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If you can time your journey right, he will be having a sleep when you arrive, so you can hopefully get the tent pitched (quietly!) whilst he's still sleeping.  Once the tent is pitched, you can use one of the tent bedrooms as a giant play pen (particularly if it has a mesh door) - just position the zip ends way up out of reach, while you sort out the rest of your kit.

Just to repeat what others have already said - forget about sleeping routines.  He'll be awake later than normal due to excitement/light.  The first time we went with our first, we got really stressed trying to settle her repeatedly at normal bedtime.  After a couple of nights we just learned to go with the flow - she was quite happy to be safely in her room, as long as she had plenty of things to play with, and when she got too tired, she just lay herself down.  He may wake up early because of the light, or may sleep in late due to tiredness.  If he is waking early as well, you're probably going to have to give him a bit more sleep than normal in the day.

We're soon off on our first little trip with three - 5, 3 and 5 months.  Youngest has a cleft palate which means my wife is expressing all his milk, then we feed it with a special bottle - it's hard enough work at home - are we mad?!  Still, the older two will love it.

We have a 4 and 2 yr old.....and all was great.  we took along a surpise toy for each of them (small eleastic monkey thing!!) which we gave them when we first arrived and it amused them for about the first 30mins....which gives you enough time to atleast get the inner tent up and pegged down etc.  Kids then loved goiing into the tent playing (choosing their bedrroms etc) - put their sleeping bags in and they both loved rolling around with them.  My 2 yr old was also "peg monitor" and she enjoyed folling me around and passing out the pegs!

The onlyslight problem was that my 4 yr old managed to "ping" his elastic monkey onto next doors Caravan roof within about 10 minutes of arriving....hence a nice introduction to our neighbours:
"Hello, I'm Lloyd, pleased to meet you,would you mind if I retrieve my sons monkey from your roof...."
Thankfully they saw the funny side of this and it was a nice ice breaker!!

My advice - plan a little bit to distract them for first 30 mins....(toy etc) but generally just chill out and have some fun putting the gear up....kids will respond to the "fun" and this just adds to the camping experience!!

Why not take some plastic cups and a plastic box that he can get into - put in a little bit of water and get him to wash up or play in the water while you erect the tent. As soon as the tent is at the stage where one of you can finish it off alone do something with him - wander round the campsite, go for a swim, play a game that sort of thing for half an hour then unpack the essentials while he plays. The biggest problem is trying to finish everything off expecting little people to understand and wait. I say this from 2 years of trying to do just that. Last year we jsut put up the tent then Mum wandered off with the boys while I finished it off. It takes longer that way but it is a LOT less stressful for every-one and to be honest its not the end of the world if the kitchen stuff is messy for a while as long as you have a tent, beds and clothes available. Most important thing is knowing where your swimming cozzies are...

Hi there

My 4 year old was so excited about his first trip he was in his PJ's in his sleeping bag by 6.30.  Mind you he then ended up running round the site in PJ's till 9.30.  He was grubby but happy. Abandon routine - its just not worth the hassle.  They're on holiday too after all. 

No expert but presumably as long as you don't arrive too late you can take it reasonably easy and allow ur wee one a bit of play/running around time when you arrive.  With any luck you'll have nice neighbours with slightly older kids who will enjoy entertaining a little'un.

Hope you have a wicked trip - enjoy!!

Laurie