Disney Gifts for Grandma, From the Grandkids: What a Disney-Loving Grandmother Actually Keeps

Why most Disney gifts for grandma are a shirt or a mug

Nothing on that first page is a bad gift. It is aimed at the wrong thing, in a few familiar ways.

• The theme instead of the person. A shirt that says Disney Grandma tells everyone what they already know. Nothing on it is about her, or about the children she takes.
• The duplicate. She buys the good things at the parks, in person, because choosing them is half the fun, and she likes her own version better.
• The shirt made for one day. Matching family shirts are a happy tradition, but a shirt for the trip is a costume for the trip. The shirts are not the keepsake. The photo of everyone wearing them is.
• The object that needs a shelf. Figurines, snow globes, one more ornament, for a woman who may be trying to own less, which is the problem our guide to gifts for grandma from the grandchildren takes on directly.
• The gift from the store, not from the children. An adult chose it and wrapped it, and the grandchildren's part is their names on the tag. She can tell.

What a Disney grandmother actually keeps

For the grandmother in the matching shirt, the parks are rarely only about the rides. They are about the week: the few days a year when three generations are in one place, walking at the pace of the smallest one. She loves Disney. She loves that week more.

So what she keeps is whatever holds the grandchildren, in one of four forms.

• Their faces, this year. Not the baby pictures she already has. The children as they are now, which, between visits, she sees less of than anyone assumes.
• Their hands. A drawing, a card, a crooked sentence in pencil. Anything that could only have been made by one child at one age.
• Their voices. The part of a grandchild that changes fastest and gets recorded least.
• Their time. A day, an afternoon, an hour with one of them, with the date on it.

Every idea below is one of those four, dressed for a woman who loves Disney. The Disney part is the wrapping. The grandchildren are the gift.

The four kinds of Disney gift that last

Nearly everything that is still out a year later falls into one of four groups, and none of them depends on the budget.

1. A memory of a trip you took together, printed properly. The photo from the week everyone came, on paper, with the date and the names on the back.
2. The next trip, with a date on it. Not someday. A day at the park with the grandchildren, booked, and written in the card.
3. Something the grandchildren made. A drawing, a letter, a recording: their hands and their voices at this age.
4. A keepsake with her and the grandchildren in it. A record of them together as they are now, which gains value every year.

The fourth group is where we work, so read that part knowing it is ours. To look first, the preview is free: on the first screen of our story maker you can start from Grandma and see her drawn from one photo.

A trip you took together, printed properly

Families come home from the parks with hundreds of pictures across three phones and none on paper, and the grandmother is often in the fewest of them, because somebody has to hold the bags, the baby or the camera.

• The one photo she is in. Find the picture of her with the grandchildren, even an imperfect one, print it large, frame it properly, and write the date, the place and everyone's names on the back.
• The PhotoPass pictures, before they expire. If the family used Disney PhotoPass, the parks' own photo service, Disney's pages for both Walt Disney World and Disneyland say the photos expire 45 days after they are taken, and that a one-time 15-day extension may be available. Download them now, and print the best one with her in it.
• A print, not a download. Memory Maker, the Walt Disney World package that downloads every PhotoPass photo from a trip, is digital only by Disney's own description, and prints are a separate order. A file on a phone is not a photo on her shelf.
• A small book of the trip. Twenty photos, captioned by the grandchildren in their own words. What a six year old writes under the water ride photo beats any caption an adult could write.
• Then and now. If she took her own children to the parks years ago, those photos are in a box somewhere. Scan one, and frame it beside a picture of those children, grown, with theirs.

Whatever you print, date it: which spring it was, and how old everyone was. A dated photo is a record, not just a picture.

The next trip, with a date on it

The usual experience gift in a Disney family is a promise: we should all go again. It is sincere, and it rarely becomes a date. A promise is a wish. A date is a gift.

