How to Choose the Right Backpack for Family Travel

August 6, 2010 By

I won’t carry the kid, but I’ll carry the pack!

I can’t travel without a trusty backpack, so while on our most recent road trip, I paid close attention to the types of bags and packs other families carried in and out of restaurants, museums, picnic areas, and on hikes and tours. As you’d guess, I saw a vast assortment of styles and solutions ranging from fanny packs to Camelbaks to messenger bags, and for good reason: the family pack is an important and personal choice!

Whether you opt to outfit every member of your family with their own packs or stick to one family pack for which you share the load (our choice), there are several features we’ve learned we can’t get by without:

1. Size matters. You don’t want a pack too big or heavy for the intended wearer. We’re not talking about backpacking here: you only need to carry the essentials. Likewise, not having enough space in your pack means you’ll be spending too much time searching for things squished inside or worse yet, leaving important items in your hotel room or car.

2. Lots of zippered compartments are good for more than just toddler diversion (although it’s good for that, too). A pack with multiple compartments means the difference between finding the sunscreen or the car keys quickly or trying to corral kids in the baking sun or a parking lot (or both simultaneously) while you search. Since we carry one family pack, I also make sure our pack has water bottle compartments.

3. Price isn’t important, but comfort is…and they often go hand-in-hand. I’ve yet to use a cheap backpack that doesn’t hurt my shoulders, neck, or back. (If you’ve found one, please let me know!) Mid-priced packs work great for us. Remember, you can use backpacks for much more than just hiking as a family: we like the hands-free convenience of them on planes, in museums (where permitted), and in the car (slung over a seat back to be off the floor), too.

For more tips on packing and luggage, see the other articles in our Travel Tips section!

A Pit Stop a Day Keeps the “Are We There Yets” Away

June 22, 2010 By

Or at least, that’s my hope as my family and I embark upon a 22-day road trip, touring four national parks, six family-friendly resorts, eight states, and a partridge in a pear tree. Well, maybe not that last one (which means it’s sure to show up on auto bingo, right?).

Where are we going?

Glacier National Park
Yellowstone National Park
Grand Teton National Park
Zion National Park

with overnights and multi-night visits at many mountain and family resorts, all of which we’ll be reviewing!

I’ll be posting ‘A Pit Stop a Day’ during our travels

(as WiFi availability allows), and hope you’ll follow along as I document our progress with texts and photos on Twitter using the hashtag #apitstopaday. Throughout our trip and after we return, you can expect extensive reviews on not only the best potty break locations (although those are worth their weight in gold), but on all the “Off the Beaten Path” resorts and attractions we visited.

If you need further incentive to stick with us as we make our way along the interstates and highways of the western U.S., Pit Stops for Kids will have not one, but TWO great giveaways introduced during our road trip!

Details to follow in the next few days, so make sure you’re following us on Twitter and ‘liking’ us on Facebook so you don’t miss out on opportunities to win!

Below is our general route. Our first stop: Portland, Oregon, where we’ll be reviewing the Portland Spirit Sightseeing Cruise and the Hyatt Place hotel!

To see all 23 posts on this road trip, click here.

View National Parks road trip 2010 in a larger map

When Pit Stops are Far and Few Between

March 30, 2010 By

Photo taken on the valley floor of Death Valley, CA

When we first planned our recent spring break trip to Death Valley, CA (more on that to come!), I knew pit stops en route would be in short supply. I’d noted the lack of places to stop and play on Google Maps, and I thought I’d planned accordingly. Even so, I was concerned anew once we’d turned onto lonely I-95 shortly after our overnight in Reno, NV. For hundreds of miles, there’s simply…nothing. Nowhere to stop. Next to nowhere to eat.

At least, no place that we could consider…’family friendly’. Traveling down the center of Nevada, the only colorful landmarks we passed were, shall we say, very colorful indeed. (It did prompt one lively conversation that started like this: “Mom, why is that motel called a ‘playmate house’? Who plays there?”)

The boys and my dad standing under I-50\’s \’Shoe Tree\’ during a long car trip.

In a nutshell, not exactly where you want to pull off the road to let the kids run around.

