Every month or so we have a 230-mile round trip back to Birmingham to visit our families. Whilst we look forward to seeing everyone, we all dread the journey. It takes anything between two and three hours, depending on the time of day we travel at, road works and whether we splash out and take the M6 Toll.
We tend to leave Wales at about 6.30am in the morning to make the most of the weekend, and at that time in the morning, I need lots of caffeine (provided by Macdonalds!) and peace and quiet. I just cannot cope with three hyper children squealing in the rather irritating way only children can. We really needed something that would keep them quiet in the back of the car just until I was a functioning human being.
When we were given the chance to review a couple of Keep Em Quiet Travel Packs, I hoped that this would be the thing to keep them amused for at least the first part of the journey!
The Keep Em Quiet packs are cute little gift packs filled with comics such as DC comics, sticker books, small toys and snacks to entertain children on their journey. They come in lovely little drawstring bags, which are really easy for kids to carry.
You can choose your packs based on the length of your journey – short, medium or long – and by gender and age. We had two of the short journey packs for the boys and chose the 5+ one, and the 3-5 years one. I’d hidden them in the cupboard so they didn’t know they had them, and as soon as it was light enough in the car, I whipped them out for them to open and get stuck in.
We were all really impressed with the contents of the bag, although they are definitely more suited for aeroplane travel than car travel, as they needed a flat tray to work on. However, they had fun with the various sticker books in the car.
We actually found these more useful as activities to keep them happy during our weekend. It’s really hard to know what toys to pack because they (and us!) don’t know what they will want to play with in advance, and we don’t really want to be packing even more stuff and risk leaving favourite toys in Birmingham. These packs meant that they had little bits and pieces to do throughout the weekend – making models, playing with the toy cars and using the playdoh.
Prices for the packs start at £9.99, and I think if you’re travelling by plane they are a really good investment in order to keep your sanity. I’m not sure how well suited they are to car journeys, but ours still loved them, and it made for a peaceful and quiet weekend!
*We were sent two packs for the purpose of this review. All thoughts and opinions are our own.