• One grandchild, one grandmother, one day. For a grandmother of several, time alone with one of them is the rarest thing she has. One day at the park, just the two of them, with the date in the card, can mean more than a week with everybody.
• Something to unwrap. Put something in the box: the plan for the day written out by the grandchild, or a map drawn from memory with her favorite ride circled.
• Her, in the pictures. At Walt Disney World, Capture Your Moment at Magic Kingdom is a private twenty-minute session with a PhotoPass photographer, for up to eight guests, best booked in advance. Park admission is separate, and the photo downloads are sold separately or covered by Memory Maker. For the woman who always takes the pictures, it is one set where she is in every frame. Check Disney's page for the current details before you promise it in a card.
• A day at her pace. She may now prefer a morning, a long lunch sitting down and the one ride she loves. Ask her, and build the day around the answer.

If the trip is months away, the card is the gift for now: the date, the plan and who is coming, handed over by the grandchild.

Something the grandchildren made

A gift a child made beats almost anything bought: nobody else could have made it, and the child will never make it again at this age.

• A drawing of her favorite ride, framed properly. Ask the child to draw the ride they went on with her, put it behind a mat like a print, and write their name and age in the corner. The frame is what moves it from the fridge to the hallway.
• Their voices, recorded. Each grandchild, on a phone, answering one question: what was the best part of the trip with Grandma? Voices change faster than faces, and almost nobody keeps them.
• A letter about one day. One page, from a child old enough to write. Specific beats long: the churro, the rain, the moment she screamed on the drop.
• The words on the card. The sentence a small child dictates, written down exactly, odd grammar and all, is the part she reads first and keeps longest.

That sentence matters most in a book. In ours the dedication is printed word for word on its own page after the story, so a four year old's line ends up in print. You can start with one photo of her and write the dedication a few steps later.

A keepsake with her and the grandchildren in it

This is the group that gains value every year, because this version of them, her at this age and the grandchildren at theirs, will not come around again.

• A three-generation photo, taken on purpose. Her, her children and theirs, in the matching shirts if that is the family tradition, taken by somebody else so that nobody is missing.
• A portrait of her with the grandchildren. Drawn or painted, it goes on a wall and never gets thrown away. Commission it well ahead.
• A recorded conversation. A grandchild asking her about her first trip to the parks, and her answering: both voices in one file.
• A storybook with her and a grandchild drawn in. The one we make, with its limits, just below.

What the four share is that she is in them. For the grandmother who plans the trips and takes the pictures, being in the family's record is the gift. If you are weighing personalized books in general, our guide to custom children's books explains what separates a keepsake from a name dropped into a stock story.

Where our book fits, and what it is not

It is called The House That Remembers, and it is ours. You send one photo of her and one of a grandchild, and we draw them both in the look of a modern 3D animated film, on all thirteen illustrated spreads of a story told in rhyme: a slow afternoon at her house, a tin that will not stay shut, a small brass key, a leaf pressed flat in an old coat pocket. Every old thing turns out to have a story, and in the end she sits down and tells the grandchild all of it.

It is written for the grandchild, ages three to ten, with her on every page, and that is why it works for her: it is the one thing on this list a grandchild will carry over and ask her to read aloud. For a copy on her own shelf, the cart offers one more copy of the same book, for the grandparents.

What it is not: a Disney book, or a book about your trip. There are no Disney characters and no Disney places in it, and we have no connection to Disney. The story is ours, the same for every family who picks this title. What makes it theirs is her face and the grandchild's, their names in the words (Grandma, Nana, Nonna, Grammy, whatever they call her), and the dedication you write, printed word for word. If you want your actual trip, the photo book is the better gift. If you want the two of them, recognizably, in a story they will read together, this is the one.

For a book with the real characters in it, licensed personalized Disney books exist, and we wrote up what they can and cannot personalize.

Ideas from the smallest grandchildren to the whole family

What changes with age is what the grandchildren can actually do.

