Sometimes there’s nothing worse than waiting! When you know you have a Disney trip just around the corner, that month-long (or year-long!) waiting period is pretty horrible.

But cheer up — there are a lot of ways to make counting down the days to your upcoming Disney trip just as fun as the trip itself (well, almost!).

Create a Countdown Chain
Making a countdown chain out of colorful paper is great activity to make the trip countdown “real” for kids. It’s easy to do, and the kids can help. Just cut colorful paper or construction paper into strips, decorate the strips for each day before your vacation, and tape or glue the strips into a long chain.

Every day before the trip, your little ones can tear off one more chain link and watch the countdown chain get shorter and shorter — and their Disney trip get closer and closer!

Use a Countdown Ticker
A lot of us grown-ups spend many hours on the computer each day, and creating a computerized countdown ticker is a fun way to watch the days, hours, minutes, and seconds before our Disney trip tick away!

If you’re a member of some message boards or forums online, MickeyPath.com has some fun countdown tickers that are easy to make. All you do is enter in your basic trip information, choose a format, and paste the resulting code into your forum signature line!

And Disney’s even creating their very own desktop widget to plan for and count down to your upcoming trip! At DisneyVacationConnection.com you can learn about this cool new “toy” for your desktop, and sign up to be the first to hear about it when it officially launches:

What are some of your favorite ways to count down to your Disney World vacation? I’d love to hear your tips and tricks for making those days go just a little bit faster!