You Pinspire Me
Well, we just took our maiden family vacation via air, and I admit, I was a teensy bit nervous as to how my squirmy wormy short-attention-span feisty 4 year old would do with the flights. I knew our 6 year old would be a boss – this was, after all, his third round-trip on an airplane, and he’s a calm, level dude to start with.
TV and screens are still pretty exciting for our poor deprived children, and we flew with Canada’s new ultra-discount airline, NewLeaf, so we figured there would be no seat-back screens for us. THANKFULLY, Netflix now has downloadable content, so once our kids got tired of watching clouds go by, we could hypnotize them with captivating content.
I know that a lot of you heard about this exciting new development – that you can now download select titles from Netflix to your device – but I also know from conversations that way too many of you are left out in the dark. Let me get that lightswitch for you, my friends – you can put PAW Patrol on your phone for long waits in the ER! Alvin & the Chipmunks, Barbie’s Dreamhouse, LEGO Ninjago! THIS IS BIG STUFF! Now, since you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I don’t plunk my kids in front of a screen willy-nilly, but we bought our first ever iPad and bumped up our cell data so that we could stream Netflix for the kid when three hours to Grandma’s house was HELL. When we brought our kids to a pub a few weeks ago so we could have dinner with some colleagues from his Masters program, we brought the iPad, preloaded with Netflix, to take care of the time after dinner was over and we were just gabbing away.
My husband and I gathered all of our tablets and downloaded our kids’ favourite content – and ours – and then I put some on my Moto Z just for good measure. You can never have enough pre-loaded content when traveling. Who knows when a 1 hour layover will turn into 5 hours?
And it worked – brilliantly! Everyone had their own device, everyone watched their own thing (after, of course, we marveled for a while about being in the middle of clouds and realizing how bumpy they are). We had no melt-downs, we had no kids running up and down the aisle, we had no one glaring at us. Huzzah!
Score one for Netflix and the parents of little kids on airplanes (and, come to think of it, all of the passengers on it, too!).
You might, while trying to download an item for yourself or your kid, get a little frustrated by the fact that so many seem ‘unavailable’ for download. You might think, “It’d sure be nice if they had a list of all titles that I could download so I didn’t have to click on each one to find out.”
And guess what? They DO! Just head to the menu (the three horizontal lines on the top left corner), then click on Available for Download. Boom. There they are.
And so, my friends, I wish you happy downloading. May your trips be quiet and your kidlets be mesmerized.
Disclaimer: We’re members of the Netflix #StreamTeam, meaning that we get special perks now and then in exchange for sharing our excitement about this fantastic company and service. We don’t get paid, but we do get to do fun stuff now and then like meet King George. All opinions are our own!
Jenn vanOosten
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