From grandchildren under five. The gift is them: a dated handprint, a photo of them asleep in their ears on the way home, a scribble framed like art. Let the child pick one thing, the frame or the photo, and hand it over themselves.

From five to twelve. The best age for anything handmade, because they can do it alone and are still proud of it: a map of the park day drawn from memory, their five favorite moments of the trip with her, a comic strip of the time she went on the scary ride.

From teenagers. The scarcest thing a teenager has is time, which is exactly what she wants. A teenager who plans a park day with her, handles the app and the lines, and walks at her pace has given her the whole trip. At home, a playlist of songs from her favorite films, with a line about each, costs an evening.

From the whole family. A movie night at her house with her favorite film and everybody in the shirts. Or a day each: every grandchild takes her out once in the coming year, each on a date written in the card.

Grandfathers who love the parks just as much have their own guide, and the parents who are fans in their own right have Disney gifts for adults.

For a grandmother who cannot travel anymore

Some of the most devoted Disney grandmothers are the ones who cannot go now: the knees, the heat, the distance, a husband who is unwell. A gift that assumes a trip hurts a little. The ones that work bring the parks to her.

• Send her the trip. If the family goes without her, Walt Disney World lets you share PhotoPass photos with people on your Family & Friends list, or invite them by email, and by Disney's own account they can view them without buying Memory Maker, and order prints too. Set it up before you leave, and she can look through the trip from her own couch.
• Do her ride for her. The grandchildren ride the one she always did and tell her about it on a video call at the exit, or bring back the souvenir she always bought herself.
• Bring the park home. Her favorite film on a Saturday afternoon, the grandchildren in their ears on her couch, the snack she loved at the park made in her kitchen.
• Ask her about the old trips. Get out the prints from the years she took her own children, and let the grandchildren ask who is in each one. Record it if she agrees: they have never heard most of those stories.

A book she is in needs no travel either: a grandchild can read our personalized book for grandma with her at her kitchen table or over a video call, and the preview of her is free, with no account and no card.

One thing to avoid: anything that counts down to a trip she is not going on. It is cheerful for the traveler and quietly painful for the one staying home.

Christmas, her birthday, Mother's Day and Grandparents Day

Four occasions carry most of her gifts, and each one tilts the choice a little.

Grandparents Day is not a Disney holiday. It is National Grandparents Day, which federal law asks the President to proclaim every year for the first Sunday in September after Labor Day: anywhere from September 7 to 13, usually the second Sunday of the month. D23, Disney's official fan club, marked the day in 2016 with a roundup of the grandparents in its films and shows, and our guide to Grandparents Day gifts covers the day itself.

Mother's Day is the one people forget applies to her. A Disney grandmother is, first, the mother who took her own children, so the gift that lands says her children remember: the then-and-now frame, or a note from her daughter about the first trip.

Her birthday, if it falls during a trip, is the one day the parks themselves help: pin on the button, and let the grandchildren do the rest.

The dates that decide whether it arrives

Anything personalized is made after you order it, so the number that matters is production plus shipping, and in December both slow down.

• Find the photos first. You send two, one of her and one of the grandchild. A clear, recent photo of her is usually the slow step, and a trip photo works. Each face should be reasonably clear and roughly facing the camera, so skip the one in sunglasses.
• Ours is made after you order it. It is printed in the United States and checked by a real artist before it goes to print, and the book's page and the cart show real delivery dates before you pay.
• For Christmas, December 1. That is the last date we can promise for our book, and we would rather say so here than on the 24th.
• A few weeks ahead for the rest. For her birthday, Mother's Day or Grandparents Day, a few weeks before is comfortable for anything made to order, ours included.

The preview works at any hour, so you can see her drawn tonight and decide in the morning. And if you are late anyway, print the cover from your preview, put it in a card with the date the book arrives, and let her open it twice. Nobody remembers the day a present arrived. They remember who was in it.

A short list, if you want one

The ideas above, with who gives each one and why it survives.

If you only do one thing, get her into the picture: on paper, dated, and with them.