Top 7+ tips to make traveling with kids easier, according to celebrity parents
Many celebrities have access to things that make traveling with a child easier: first-class seats, nannies or assistants, the latest tech, and familiar faces that make everyone treat them a little nicer. The funny thing about flying with young kids, though, is that all the money in the world will not entertain a two-year-old eleven hours into a 15-hour flight, nor will it make them sleep, or keep them from kicking the seat in front of them. A baby on a plane can humble us all.
Over the years of chatting with actors, authors, musicians, entrepreneurs, and A-listers of all stripes, we at Condé Nast Traveler have heard some pretty solid tips that even the most down-to-earth traveler can use while they’re up in the air with some tots. This holiday season, take all the help you can get—even if it’s from a billionaire—and here’s hoping the skies are friendly to you and your whole family.
Just accept the iPad
Today’s parents tend to be hyper-aware that too much screen time can be detrimental to kids, but air travel is certainly a time when the rules can be relaxed, for everyone’s peace and entertainment. After all, we adults are watching movies in flight too, right? “I'm very conscious about screen time for children, but when we travel, I just let it go,” said actor Gal Gadot. Virgin Air founder Richard Branson, who has two kids and five grandkids, also weighed in: “Obviously, the easiest way of traveling with kids on a plane is to put them in front of a screen, and they'll be forever grateful. We're no different from most grandparents or parents [in that respect]. We will spoil 'em on a long journey in order for everybody else to have a good sleep around them.”
Release the guilt, according to singer Kelly Clarkson: “I know there’s a lot of hippy dippy moms out there who don’t approve of iPads, and I think that’s great for them. More power to you,” she laughed. “But we definitely have iPads, because at some point travel can be total hell.” Her fellow pop star Katy Perry has a rule around airplane screen time that eases her mind. “I use an iPad if the flight is over nine hours, so she gets to watch her favorite movies and play games,” she said. But there are unfortunately, limits: “Even if you let the child have her iPad for two hours, they get bored. They want other types of stimulation.”
A key aspect of pre-plane tablet prep: Don’t forget your charger, or to download content ahead of time. “You have to have all the things they love that keep them entertained,” said singer Ciara. “If you bring their iPads, have the shows downloaded that they like—because oftentimes the Wi-Fi doesn't work.”
Pack more snacks and clothes than you think
Actor Christina Ricci’s advice is straight forward: “Lots of snacks, a tremendous amount of snacks,” she said. “It's always a crap shoot. You just never know how it's going to go with children below the age of four.” The queen of organization, Marie Kondo, is naturally prepared. “I carry small, healthy snacks like dried fruit or rice crackers for when the kids get hungry.”
And consider stuffing in two to three changes of clothes, along with a small plastic bag to wrap up any soiled onesies. “It depends on the age, but a change of clothes is obviously very necessary. Before my daughter was potty-trained, yeah, you can guarantee you need that,” said actor Lamorne Morris. “Can you imagine trying to change the messy diaper of a screaming baby in a small airplane bathroom? Not good.”
Actor Jason Biggs had some very specific advice around both food and diapers: prioritizing access. “When you get on the plane, you take everything out of your bag that you might need for a half hour to an hour, before they maybe take the seat belt sign off. That's water, it's the snack, it's the something for their ears. Make sure you have a diaper handy,” he explained. “I've run into that problem where the diaper bag is not within reach and we had an issue and we couldn't get up from our seatbelts. You’ve got to make sure everything's right there.”
He also recommends using candy as both incentive and ear-pressure reliever. “We do some gummy bears, because those are good if their ears are popping—but it's also a good treat if they're behaving and they're staying in their seat. A little bribery goes a long way.”
Go through a whole in-flight bedtime routine
Traveling through the night promises at least a little bit of that flight time will be eaten up by sleep. “It's kind of perfect when you're traveling with kids to try and get those really late flights so they sleep the whole time,” said Clarkson. “Especially when we go overseas, we get on the plane and then everybody winds down. We drink some chamomile tea, calm everything down, and then we go to sleep.”
Olympian Allyson Felix similarly tries to recreate patterns from home. “I want her to be able to sleep for the majority of the flight, so putting her in her pajamas and giving her a little bit of that same routine that she had from home [is essential],” she said.
Make everything a toy
Felix also flies with a slightly unorthodox set of art supplies: “I started traveling with a white board and dry-erase markers for my daughter and she loves it. She's all about it.” Actor Josh Gad has artsy kids, too. “We also come armed with as many drawing utensils as possible, a lot of paper and colored pencils,” he said. Plus, “We pack a lot of mini games, like Connect Four, Chess, Checkers. We also do mini board games, and that's really more for a long meal when they're waiting for the food and just want to play with something.”
Consider the value of novelty, suggests model Ashley Graham. “I just went to Dallas with [my son] Isaac alone on the plane and what I did was, I had two new toys and three new types of food,” she said in a 2021 conversation. “It was entertaining for him because it was something completely different, and I have to say it did eat up a chunk of the time.” Ciara leans into the opposite reasoning, though. “Have them pick out some of their toys. When they pick it out, they feel empowered,” she advises. “They love being independent and being a part of the decision-making process.”