So what do you do when confined largely to your car on long stints, whether due to weather conditions, lack of eminities (or lack of non-‘adult’ fare, as was our case)?

1. Plan ahead when possible. If you know you’ll be driving a particularly desolate stretch of highway, plan accordingly. For this trip, we bought car adaptors for the kids’ beloved Nintendo DS consoles to ensure hours of game play, and I brought along a bag of hands’-on activites, including the kids’ favorite action figures and a My Busy Kit, which was worth its weight in gold. (More on that in an upcoming review!) I helped myself to the hotel ice machine before pulling out in the morning, dumping a copious amount into our cooler filled with drinks and snacks. We also packed a loaf of bread, some cheeses and lunch meats, and a selection of chips, veggies, and hummus (all in the cooler) so we would not be reliant on restaurant fare on the road.

2. Be wary of rest stops in very rural locations. Once, while traveling solo with my three kids, I stopped at a clean (but empty) rest stop. Everything was fine until another person pulled into the complex…and the lone driver sat in the idling car watching us for too long for my comfort. Suddenly, I felt volnerable in the isolated location, and hustled my kids to our vehicle. Since then, I don’t rule out simply pulling over on a safe road-side turn-out. I let the kids take that much needed potty break (shield them with a beach towel if you must) and at least stretch their legs, all while I’m very close to my car.

3. Think outside the box. What may not look like a good pit stop to you might be your kids’ idea of heaven. We’ve stopped at fish hatcheries, dams, off-season state parks, and even a tree filled with shoes (a local landmark) when traditional pit stops have been in short supply.

4. And when all else fails, just focus on getting to your destination. The kids have all gone to the bathroom? Have enough snacks to last the distance? Have their books or games at the ready? Just GO. And don’t look back. We all know the feeling! (Just watch for speed traps!)

Madrid-Barajas International Airport

September 28, 2009 By


The cost of airfare for five has kept our family vacations grounded for a couple years now. While our budget restrictions have led to finding many great pit stops while on the road (crammed into a Prius, no less!), I do dream of the (relative) ease of air travel. Especially when an airport really knows how to do it right, such as Madrid-Barajas International.

If you find yourself flying to Madrid, you’ll be treated with not one, but two lifesaving playspaces, one for kids over age six (complete with a tube/jungle gym climbing structure) and one set up as a nursery and respite for toddlers and babies.

Madrid Airport's answer to restless children!

Madrid Airport’s answer to restless children!

Says Madrid resident, mother of a preschooler, and recent flier Laura Carvajal, The nursery is the most amazing thing of this kind I have ever seen. Firstly, it’s huge, and looks very new and neatly designed. Two staffed child-care professionals are present at all times, one mostly at the door taking your info when you come in (name, flight number, etc), the other handing out crayons and ordering (parents) kids to put stray balls back into the ball pit 😉

Play area for ages 6 and up.

Play area for ages 6 and up.

There’s another separate darkened room which was very cozy, with about 6 cribs and one sofa where you can feed the little ones and set them down for a nap. The overall facility is laid out in “levels”; first you see the slides and open space for kids to roam around on tricycles. The second area is mainly just the ball pit and the third has 4 or 5 tables where kids can draw, read or play with toys (lots on the shelves there).

The reviewer's daughter, focused on an art task.

The reviewer’s daughter, focused on an art task.

Date last visited by reviewer: August 2009

Location within the Airport: Terminal 1, next to gate C46

Hours and Admission Prices: Free! Open from 8am to 8pm

Bathrooms: Kid-sized and clean! Changing tables, wipes, and diapers are available. And–ready for this?–there are even bathtubs for the children’s use, in case it’s been a really, really long day.

Additional Perk: There’s a designated area for leaving your baggage.

Edited on December 11, 2009: An additional play area exists in Terminal 4, past the passport check in the duty free zone right after the Zara store. It’s smaller than the children’s area T1 but is the same idea: two professional caregivers, sleeping area with cots, kid sized bathrooms, and two separate play areas: a ball pit and general play area with tricycles, drawing area, reading area, slide structure and random couches for tired parents!

Extensive Great Wolf Lodge review: Grand Mound Washington

July 1, 2009 By

This past week, my family and I spent two nights and two days at The Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, WA.

