Where to go when family vacations keep sucking

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a bigger splurge / trip, what about the Disney resort in Hawaii? I think it's all the amenities / support / kid friendliness of Disney but with beaches and pools instead of a Disney park. And you can easily do road trips around the island while you're there. My sister (single mom) took her 6 yo son there last year and had an incredible time.

There is no way I’m getting on a plane for that many hours with my 18 month old.

LOL fair. Maybe next year? I think by around 2 or so my kids could watch TV for an hour at a time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a bigger splurge / trip, what about the Disney resort in Hawaii? I think it's all the amenities / support / kid friendliness of Disney but with beaches and pools instead of a Disney park. And you can easily do road trips around the island while you're there. My sister (single mom) took her 6 yo son there last year and had an incredible time.

There is no way I’m getting on a plane for that many hours with my 18 month old.

LOL fair. Maybe next year? I think by around 2 or so my kids could watch TV for an hour at a time.

I dunno man... my DD by now could be entertained on a long flight with an iPad. DS is a shark: if he’s not swimming he’s suffocating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a bigger splurge / trip, what about the Disney resort in Hawaii? I think it's all the amenities / support / kid friendliness of Disney but with beaches and pools instead of a Disney park. And you can easily do road trips around the island while you're there. My sister (single mom) took her 6 yo son there last year and had an incredible time.

There is no way I’m getting on a plane for that many hours with my 18 month old.

LOL fair. Maybe next year? I think by around 2 or so my kids could watch TV for an hour at a time.

Disney also has Vero beach and Hilton Head if you want a little Disney for the kids but mostly a relaxed beach vacation. I've never been so I don't know what amenities they offer over other beach resorts, but it could be something you look into.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Places we have been that went poorly: Portland/PacNW, Colorado, NYC.

Ha! We had a semi-disastrous trip to Portland as well! Beautiful city/area, but timing was bad when kids were 1 and 4, and they were just not in a good place that time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The last couple trips with my 7 yr old and rambunctious now 18 month old DS have been miserable with lots of whining about food choices, sleeping arrangements, etc. The best trip we have had TBH was Disney but DH doesn’t really want to go back. At this point I want to bag the entire concept of family vacations. Any advice?

You have two very different ages to accommodate and traveling with a child in the 9mo-2 year old time frame is going to be dicey no matter what. I agree a resort type vacation, preferably where you also have an in-suite kitchen to serve up kid food, is probably your best bet. However, keep expectations low for now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Places we have been that went poorly: Portland/PacNW, Colorado, NYC.

Ha! We had a semi-disastrous trip to Portland as well! Beautiful city/area, but timing was bad when kids were 1 and 4, and they were just not in a good place that time.

I’m actually from the area so I really didn’t see it coming that DD was going to be horrified by all the “crunchy” menu options. She’s usually an adventurous eater but something about the west coast culinary scene was a huge problem.

[Anonymous]

2 bedroom room at a place with a kid-friendly pool, lunch/drinks at the pool, and on-site/nearby restaurants.

Location doesn't matter - just make sure the kids are entertained and you have drinks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last couple trips with my 7 yr old and rambunctious now 18 month old DS have been miserable with lots of whining about food choices, sleeping arrangements, etc. The best trip we have had TBH was Disney but DH doesn’t really want to go back. At this point I want to bag the entire concept of family vacations. Any advice?

You have two very different ages to accommodate and traveling with a child in the 9mo-2 year old time frame is going to be dicey no matter what. I agree a resort type vacation, preferably where you also have an in-suite kitchen to serve up kid food, is probably your best bet. However, keep expectations low for now.

Agree with the bold above. We are pretty regular travelers with both of our kids, but we basically chained ourselves to our house for ages 12-24 months. We just white knuckled through it and both kids ended up able to travel again when it was over. It's a really, really hard age for travel.

We had one okay trip when my oldest was 14 months to an all-inclusive in Cancun. It was definitely not relaxing, but we spent almost the entire time in the pool and had a bit of fun. My parents paid, but I don't think it would have been worth the costs if we had to pay for it ourselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last couple trips with my 7 yr old and rambunctious now 18 month old DS have been miserable with lots of whining about food choices, sleeping arrangements, etc. The best trip we have had TBH was Disney but DH doesn’t really want to go back. At this point I want to bag the entire concept of family vacations. Any advice?

You have two very different ages to accommodate and traveling with a child in the 9mo-2 year old time frame is going to be dicey no matter what. I agree a resort type vacation, preferably where you also have an in-suite kitchen to serve up kid food, is probably your best bet. However, keep expectations low for now.

Agree with the bold above. We are pretty regular travelers with both of our kids, but we basically chained ourselves to our house for ages 12-24 months. We just white knuckled through it and both kids ended up able to travel again when it was over. It's a really, really hard age for travel.

We had one okay trip when my oldest was 14 months to an all-inclusive in Cancun. It was definitely not relaxing, but we spent almost the entire time in the pool and had a bit of fun. My parents paid, but I don't think it would have been worth the costs if we had to pay for it ourselves.

