5 Ways to Entertain Kids When Stuck at the Airport

You’ve planned a wonderful family vacation. You have loads of activities planned and tourist attractions to visit. But it’s important to not neglect entertainment when heading to and from your destination.

Not only do you have to prepare some activities or distractions for your children when flying to and from your destination you need to ensure that you prepare for ‘when things can go wrong’.

What do we mean by that?

One of the most common scenarios is when your flight is delayed. Unfortunately this happens often, especially if you are flying later in the day. My experience tells me that if you book early you’re more likely to fly on schedule, but that again is not a hard and fast rule.

So what do you do if you’re told your flight is delayed by an hour, or even more?

As a parent your mind instantly thinks about maintaining a happy family during this time. Especially if you have younger children you might find yourself susceptible to grumpy, tired and teary children.

The best way to avoid this is to have a plan, and we’re here to help you.

Check out our 5 ways to entertain the kids when stuck at the airport:

1. First and foremost you’ll usually be able to distract the kids with food. The challenge here is to not fill them up on junk food, which could make them feel worse in the long run.

2. Conversate with the kids and play some traditional FREE car games, manipulated to suit the airport environment. For example, I spy (with my little eye) or ‘What am I’ (giving everyone hints until they guess what you are). Perhaps you could prepare yourself by creating little BINGO cards with images relating to an airport and when the kids seem them they cross them off. First to get a straight line wins! Do you see where we’re going with this one, I’m sure you can come up with a few more too and best of all they are FREE.

3. Treat them to a magazine or activity book. Obviously this will depend upon your budget. But the delay is unexpected, so surprise them, take them to the airport news agency and allow them to pick a magazine. These days you can get magazines for kids of all ages and unless you buy them all the time this will act as a real treat.

4. Go for a walk. Don’t check in through security until closer to the departure time. Maximise the airport arena and go for a walk. In a busy airport there are loads of things to look at, people to see. This can be quite fascinating given most kids don’t go to the airport regularly. Plus if you’re lucky by the time you have to get on the plane your kids will be tired and therefore might have a good rest.

5. Take some time out, go to a cafe or sitting area and allow them to have something out of their goodies bag. Did you pack a portable DVD player or iPod. If you can afford it this is a great example of the benefits of owning your own DVD player and not relying on the onboard entertainment. Your personal DVD player allows so much more mileage.

Fingers crossed you will not be stuck at the airport for a long and unexpected period of time, but in the unfortunate instance that you are don’t be caught unaware.

You don’t want bad experiences at the airport coming home to ruin your next family vacation.