Planning a trip!

Girl Scout 
verb

Being a Girl Scout is something you DO, and it is an EXPERIENCE that no girl should miss!

Trip planning is ALWAYS a lot of work - and even more so when it involves a gaggle of little ladies who are eager to be independent and have fun away from mom and dad!

In my opinion, preplanning is the most important part of any trip.  With girl scouts, this is no different.  We start with identifying where we wanted to go.  In ^^ this case, it was Great Wolf Lodge.  Once the girls decided on a destination, we researched costs - SO MANY COSTS!  Here is a list of line items we considered:

1.  Hotel cost

     -In our case, we only needed two rooms, because they both slept quite a few people.  This was the largest part of our cost, because as we alllll know - GWL is soooo expensive.  This brought us to a second point of consideration here - we live about 3 hrs from one GWL, and about 4 hrs from another.  When comparing the prices, the one that was a bit further out had a GS special - that brought our room cost down from $1000+ a night to $400+ taxes a night for 2 rooms.  Guess where we went!?!

2.  Food

     -Girl scouts can PUT IT AWAY.  We had microwaves and fridges in our rooms, and the girls set a budget for snacks.  Then they researched the restaurants at the hotel. They looked up the cost for 13 people to eat at the various restaurants, and factored in how much they wanted to do sit down meals, versus fast food.  And I mean to the dollar.  The one downfall to this trip was that the restaurant pricing had increased, but it was not increased online, so we were caught off guard by that.  It left us short $50+ each meal we planned to eat there.  Shout out to GWL - Williamsburg though - we asked them to match the advertised price, and they did.  And for our trouble, without any request, they comped our entire buffet dinner for about 15 people.  That was HUGE for us. (And leaders - there is a Dunks on site! Get you some caffeine!)

3. Activities

     -These were an interesting dichotomy of **OMG IT LOOKS SO FUN MUST DO IT** and, "yall.  We are staying at a WATER PARK. Lets just WATER PARK."  In the end, we allowed each girl to choose 2 options, after looking up the cost.  In the moment, they all did the magic wand thing in groups of 3 and we called it good.  We swam A LOT. 

4.  Leader Suggestions

     -As leaders, my co and I had a few suggestions of our own.  They were as follows:

          1.  A go bag.  You can see the example in the photo of this article.  We will discuss this more later. ($3 per child)

          2.  Gas for the vehicles - we did not do this for our first trip.  Lesson learned. (We spent about $75-$100 per vehicle.  We took 2 vehicles.)

          3.  A cabana for the ALL DAY day in the waterpark - essentially a home base.  Comes with drinks, and the girls ALWAYS knew where an adult was.  I was in a wheelchair from massive surgery, and this made it easier for me to keep track as well.  (Costly but worth it - I want to say about $200 for the day)

          4.  Do good tokens - More on these later ($2)

          5.  Spenging money for the girls.  We did not do this on our GWL trip, because we were confined to the hotel.  However, when we visited Savannah, there was a lot of shopping.  In the effort of equality and the girls not bringing, and potentially losing cash, we gave them all a budget of $15.  This was an excellent and very functional idea. 10/10 recommend.

The last bit of planning was to give each girl a captain role.  We had 10 girls, so this was a challenge, and a multitude of ages.  We had titles such as CEO (each car had one - this was the go to girl for anything, and also the holder of the snacks and drinks in the car), Fun captain, safety captain, financial captain, etc.  My co and I came up with these, and the details for them on our own and included them in their go bags.

Once our girls had their desires on paper, and we added it all up, they were kind of surprised at the cost.  But it was GREAT education for them!  They were as motivated as ever to fundraise, and to get this trip under their belt.  And off they went...cookie season came, and went, and I'll be darned if those beautiful litte ladies didnt earn enough PLUS some for this trip!

Now - Let me share a bit about our go bags, and do good tokens.  In the end, the leaders provided the go bags - we covered the cost (it was low) and assembled them as a surprise.  They included an age appropriate activity book, a set of markers, a ticket for a car snack, a ticket for a car drink, and the written description of their captain role - essentially what they are in charge of, and empowerment for them to carry out that role while we were gone. The last thing included was a name tag.  We used waterproof phone cases so they could have them at the water park as well.  These listed their names, (only first), their leader/captain role, the shower number (ie, rm 1, shower 1), their car seat location (ie car 1, or car 2), their sleeping location (ie Q2), and their buddy's name.  On the back, we listed both leader names, and our contact information.  We LOVED these.

The last little thing we do on our trips is do good tokens.  These are so simple - we got glitter glue for a glue gun, and made little discs.  Each of us, myself and my co, carried a plastic sack of these, and as our girls did outstanding things, thoughtful things, and basically anything that was above and beyond, we handed them out.  It did promote a slight competition, but they were very focused on just being wonderful tiny people. 

In the end, trips are hard.  Planning is hard.  Watching our girls bloom as they plan and execute our trips is priceless.