Last week, Kristen Bell appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live amid the release of her new Netflix show, Nobody Wants This.
And during her conversation with host Jimmy, Kristen casually revealed that she and her husband, Dax Shepard, let their two kids explore a theme park unattended for hours during a recent family vacation.
Kristen and Dax, who have been married since 2013, share two kids: Lincoln, 11, and Delta, 9.
Kristen began by telling Jimmy, who is also a parent to two young children*, that going on vacation with kids can be pretty stressful.
*As well as his 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, Jimmy is dad to two adult children from his previous marriage.
“Don’t you find that going on vacation as a parent — it’s not a vacation, you’re just watching your kids in a different city,” she said.
Jimmy agreed, noting it’s “worse than being at home.” Kristen replied, “Truly! Because they have none of their creature comforts, they’re asking you a thousand more questions than they normally do…oh God.”
Kristen then revealed her and Dax’s “hack” to getting some alone time while on vacation. She shared, “The hack is when we went to Copenhagen, we stayed at this hotel that was right at Tivoli Gardens, which is a seven-acre theme park. Anyway, the hotel opens up into the theme park, and so we just were kind of like, 'Are we going to free-range parenting and roll the die here?’”
“We let them wake up at 6 o’clock every morning. They scanned their bracelets to go outside. Didn't see them for seven hours. Just running around Copenhagen,” she laughed.
Visibly surprised, Jimmy questioned, “And that was OK?” Kristen replied, “Apparently! They’re both alive. We all returned home!”
Kristen added, “It was heaven. We just had coffee, we played Spades, and then around 3 o’clock, we’d be like, ‘Anybody see them?’ And then one of them would run up and need a Band-Aid.”