You can experiment with using typical toys in new ways, as Perry’s daughter Daisy, age five, enjoys. “The non-messy Play-Doh is amazing, and she loves using children’s scissors and cutting the Play-doh. There’s something meditative about making these tiny little cuts, so she will not stop,” the singer said.
And remember that anything can be fashioned into a toy at 30,000 feet. “Someone gave me a trick once, and it lasted my daughter 45 minutes on the plane: We took a salt container with three or four big holes in it, and a bunch of Q-tips,” said Morris. “I had her put the Q-tips in, then empty them out onto the seat, then put them back in, rinse, repeat.”
Accept the difficulty of different ages
When asked for advice on traveling with kids, Mad Men actor and father of two Ben Feldman cracked, “Don't,’ I guess would be tip number one.” Admittedly, he was in the parenting trenches at the time. “We have two toddlers, and they're a year and a half apart. Our three-year-old can watch stuff on an iPad or play games. Our almost two-year-old, she just screams,” he said.
Realizing that babies are easier than toddlers—and that toddlers are the absolute most difficult—is actually part of the process, said Felix. “The worst time to travel with kids, in my experience, is from the time they walk. For our boys, it was around a year or 13 months, until they’re two,” said Biggs. “That whole year is horrendous because they’re mobile. They don’t want to sit still, they want to run up and down the aisle but they don’t have the attention span to watch an iPad or get distracted by a coloring book.” Ultimately, he said, “It’s one of those things you’ve really got to meditate through.”
Part of that meditative focus can be remembering that, eventually, it gets better. Much better, promises reality star Kristin Cavallari. “It's definitely easier [now]. I remember those days when it was a nightmare just to get them to sit down for takeoff and landing,” she said of her kids, who are now 13, 11, and nine. “I no longer have to entertain them the whole flight; they’re pretty self-sufficient. The phase I’m in with my kids right now is my absolute favorite.”
And once you’ve arrived on vacation…
Cavallari also has some advice for the trip post-landing: Go to the same place over and over again so you can all have a proper rest. “I usually take my kids to the Bahamas. We have a place we love that is set up so perfectly for kids, with water slides and horse riding on the beach that my daughter loves. They've got every game imaginable, and a big trampoline park,” she said. “It is so ideal for kids, and it's so safe. That's our spot.”
Biggs is also a fan of returning to a destination, both for ease and for the kids’ own excitement. “We took a trip to Austria over Christmas, and it’s the second time we’ve been to the very same place, same resort. We were there over the summer and decided to go back in winter,” he said in 2020. “The boys remembered it and were looking forward to specific things, so that was very cool. I usually don’t endorse going back to the same place. It’s just magnificent, in the mountains, and there’s so much to do in that whole part of the world: biking, lakes, hiking, swimming.”
When it comes to adjusting kids’ body clocks to a new destination, Perry advises getting outside, and ideally into the sea. “There's something about the ocean that really restores you. If you jump in the water and soak in the sunlight for a right amount of time, the kids snap into gear,” she said. But pack one of those blackout tents for the crib, just in case. “As they’re acclimating, you can put them down at six if they need it,” she said. “You have to do a lot of pre-planning.”
Let travel be an opportunity to grow
To get her kids excited for a new place, Kondo likes to discuss the destination as much as possible to get them psyched up. “Before traveling, we learn a bit about the destination in advance to spark their interest. Sometimes we watch anime, read manga, or picture books that feature the place together, which makes the trip even more enjoyable,” she said.
Actor Neil Patrick Harris uses the flight time itself to help reinforce manners. “We've traveled with Harper and Gideon ever since they were infants, so they'd been very familiar with planes. I think teaching kids some travel etiquette is a pretty good idea—to know to be respectful to the flight attendants, to stick together in the airports, to not have meltdowns,” he said in 2021.
Figuring out what types of trips are age-appropriate is a wonderful way of instilling curiosity about the world, actor Melissa Joan Hart has found. She has taken her kids on long adventures across Australia and through Choma and Victoria Falls in Zambia, but found that they’re not quite ready for the old-world aspects of western Europe. “Because of [the Australia trip], we decided ‘Hey, let’s do Europe next year,’ which was not as great with the little kids. We went all over Italy and Paris and Portugal. Any place there was a pool or water, the kids were happy; any museum or church, they were not,” she said in 2020. To further their interest, her family mounted a huge framed map on their kitchen wall. “We sit there at breakfast and we have pins in it, looking around at where we have pins, where we don't have pins, where should we go next?” she said. “We noticed we don't have any pins in South America. Maybe that'll be our next adventure.”
Actor and Oscar winner Zoe Saldaña believes travel is making three sons better people. “I am always looking to understand people and cultures and places that are very different from mine, especially as more conflict happens in certain places around the world. I hope that I can pass that down to my sons—to never rule out empathy, to never rule out that curiosity for people, to always want to break bread with people from all walks of life,” she said.
The most important thing is not to let fear of travel stress keep you from taking flight, said actor Jesse Williams in a 2021 conversation. “People sometimes have a reflex, ‘You can't take them places.’ Just take them! Just take them with you, and they watch everything, they soak everything up,” he said. “I know my kids do. That, I find, is the best. There's no teacher like experience.”
