Need your help & advice on how to plan a birthday party with a DISNEYLAND theme!

[mmd72]

Hi all,
Really need some help (lots, actually!!) to plan a combined birthday party for my two kids - a 2 year old boy and a 4 year old girl. their birthdays come within 2 days of each other, so it kinda makes sense to hold the party as a combined one! Now, my daughter loves Cinderella, but i cant just have just a cindy party, or just a Cars party, So, i wanted to have a DISNEYLAND theme, to kinda club everything together. NOW HERE IS THE PROBLEM... I need help to be able to merge everything together and plan it so that they are both happy!
Does anyone have any ideas / tips as to how I could transform the garden & house into a Disneyland theme? I thought I could transform our driveway into Main Street USA and maybe even have a mini-train for the kids to ride on, but beyond that, i am at a loss! I wont be able to recreate any other rides normally found at Disneyland... well, what do you think??!!
Any ideas will be most welcome and appreciated!

[Princess Buttercup]

My sister has a son and a daughter and for one of their parties, she collected a whole bunch of costumes for both princes and princesses and let all the kids dress up in them and idid their hair and make up (she and her husband are hairdressers for a living) . Then she took pictures with all of them and some teenage friends of hers she had hired to dress up as various Disney characters. They made picture frames with Disney stickers and jewels all around the edges and she put the poloroid pictures in them so they could take them home. She also had a castle bouncy house and a Disney pinata that the kids hit with a stick that looked like a royal sceptor. The goodie bags that they put the candy in had Disney characters on them too.

There are so many fun things you can do with a Disney theme.

Is there a party store near you and do you have an Oriental Trading Company catalog? If not, you can order one online.

Have fun with all your planning!

[ladyalmalthea]

Hi all,
Really need some help (lots, actually!!) to plan a combined birthday party for my two kids - a 2 year old boy and a 4 year old girl. their birthdays come within 2 days of each other, so it kinda makes sense to hold the party as a combined one! Now, my daughter loves Cinderella, but i cant just have just a cindy party, or just a Cars party, So, i wanted to have a DISNEYLAND theme, to kinda club everything together. NOW HERE IS THE PROBLEM... I need help to be able to merge everything together and plan it so that they are both happy!
Does anyone have any ideas / tips as to how I could transform the garden & house into a Disneyland theme? I thought I could transform our driveway into Main Street USA and maybe even have a mini-train for the kids to ride on, but beyond that, i am at a loss! I wont be able to recreate any other rides normally found at Disneyland... well, what do you think??!!
Any ideas will be most welcome and appreciated!

Fantasyland is a good start.
You can have it tea party themed, which might satisfy the older, and have games based on rides (Mr Toad's could be a wheelbarrow or three legged race that older kids could do.)
You could have a drawing contest, like create your own car, and put them up in a 'gallery'
Girls could get crowns as party favors, boys could get cars?

[fairygoodmother]

Loving the Fantasyland idea! You could also have a party based on carousel horses - let each guest make a stick horse (you cut out horse heads, let them decorate them, place them on a wrapping paper tube or PVC pipe). You could have a coloring contest, races, "follow the leader" games with the horses...all kinds of stuff.
Also, don't underestimate the draw of Cinderella for little boys. My daughter dresses up as a "blue princess" and entertains at children's birthday parties. Little boys ADORE her. The last party she did was for a 5 year old girl and there were more boy guests than girl guests. They were dressed as princes and knights and never stopped staring at her! She once had a 9 yo party guest ask for her phone number.

To make a princess party work for both boys and girls, try having something like this:
http://catalog.hsn.com/prod-15678/ty...05/2391805.htm

Feel free to PM me if you want more info on making a princess party work for both. Good luck!

[ladyalmalthea]

love the carousel horse idea.
I want to make one!

[Simply Mad]

You could totally do the awesome Main Street idea and then have the backyard be a combo of Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. Include knights with Cinderella and Sally or Flo with the Cars. A project idea for Cars...paper plates with a little paint, let the kids roll the cars through the paint and then drive on a piece of paper. You could also set up a small Autopia race track and let the kids be the cars with paper plates for stearing wheels.

