Heather Rae and Tarek El Moussa Reveal Their Secret for Conquering Disneyland With 3 Kids

Though we are accustomed to seeing Heather Rae El Moussa traipse around ultra-luxury properties in designer ensembles and five-inch heels on Netflix’s Selling Sunset, her life looks a bit different these days, especially when it comes to travel.  El Moussa — who is now an HGTV host alongside her husband Tarek El Moussa on The Flipping El Moussas — welcomed son Tristan in early 2023. Tarek also shares two children, daughter Taylor and son Brayden, with his ex-wife and former Flip or Flop co-star Christina Haack, which means the couple is often traveling with three kids. So what is Heather’s main family travel tip? “Stay organized! Especially when you have different ages. Bringing snacks, bringing water, and taking little breaks when you need to,” she told Travel + Leisure recently. “I’m a perfectionist. I like to plan. I don’t like last-minute things. I wish I did and could be spontaneous, but I like to plan everything because I don’t like to be caught off-guard. Especially with the baby, you have to plan when traveling with kids, or else it can be chaos.”

The other key to traveling with multiple kids? Make it as easy as possible on yourself. “When we travel with the kids, we want convenience. We want stress-free, easy,” Tarek added. The El Moussa family recently partnered with Visit Anaheim and did a staycation with all three kids at the Westin Anaheim Resort, conveniently located by the theme parks (“it’s literally feet from Disneyland, so you can’t really beat the location”). Tarek explained that they were able to make their trip to Disneyland epic and stress-free because they had a private tour guide so they could skip the lines for rides. “Honestly, when you’re traveling with a group, you need to make things easy. In the end, we had five trips worth of Disneyland done in one day because we expedited the process through a tour guide. So that is one thing I recommend — make sure you get a tour guide.”

A VIP tour is certainly a luxe addition to a Disney day, and Heather feels her definition of luxury travel depends on the trip and who she’s traveling with. “When we travel alone, luxury looks very different than when we travel with the kids. So when we travel alone, accommodations, what room we’re staying in, the food, for sure, maybe some cocktails here and there, all matter. And when we travel with the kids, we want convenience. We want stress-free, easy. Also, luxury is just spending quality time with each other and the family and the kids.”

The family loved going to Disneyland and seeing the Anaheim Ducks play, but the couple noted that they would come back without the kids for a romantic getaway. “We are totally coming back and doing the exact same thing without the kids because there’s the restaurants, we can get the drinks. We got the Westin hotel, and we had the fun roller coasters,” Tarek said. “We’re gonna do a date night or date day together, where we just come and it’s me and him going on all the big rides,” Heather added. There’s something for all interests; Heather also loved that she could get vegan food at Disney California Adventure Park.

Besides the kids and Heather’s upcoming beauty line called Heather Rae Essentials, one of the activities that keeps the El Moussas busy is their new show, The Flip Off, which premieres on HGTV at 8 p.m. ET on Jan. 29 with a special two-hour episode. Though it is another real estate competition show featuring teams competing to find, buy, and flip a house for money, this one has quite the emotional twist. Tarek and Heather were originally supposed to be leading one team to compete against his ex Haack and her husband, realtor Josh Hall. However, in the first episode, Haack announces she is getting divorced.

“Well, I think most people are just unexpected about the fact that we’re actually doing the show, because it is a house flipping competition show between me, Heather, and my ex-wife, and in the end, the person with the highest return on investment is going to be the winner. So it’s going to be a really fun, exciting show, and we are all very competitive. I think viewers are going to be excited.”

The six-episode series will also feature a star-studded panel of celebrity judges for each challenge including  Amanza Smith from Selling Sunset and Heather Dubrow from The Real Housewives of Orange County, as well as Haack’s ex-husband, Born Mechanic host Ant Anstead. Heather added, “Viewers are going to love it. They’re gonna laugh. They’re gonna probably be mad at us sometimes. It’s her fans, our fans, against each other. So it’s going to be huge.”