In between the swimming lessons and summer camps and the couple of planned excursions to Disneyland and the beach, you might very well have a house full of kids and lots of down time. Instead of parking them in front of an endless loop of Nickolodean and Disney channel cartoons, consider the purchase of the Tripflix DVD. At a mere $19.99 it'll probably pay for itself in no time.

One big issue in our house is getting the kids to want to do something without a visual. I think Tripflix comes in handy here by giving the kids plenty of visual about all sorts of places. Nicely balanced between high end locations and random cheaper and natural destinations (amusement parks on one end and hunting for dinosaur tracks in the southwest on the other), I wanted to hug them for including the Four Corners Monument and geeking out there.

My son loved the interactive questions in between segments though as a lazy parent sticking on a DVD, I could have done without having to enter answers for them on the remote--but a none lazy parent might enjoy watching with the kids and helping out. I liked the format and set up of it. Loud, but not obnoxious graphics and no talking down to the kids ever. Yay!

I loved the little bits of historical information about each one of the destinations. Especially the historical presentations like the one on the beach between Oregon and Washington. They tried to really make it informative and fun at the same time. Some of the jokes and skits work well, some of them fall flat but in general it's fun and keeps the attention of the wee ones...(the five year old and three year old only got bored during the Atlantic City segment and the Alamo banter by the teenagers).

As a lifelong Californian and westerner, I'd love to see some less obvious choices for California. There's so much here that's amazingly fun-- do we really need to go and promote Sea World...again? Perhaps the Monterey Bay Aquarium instead? Musee Mechanique in San Francisco? Anything in Los Angeles? But that was a small issue in an otherwise fun DVD that held the attention of the kiddies and that's really what you need most out of a dvd in the summertime.

I hope they plan on a part two with new destinations!