[tinkermonkey]

Ok, I’ve had time to think so here are my ideas…

At 2 and 4 they really aren’t going to care much about "that is for boys or that is too girly", but as a mom YOU care so that’s important. I’d say go with the Main Street idea and even make it end at the hub. Then one path takes you to Tomorrowland and to the other is Fantasyland. Use Simply Mad’s ideas for incorporating boys into FL and girls into TL. One idea with an Autopia track would be to use cardboard boxes with suspenders on them (small boxes as these are small kids) and decorate the boxes to look like either the Autopia cars or the Cars from the movie.

For a cake, you could do a Mickey cake as a centerpiece and have cupcakes with princess and Cars tops. If you can’t find princess tops, you could use big plastic jeweled rings instead.

Other food ideas – you have to serve Churros (check costco)!! Other easy snacks would be popcorn and pretzels.

[hauntedhoilday]

this may be a little to much but for all the rooms that you letting the kids go in decorate them like a land or even have diffrent sections in a room as lands. for adventure land theme you can create you own jungle vines. really simple. get paper bags from a grocerystore the ones you put your grocerys in cut the bottom off and take the handles off. you should have a long piece of brown paper. twist it . then stapel little cut out leafs to it and you have a vine

by reading over this it sounds kinda complicating so if you have a question just ask

[Stitchy]

instead of the jeweled rings....what about ring pops? then the kids could eat them. My daughter had two parties this year, one on her actual birthday-a Mad Hatter's tea Party...it was in my parents garden, with nothing matching. a crazy cake, and my father made a cut out (with plywod) of the Mad Hatter and painted it to look just like him, he sat at the head of the table. You could try something like that....only bigger. What about Sleeping Beauty castle? Lean it up against the house and make everyone take pictures in front of it. I do this every year with sme character...its a good way to know exactly who came to each party.

Her second was Pooh, we had a Pooh character come, and she loved it. So, I strongly suggest that. Although, with Cars...that's almost impossible. But, you could see what is offered in your neighborhood.

You could make Mickey ears for everyone to wear, have sparklers lining the driveway as they leave to resemble the fireworks....have a jumper, some kind of ride...

I'll hae to think on this some more.

[Alice's Wonderland]

Have everyone come dressed as their favorite Disney Character. Have the cake look like Sleeping Beauty's castle. Have different tables set up to be the different lands. At tomorrowland they can color and decorate paper towel tube rockets. At the adventureland table you can have a water table filled with the jungle cruise boats. At the toon town table they can color pictures of mickey and friends. At Critter Country you can do a version of musical chairs, instead use paper honey pots on the ground and don't keep eliminating hunny pots, the child that lost now has a chance to win again. At New Orleans Square have a treasure chest for the kids to one by one pick out a piece of treasure (cheap necklaces, candy, plastic coins, eye patches..) At fantasyland (depending on the size of your group) have a jump house, or they can decorate already frosted cookies of castles. Fronteirland...I've got nothing. Something with trains? or something toy story?

What I've listed will be a lot of work but at that age many parents stay to help. Encourage this. Set up a rotation schedule so you have all the kids at one land at a time. It should work fine. Have fun!!

[tinkermonkey]

WOW - those are GREAT ideas...I'm keeping them for future use if you don't mind...

[Morrigoon]

Go with the 4 original land: Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Frontierland, and Main Street.

Get all "Farrell's" with the birthday cake (straw boater hat, horns, shirtsleeves held back with garters, etc.). Even better if you can get a CD of ragtime music to play around all that.

Fantasyland will appeal to the little girls, so that's where you have the stickers/frame decorating someone else suggested.

Frontierland brings a lot of "cowbow" opportunities, and there's tons of western stuff out there, so that should be easy. (Good spot for pin the tail on the donkey- though at those ages, it might be wise to find one that uses either velcro or stickers). And of course, good spot for a pinata.

Then Tomorrowland could have coloring stations with pics of Buzz LIghtyear, rockets, planets, etc.

Might be fun for the grownups in attendance if you play some of the Walt Disney Treasures DVDs playing - the Disneyland one