We arrived at the resort at approximately 9 pm on a Sunday night. The lobby was still filled with children watching the evening animatronics show by the Grand Hall’s main focal point, the clock tower (more on that later), but there was no wait to check in.

Great Wolf

Get our top Great Wolf Lodge tips here, good for all locations!

As a family of five, we had booked a Kid Cabin Suite, which consists of a room with a queen bed, a pull-out sofa, and a framed off cabin compartment with a kid-sized bunk bed and day bed. Based on photos from the website, my boys had wanted a Wolf Den Suite (similar but with a faux rock wall to simulate a cave), but as it’s designed for a family of four, booking one would have required purchasing an additional water park ‘Paw Pass’ for our youngest to the tune of $40 a day (a detail I only realized after booking¦luckily it was easy to change). For our family, the Kid Cabin Suite was a better deal.

And the kids were very happy with it.

The rest of the room was spacious and clean. We were pleased with the corner fireplace and flat screen TV, and it was also very nice to have a fridge and microwave (enabling us to eat breakfast in our room and store drinks and snacks). Within the kid cabin was a second flat screen TV with a Game Cube (games can be ordered for $6.95 an hour). We opted to skip that feature, and used the TV only for free channels in the mornings. I was slightly worried about noise level at night with so many kids afoot throughout the lodge, but at least in our section of the lodge, the ‘Hibernation’ hours of 10 pm to 7 am were well adhered to. We never heard a peep after putting the kids to bed at 9 pm each night.

great-wolf-lodge-kidcabin

On Monday morning, we ate our own breakfast in our room, and I checked out the fitness center. It was smaller than I had expected, but at 7:30 am, I was easily able to get an elliptical machine. There were also treadmills and weight machines.

Great Wolf Lodge activities:

MagiQuest:

By 9 am, the water park was open and MagiQuest was activated for the day. This bears explaining, because trust me, your kids will want to do it.

Tip: get all our MagiQuest tips here!

MagiQuest is an interactive activity installed throughout the lodge. The official website explains it better than I can: Armed with high-tech wands, your family must solve magical challenges throughout the resort to gain powers (and points) and move to higher levels of the game. Even if this doesn’t sound like your sort of thing, you won’t be able to avoid it. Everywhere you go (on the public areas of the first four floors), kids will be waving wands and bringing various fixtures in the hallways and ceilings to life. I know it sounds annoying, but it’s actually quite good fun. We encountered older children stopping to give hints on the game to younger ones and while kids occasionally bumped into us in their excitement to find their next clue, the general chaos wasn’t unmanageable.

MagiQuest

But onto the nitty gritty: wands start at $14.99 (you can pay substantially more for fancy toppers) and then an additional $9.99 is necessary to activate’ your game. I am not one to spend money on overpriced souvenirs or gimmicks, but let me say: it’s worth it. Every penny. It took my kids their entire stay to complete the quest (playing on and off as time allowed), and then several more games opened up…they continued playing right up until the moment we left, and could have played for another day at least. They took their wands home as keepsakes, and if we come back for a return visit, they can reuse the same wands (paying only the $9.99 activation fee). All in all, it was a great activity, and good exercise too!

ShadowQuest:

shadowquest

ShadowQuest is a brand-new interactive wand game, available at Great Wolf Lodge’s Grand Mound location, as well as at several other Great Wolf Lodge locations. In this live-action adventure game, your family takes on the task of helping to save the light of the sky before it vanishes. Players follow clues in a guidebook and explore the halls and stairways of Great Wolf Lodge to find hidden objects and complete quests.

The game is 12 stages long and can be completed over multiple visits to Great Wolf Lodge. My family played for about 3 hours and had a great time finishing the first four stages. My kids loved that their wands could be used not only for playing the game, but for opening treasure chests and activating statues and animals all over the lodge!

Howl at the Moon Miniature Golf:

Another new attraction at Great Wolf Lodge is the very cool Howl at the Moon miniature golf course. This golf course is a 9-hole course located near the arcade. It is decorated with lots of woodland creatures and has simple obstacles to work around on your way to the holes.  The whole course is lit with blacklights for a fun effect.

