17 Family Road Trip Games You’re Going To Want To Try Now!

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Tis’ the season of travel, that time of year when we hit the open road for long car rides to Grandma’s or other relatives for the holidays. Thank goodness for built-in DVD players that make traveling with kids much more bearable.

But let me ask you a question. Do you remember when you were a kid and long trips were filled with fun road trip games? I remember the miles seemed to fly by as my family and I traveled in our old trusty station wagon. We played game after game, and time passed quickly as the miles trudged on.

This year I thought I would bring back the classics and introduce new family road trip games to make this time of travel and family vacation time throughout the year much more fun! Are you in?

Let’s start with some of the tried and true road trip classics. The ones we all grew up playing but maybe have forgotten. These games require nothing. So they are easy to play on the fly, with no prep work.

The Best Old-School Road Trip Games

• Eye spy with my little eye – I spy is a great game for younger kids.
• License Plate Game – Can you find license plates from all the different states
• Quiet Game – Pull this one out when you need a little peace and quiet for a bit. The first person to speak is out!
• Letters of The Alphabet Game – Try and find something to represent each letter of the alphabet, going in alphabetical order!
• Slug Bug or Punch Buggy- A classic road trip game searching for the Volkswagen beetle!
• American Flags – See who can spot the most.
• Hot Seat – The person in the “hot seat” has to answer questions from all the other players – this is a fun way to get to know each other better!
• Movie Game – Quote movie lines and see if your fellow passengers can guess the movie!
• Name Game – Have each member write out names of famous people, and then draw the characters from a jar and give clues until the name is guessed.
• Start – Stop Game. One person is designated as the start/stop person. The first player starts the story and tells a part of the story until the stop/start person says “STOP,” then the second player picks up with the story where the last player left off. These stories can get pretty zany.

With a bit of planning ahead, the following road trip games can add diversity to long car rides. The best way to make the miles fly is to break things up; here are some fun ways to do just that.

Fun Road Trip Activities To Bring Along

• Travel Bingo
• Paper and Pencil for heated games of tic tac toe
• Road Trip Scavenger Hunt Game
• Mad Libs – Always a good time!
• Coloring Books
• Nintendo Switch – A Nintendo switch is great because your kids can bring it along in the car!
• Shot Gun
• Hang Man

If you want to mix things up and encourage lively conversation with the whole family, you’ll want to play this road trip jar game I created on your next family road trip!

How To Play The Road Trip Jar Game

How it works: – Print out the FREE questions and activities. There are over 100 things. Cut out each line as a separate slip of paper. Once all the questions and activities are cut up into little pieces, place them in a jar or Tupperware. Each family member takes a turn choosing a slip of paper; they either answer the question on the slip of paper or lead the other family members in the activity specified! This game is excellent for older kids as well as younger kids. It is designed to be fun for the entire family!

This post was initially created in 2013 when I first started blogging. We have played this game on road trips for the last eight years, and we always have a good time! There is a reason this game has been shared over 13k times! I am always amazed at how much we learn a lot about our kids each time we play. And I am always amazed by the lack of fighting and general happiness that fills our vehicle when we play. No one complains about how much further or so and so is bugging me. We enjoy playing our game together! We have so much fun!

My son kept getting questions about what he loves best about our family and what he wishes we did more of as a family, and his answer was always “Family Hugs”…It melted my heart!! It was adorable – So prepare yourself for fun moments that will melt your heart! 

So get to playing and print out this fun road trip game and give it a try!! You might learn a thing or two about your family members and enjoy the break from the DVD and screen time.

Honestly, my kids could play this game for hours! This game even works great for short trips.

I think my kids responded so well to this game and continue to do so because it allows them to engage with you and spend some quality time with you – which kids crave! The greatest gift we can give our kids is our time, and what better time and place to do so than when you are all strapped into a car for hours on end together? 

My kids always ask when we get to play the road trip game again, even if we are driving around town… I told them we’d play it only for special occasions and longer drives. {Making a “special” game gives it even more clout!}

For more ways to curve the drama on road trips, make sure and check out my 7 Tips For A Drama FREE Road Trip post.

What do you do to entertain your kiddos for long drives?

I would love to hear from you and what you think of our lineup of family road trip games! How many of the above list of road trip games has your family played? I hope you have as much fun with these road trip car games as we have!

Happy Travels!