’ll shout some angry words. But they’ll go back to look for it, and when they find it they will carry it for you. All the way to the plane.
T2: If you refuse to eat the nasty food on the MASSIVE plane, then Mummy will let you eat ANYTHING YOU LIKE. That means ice cream, chocolate – whatever good stuff is on that amazing wheelie trolley. If you make enough noise, you might even be allowed to get sneaky special ice creams called Mag Nums (they’re the good ones that Mummy usually sneaks from the freezer herself and eats around the corner when she thinks we’re not looking). Our baby sister got one of these for screaming so much – it was a reward for making the bestest, loudest noise on the plane.
T1: If you need to be sick, you can throw up on either Mummy or Daddy as Mummy always brings spare clothes, so they won’t mind.
T2: If you scream just like our baby sister does ALL THE TIME ON A PLANE you get to walk around and see everything. Strangers will offer to give you a cuddle, and maybe even give you another sweetie or an eye-pad so you can play more Angry Birds. I know you shouldn’t talk to strange people but when you’re off the ground this doesn’t count anymore as Mummy said so, especially if they can stop you from crying.
T1: If you drive your Hot Wheels car off your seat and under the seat in front, you can laugh at Mummy as she tries to squeeze between the seats to try to find it. It should pass at least a few minutes of the journey. Just make sure it’s not one of your favourites like Super Car or Shark Car, or Blue Car just in case Mummy can’t find it again. But if that does happen then at least everyone will be extra nice to you for the rest of the flight as they won’t want you to start crying.
T2: I like to stay awake for the whole flight, then curl up and go to sleep as we’re about to land. That way I don’t get to miss out on any of the fun, I can watch loads of movies and eat tonnes of chocolate. Mummy usually tries to prod me awake but by this time I’m so sleepy that it doesn’t matter. Then I get carried off while the boring bit of collecting the bags happens. This helps Mummy out as it means she has to carry me (and my Trunki) instead of having me run off all the time.
T1: For fun, I like to scream for my favourite bedtime toy that Mummy forgot to pack. It gets me loads of cuddles and treats as Mummy feels bad. Then when we get off, I like to climb on the moving thingy with all the bags going round and round. It freaks Mummy out and makes me laugh a lot.
T2: Flying is AWESOME, and we love it. It’s a lot better now we’ve figured out the best ways to deal with Mummy and Daddy. You just need to be prepared and not expect the journey to be fun all the time.
T1: At least when we travel, Mummy and Daddy are outnumbered as there are three of us to help deal with their grumpiness. Our baby sister already knows how to manage them – she has them, and most of the other people plane, wrapped around her little finger. Maybe on the next flight we’ll copy her by crying non-stop to see how much ice cream we can eat.
We’d love to hear if you’ve got any more tips to add to the list! One day we’ll be flying back to Ing-Land again to visit our old land so it’s good to be prepared.
I may hide all these tips from Z for now. He would absolutely love eating ice cream constantly on a plane 🙂 he loves staying awake for the entire flight too, he can’t get enough of all the kids movies. Great tips for a fun flight though 😉
New pens keep my two occupied for ages! Maybe they love stationery as much as I do!
I can just imagine all this stuff happening. No doubt you had other parents feeling for you on the long flights.