Waterpark:

The main attraction of The Great Wolf Lodge, however, is the water park. My first impression was that it actually smelled less chlorinated than most indoor water parks, which was a huge plus for me, since that heated, chemical-based smell really bothers me. I learned later that I wasn’t imaging it: The Great Wolf takes green’ measures to use less chlorine.

But of course my kids didn’t care about any of that. They were off and (not) running (that’s a big rule) from the moment we stepped through the doors. They were initially disappointed in the lack of a lazy river, but were quickly enamored by the wave pool. There was an excellent zero-depth entry splash and slide area for toddlers (the deepest section went up to my four-year-old’s waist) and a huge fort with dumping bucket and more slides. My husband and one of my kids spent most of their time in the pool with basketball hoops and moving floatation pads in the shape of animals, and my favorite feature was the indoor/outdoor hot tub. The thrill rides were fairly mild, but plenty thrilling for my family (oldest child at age 10). Two of the slides have a minimum height requirement of 48 inches, much to my preschooler’s disappointment, but there was plenty else to distract him. During our two day stay, we spend two whole mornings in the water park.

Northern Lights Arcade:

The kids were quite happy with the medium-sized arcade (and I was quite unhappy, because I hate arcades.) That said, this one was clean and the staff was very friendly. The kids were all able to redeem tickets for prizes, and came away with the usual assortment of arcade junk, which they greatly enjoyed.

Dining at Great Wolf Lodge Ground Mound:

On that first day, we ate an adequate lunch of hot dogs and hamburgers at the Spirit Island Snack Shop, which came to a total of approximately $30 for five people (this did not include drinks, as we brought in our own). Outside food is allowed in the water park, which was a great cost saver. I saw some families bringing in whole coolers. I wish I had been that organized!

For an afternoon break, the older boys continued their MagiQuest game, and I took the preschooler to the Cub Club, where he was able to color and play simple computer games for free. For additional fees, kids could decorate their own Great Wolf Lodge t-shirt or choose from a number of other art projects. We found it quite peaceful…and there was no pressure to purchase anything.

We opted to leave the lodge to eat dinner at La Tarasca in nearby Centralia, which I cannot recommend enough. We were back in time for the nightly clock tower show and story time, which was geared for ages perhaps 2-5. I took our four-year-old, and when we arrived right at 8 pm, we had trouble finding a place to sit. The show was a combination of song and animatronics, and ended in an appearance from Wiley the Wolf (GWL’s mascot) and a bedtime story read by a lodge employee (called a Pack Member). The message was very environmental in nature, and I’ve read other reviews criticizing the heavy emphasis placed by GWL on the outdoors when everything they offer is in fact indoors, but I was willing to let it pass. Perhaps that’s because our family spends enough hours out-of-doors backpacking and camping that I wasn’t concerned my children would mistake the woodsy d’cor of the lodge for the real thing.

Throughout our stay, I made mental comparisons between The Great Wolf and Silver Mountain Resort, where we had stayed the previous summer. They both have their pros and cons, and of course both are family friendly and have family suites. For a compatible room rate (based on the best available public rate at each), you get substantially more room for your money at Silver Mountain, with ‘true’ suites with separate rooms and a full kitchen and the ambiance of an established ski and mountain resort, but Great Wolf provides more for families to do on-site with their Cub Club, Gr8 Space (night club for kids 12 and older), and MagiQuest. The water parks are very compatible: Silver Mountain lacks a wave pool, but boasts a lazy river and surf simulator. My kids couldn’t decide which was better. Undoubtedly, Great Wolf is more centrally located for most people in the Pacific Northwest, and they are definitely geared solely toward families with young children.

We found the service staff to be excellent throughout our stay, with Pack Members’ never failing to say hello, smile, or ask if we needed anything. A Magi Master’ was always on-hand to answer quest-related questions, and I didn’t count the number of life guards in the water park, but it was teeming with them.

I’d definitely recommend The Great Wolf Lodge for a kid-centered getaway.

As I will disclose whenever applicable, we did receive significant compensation in the form of reduced rates and gift vouchers for review purposes, as is standard in the travel industry; however, these compensations came with no strings attached. As always, no less than my honest impressions will be present in this review.