“Receiving a Surprise Trip is already a Thrill ,

but when Revealed with Creativity,

it can become a Lifetime Memory too!”

 

As a travel-addict myself, gifting surprise trips to my loved ones is surely one of the presents I most enjoy to make. Be it a weekend getaway or a month-long roadtrip journey, I always love to see the emotion of excitement and happiness on that other special person’s face 🙂

Two years ago, I found myself in the situation of having to reveal a surprise trip to Paris to my girlfriend for her birthday, and the last thing I wanted was ruining an amazing surprise with a boring delivery!

After long hours thinking, I found a creative way to make her the Surprise Trip Announcement, and boy, it was such an amazing surprise, she was shocked! At that time, I also wrote an article about it, which you find here: 10 Creative Ways to Reveal a Surprise Trip (if you’re curious to see for what I went 😉 ).

Two years have passed now, and few days ago I found myself once again in the same situation of having to reveal her a surprise trip, this time to Lapland, Finland.

Resolved on not wanting to recycle any old idea, my brain started heating up one more time in the search for a brand-new creative idea for a mind-blowing surprise trip announcement! After long hours thinking, I found it, realized it and it was awesome!

If you find yourself also in the same situation in which you want to reveal a surprise trip to a special person with a boom, then you are in the right place.

Following, you find 5 (more) Creative Ideas for a Memorable Surprise Trip Announcement to surprise that special person close to you.

Let’s dive right in!

Let’s get started!

1. Say it Sweetly:

Letter with a Hidden Message

An heart-felt hand-written letter is always something sweet to gift, that most people love to receive, and that your special one might treasure for life. But ever thought of hiding your surprise trip announcement INSIDE the letter? 😉

The idea is simple, yet smart and funny: everyone is used to read from left to right, line by line, top to bottom. We are going to exploit this elementary habit, to hide our message between the lines.

First of all, you need a message for your surprise trip revelation: should be something short, between 15-30 characters long, as for example: “We Go One Week in Lapland”, “We are going to Japan next”, “Get Ready for a Trip to Brazil” etc.

Once you got your message, it’s time to start writing a personal letter to your special person while hiding the message between the lines: before starting, write your short message in vertical, starting from top to bottom, on the left side of the paper. 

These characters you just wrote are there to stay, and will be the first characters of every line you are going to write.

now just fill in all the rest of the letter with whatever you might want to say to your special person, trying to reach always the new line with a word that starts with the corresponding short-message-letter.

As a sample letter idea:

When I met you for the first time I wouldn’t 

expect in a million year we would rich this 

great and Unbelievable 10-years anniversary.

Of course, it was not all flower and roses, but

Thanks to our love and strenght we 

Overcame so many hurdles and finally etc. etc. etc.”

The previous is just a little example i made up to give you the idea: if you look at this closely, on the first column you can read the words “WE GO TO…“.

With some creativity and by putting your feelings in the letter you can craft something sweet and memorable that, once the secret message will be discovered/revealed, could become legendary ;D 

A good idea is to attach the letter to a little present (chocolate? socks? anything!) to make it look less suspicious (it will seem just a normal letter attached to the gift, taking away your special person’s attention from watching the letter too closely 😉 .

 

2. Cheer your Relationships:

The Photo-Story Anagram Game

Do you know those kind of surprises when you gift a photoset of your story? This announcement-camuflage idea takes a little bit of time to prepare, but it is thought to exploit those kind of surprises:)

Same as before, think about a short message to reveal your surprise trip: as an example, I will use “Get Ready, We Go To Finland!”.

Then, pick as many photos as the characters in your short message: in my case, 21 letters, so 21 photos. They can be photo of you two together, of places you visited before, events your special person attended, people she/he knows etc. etc.

Under every photo, add a dashed line as if you were to play hangman, with as many dashes as the main thing you’re portraying in your photo.

As an example:

if a photo portrays you and your special person together in Austria, the word will be Austria: then under the photo put 7 dashes, one for every letter: _ _ _ _ _ _. To make it easier to guess, you can add some of the letters too (ex. A _ S _ _ _ A).

Then, be sure to encircle in red one of the dashes.

The encircled letters will be at the end the letters your special person will need to anagram to compose a meaningful message and discover about the surprise trip you prepared for them.

Example in my case:

With the previous example of Austria, I would encircle the 4th dash, which is for the letter “T”: A U S (T) R I A. The letter “T” can be used to compose the short message “Get Ready We Go To Finland”.

After watching together all the photos (in my case 21 photos), your loved one should have 21 letters to anagram, which is a funny game to do and can be done with ease in few minutes. 

