Mickey Ideas for Your Disney Road Trip

- June 09, 2020

Now that the Disney parks are starting to reopen, perhaps you're starting to plan your family road trip to go see Mickey. Or maybe you have absolutely no intention to visit the giant mouse trap, but still want a bit of Disney fun in your life. Or maybe, like me, you've built a family tradition around themed road trips (parties on wheels) and need ideas. Keep scrolling to read all the details.

My family just returned from a 2,000 mile trip to visit family. We have enjoyed many themed road trips over the years- Jurassic Park, Moana, pirates, Minions, and more (see all the ideas here)- so this year we decided to make it a Mickey party. The big mouse turned 90 years old last year, but I was surprised how difficult it was to find Mickey-themed party supplies and ideas. I ended up doing quite a bit of crafting, but that's not anything new.

Fortunately, my sister, who lives in a big city, was able to put a box together for us with things she found. We ended up with coloring books, stickers, self-inking stampers, scratch drawing paper (one of our favorite car activities), and a few other things. It ended up being just perfect. My advice is to check the party sections of your local stores, shop the dollar and discount stores, visit a party store if you can, and grab the rest online.

My family has a tradition from when I was growing up to make some of the food on the road trip into "Mystery Snacks." I shop for special snacks (like Mickey goldfish crackers) before the trip and hide them from the rest of my family. As you can see, I used plain brown paper bags, but for a Mickey trip, I recommend these red ones instead. During the trip, we play 20 questions to guess what's in the bag, and then we get to eat it.

I used my Cricut Maker machine to cut out the Mickey heads and number stickers for my bags. I got my Cricut a few months ago, so it was very satisfying to make a new project with it. If you don't have a cutting machine, you can use the free printable ones from my luggage tag blog post. Print however many you need, cut them out by hand, and tape them to your paper bags. We laid these bags on top of our food containers until we wanted to play the game.

True confessions- one of the main reasons I wanted to do a Mickey road trip was so I could by the Mickey cookie cutter set. I don't know what it is about the 3 circles arranges as they are for the character, but it's magical. I couldn't wait to cut out all sorts of shaped foods for the trip. And then reality gave us only 1 week to plan the trip, and I had to settle for only a few choices.

For lunch our first day on the road, we cut out cheese (for homemade lunchables) and cucumbers into Mickey heads. My kids (8, 7, and 6) loved the project and spent a long time cutting out their own meat and cheese into sandwiches for their at-home lunch. One of them even made a shaped grilled cheese!

If I had more planning time, I would have also loved to cut out bread in the Mickey shape, perhaps make some cookies, or rice crispy treats. While we were traveling, we enjoyed Mickey ice cream bars, Mickey juice bottles, and Mickey colored M&Ms (red, brown, yellow). We even found Mickey 4th of July plates at one of our stops, which was a nice surprise for the trip home.

Once again, I pulled out my black construction paper, sticker paper, and Cricut Maker to create more labels. Although these large signs aren't necessary for a road trip, they add a lot of fun and interest to a themed trip. The negative image from the Mickey head would have made a good stencil for t-shirts, too, if you have the time and inclination.

Related: Printable Jurassic Park Road Trip Labels

We really enjoy using our packing cubes for our family road trips and vacations. They work very well for use to bring just one small envelope into our hotel room every night with everyone's clothes in them. The kids can easily carry them, they've been very durable as a suitcase, and the zippers have held up great. Of course, for a Mickey-themed road trip, official Disney luggage is the very best (wink).

To help us know which bag to bring into the hotel, I added my printable Mickey Luggage Tags. We chose to use numbers, but the printable also comes with days of the week and categories of clothes. For our 9 day trip, we had 3 bags of every day clothes, one bag of swimsuits, and one bag of sweatshirts. The bags have taken a beating, but the tags still look great.

I hope this gave you a lot of inspiration for your own road trip. Have you taken any theme trips? Are there any Mickey ideas that I've missed? Where are you panning to go on your next trip? Comment below and tell me!