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(ARA) – Whether you’re considering a family vacation for Spring Break or just want to get away for a long weekend, one of the most inexpensive ways to travel is to hit the road. Despite higher gas prices, the cost of filling up your tank a few times is still a lot lower than the amount you’d spend to fly the family somewhere.
So why don’t more people take road trips? Perhaps because they dread having to hear the kids ask, ‘When will we get there?’ over and over again.
What a lot of people may not realize is that there are steps they can take before embarking on the adventure to lessen the stress of the trip and actually make it more fun. A good place to start is by letting the kids play a role in deciding what route you’ll take to your destination.
If, for example, you’ll be traveling from Miami, Fla., to North Carolina to visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, you may not have been planning on it, but accepting the kids’ recommendation to stop at Disney World along the way will help get them excited about the trip.
Once your trip is underway, however, there’s no getting around the fact that getting where you’re going is going to take time. To avoid having to deal with bored backseat passengers, plan plenty of activities for the kids. Books, music and road games like “I Spy” will work for a few minutes at a time, but giving your kids the ability to watch full-length movies on the road or play video games will keep them occupied for hours.
Portable DVD players and video game systems have been around for a while, but a new product just introduced at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is generating a lot of excitement. Visteon Corporation has teamed up with Nintendo to offer a version of its Dockable Family Entertainment System featuring GameBoy Advance.
The unit, which mounts to a docking station built into the roof of the car, allows backseat passengers to play more than 700 GameBoy games, watch DVDs or listen to CDs, MP3 and WMA files all from the same unit. The laptop style player has a 10.2 inch screen and includes a wireless game controller. Additional controllers and other accessories are available as add-ons.
“The great thing about this unit is when the passengers reach their destination, they can remove the device from the car and continue watching movies or playing games in their hotel room, on the airplane, pretty much anywhere they want,” says Greg Gyllstrom, Visteon’s vice president for Aftermarket North America.
The Dockable Family Entertainment System Featuring GameBoy Advance will be available through authorized aftermarket and certain car dealers nationwide this April. Log on to www.evisteon.com and click on the link that says “Mobile Electronics” for more information. Courtesy of ARA Content