Receiving a well-thought photo album is an extremely wonderful gift by itself, but when your special one will find out about the surprise trip, you can be sure they’ll be amazed and stunned by your creativity too 😉

 

3. Be Funny:

The Travel Tags Armageddon

Seeing a travel tag immediately brings you to think about travelling. But what about seeing a hundred of them? 😉

This creative announcement idea takes some time to prepare but the results can be pretty fun. All you will need to prepare it are some paper tags, a pen and of course, your creativity.

The idea is pretty straightforward:

• prepare a 100 travel tags
• write on the front of the tag a destination name
• write on the back of the tag either “No, we are not going there, try again” or whatever comes to your mind (99 times)
• Write on the back of the correct Surprise Trip Tag “Yes, you found me! Get ready to Go!”
• Infest your special person’s room/home/office with travel tags (leaving always the destination side visible and the back hidden)
• Wait to see their reaction when they see the armageddon and enjoy watching them search for the real tag

Of course, depending on your time constraints and care, you can add more details on the tags, some short messages, jokes, aforisms or anything that come to your mind: the more you customize, the more enjoyable the surprise trip announcement will be 😉

 

4. Make it a Social Surprise:

Everyone Knew but You!

A creative and funny idea to announce your surprise trip can surely be involving other people!

We all love to receive unexpected video-messages from the people close to us, so why not making a mesh-up video to reveal our surprise trip too? 🙂

The idea is relatively easy to make yet genial: ten days before your surprise trip announcement date, you should start telling your special persons’ friends, co-workers and family about the upcoming surprise trip you prepared for your loved one, and ask them to record a short video wishing them a great journey.

Give everyone you involve a sentence to say: as an example, “hope your luggage is ready”, “he/she still didn’t tell you eh?”, “i hope you got a passion for…”, “don’t forget to buy suncream, it’s going to be hot!” etc. etc.

You know your special person better than anybody else, so you know better than everyone what could be funny. Try to involve as many people as possible, the more the funniest.

Sometimes it’s also funny to ask complete strangers to wish a good trip: a cashier, a street artist, some drunk person at a bar etc. That will leave your victim wondering who they are and make it even funnier.

Once you have all the videos, edit them all into a surprise video (there are many easy-to-use programs that can help you with it, such MovieMaker, Filmora, IMovie etc. and also free smartphone apps such YouCut). If editing is not your thing, you could always ask to any of the involved friends for a little help;)

Once the video is done, all is left to do is just to create the perfect set-up to show your video to your loved one. Just be sure to film them while they watch it, for sure her/his friends and family will be curious to see their reaction too! 😉

5. “You are so mean…but I love you!”

Fake you forgot, then drift, then win ;D 

This is a creative idea for who likes a bit of risk: simply, fake you forgot to make a present.

Normally, we do presents on special occasions when something is to be celebrated: birthdays, Christmas, marriages, etc.

Finding a *pathetic* excuse to justify not remembering to make a present is pretty easy: you forgot the birthday date, you arrived late at the shop before Christmas and it was already closed, you ordered it online but it won’t arrive before next months, etc.

The more you can wait with the reveal, the greater will be the surprise and the “twist” of emotion in your special person’s brain: from bitter disappointment, to fun, love and overwhelming excitement.

If you decide to go for this revelation idea, remeber to be mindful of the other person’s feeling, and be careful not to stretch it too much or for too long. With some people this kind of “prank” works great, while others might get upset very soon ;D 

Said that, you can rejoice in knowing that there’s nobody that could pull it off in this situation better then you, and that by gifting a surprise trip you are making such wonderful present to your loved one that for sure would instantly make them forget your “innocent evilness” once you reveal it 😉

 

Conclusion:

Be Creative and it will be Awesome!

Here we are at the end of the article one more time. I truly hope the content above helped you to find some inspiration to make an epic surprise trip revelation to that special person so close to you.

If you have not read the previous part of this series on how to reveal a surprise trip and you’re still looking for more ideas, I leave you the link to the first article: 10 Creative Ways to Reveal a Surprise Trip

As for me, this year I went with the idea number two: the Photo-Story anagram game.

It’s been almost 4 years that me and my girlfriend we are officially together, and so I thought a photo-story with photos from all the places we’ve been together would have been a nice present just to see again together what we’ve done and to remind some funny moments.

Watching all the photos and guessing in which places they were taken took about 10 minutes, the anagram about 5 minutes more. When she found out we are going to Finland (she always dreamed about seeing the Northern Lights) she was incredibly surprised.

I also didn’t tell her about the meaning of the encircled letter, she just found out by herself she had to do an anagram 😉 Last but not least, I packed all the photos in a Ferrero Rocher Box, just because I know she can be so gluttonous about them ;D

I hope the article was of help to you too!

If you would like to share your surprise trip revelation experience, or you have more creative ideas for an announcement that you would like to share with other readers, just drop a comment in the section below (I really appreciated receiving feedback 😀 ).

Wish you all the best with your revelation and surprise trip,

see you in the next article!