When I've traveled with kids in that age range it's just been to family or to beach resorts. Last March we went to the Florida gulf coast and that was about the right balance of low key but still fun for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Places we have been that went poorly: Portland/PacNW, Colorado, NYC.

What are you trying to do on your vacations, aka what do you consider fun? If the best vacation so far was Disney, sounds like your family might benefit more from a beach or other laidback vacation rather than a city-based one built on sightseeing and restaurants? Totally not knocking that, just trying to identify what worked at Disney and what didn't work in those locales. Maybe it was the resort element of Disney that appealed, even without the theme park, so pick a resort setting in a locale that you like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Places we have been that went poorly: Portland/PacNW, Colorado, NYC.

What are you trying to do on your vacations, aka what do you consider fun? If the best vacation so far was Disney, sounds like your family might benefit more from a beach or other laidback vacation rather than a city-based one built on sightseeing and restaurants? Totally not knocking that, just trying to identify what worked at Disney and what didn't work in those locales. Maybe it was the resort element of Disney that appealed, even without the theme park, so pick a resort setting in a locale that you like.

Yeah before kids our vacations were either cities/museums or hiking. So we were, I guess, trying to keep that going. And now I guess it’s time to pivot to more of a resort type vacation, which isn’t something DH or I would pick otherwise. So I’m sort of at a loss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Places we have been that went poorly: Portland/PacNW, Colorado, NYC.

What are you trying to do on your vacations, aka what do you consider fun? If the best vacation so far was Disney, sounds like your family might benefit more from a beach or other laidback vacation rather than a city-based one built on sightseeing and restaurants? Totally not knocking that, just trying to identify what worked at Disney and what didn't work in those locales. Maybe it was the resort element of Disney that appealed, even without the theme park, so pick a resort setting in a locale that you like.

Yeah before kids our vacations were either cities/museums or hiking. So we were, I guess, trying to keep that going. And now I guess it’s time to pivot to more of a resort type vacation, which isn’t something DH or I would pick otherwise. So I’m sort of at a loss.

Totally agree with pp. some kids hike fine, but others like fine are miserable. We tried at first to do Nc mountains, the .5 mile was crazy even with a Tula and a 7 month old. He insisted to be carried and it was 10 degrees colder inside the trail.

Our last great vacation was Legoland. I want to do Europe and nice restaurants, but sometimes it’s better to wait until they are older to do it. Sucks but it’s like the newborn stage, it goes fast.

[Anonymous]

We do have good trips with our kids but I’m not saying we always have or that there have never been rough moments when traveling or that it’s easy. I am willing to learn from what went wrong on past trips and try to not make the same mistake again going forward.

I do hear you that sleeping issues are a problem, and basically I’ve learned that if we don’t get enough sleep nobody has a good time. And we are a family of 5 (2 adults and three kids who are 5, 8, and 10 right now) so I find this really limits our options on where we can go. A lot of times, I’m priced out of nice hotels because I don’t want to pay for two rooms. What that means is, we still travel but we go places where I feel comfortable renting a VRBO or where we can afford to get two rooms, etc. A VRBO also gives us a kitchen. I don’t know about you, but it’s not easy or necessarily enjoyable for me to spend three meals a day for a week with young kids in a restaurant. I am happy to eat two meals at home and eat out one meal a day when we’re on vacation or even order takeout and bring it back to our place to eat, etc. I know that means we have to do dishes, but for us, this is preferable (YMMV). We are not cooking gourmet meals - we are having our regular breakfast and say, PB & J or turkey sandwiches for lunch, etc.

And I wouldn’t say that all of our trips are kid centric such as Disney World, but I’m willing to go to Disney World and in general my husband & I are happy on vacation when our kids are happy so I don’t try to force them to do adult tourism things all day.

In general, I say: have low expectations and try make sure everyone gets enough sleep as reasonably possible. For us, we can’t go all day every day. We need to plan one big outing a day and still leave time for the kids to stop and smell the roses, or skip rocks in the Virgin River for an hour, as the case may be.

Lately, I am into National Parks as affordable options. Last spring break we did Vegas / Zion / Bryce and I did certain things to make the trip more enjoyable for kids such as researching best hotel pools for kids in Vegas (and we stayed at Mandalay Bay and they did really like the pools). We are going to SD (Rushmore / Custer / Badlands) this summer and for two nights we are staying at the Rapid City hotel connected to a water park. We have rented very nice VRBOs in Acadia and in Hilton Head island.

Next year I am turning 40 and it is our 15 year anniversary. I wanted to do a “big” anniversary trip for spring break (including the kids). And do you know what we are doing? My husband wanted warm weather and we don’t pull the kids out of school for travel so we are going at an expensive time (story of my life). And, what we can afford to do is our first Royal Caribbean cruise, Oasis class ship, with two adjoining oceanview balcony rooms. I might have had something more exotic in mind at first theoretically but I am actually really looking forward to this trip.

One last thing is that I “let” everyone in the family pick at least one activity that they want to do on the trip, including my husband and me. If anyone complains I just say, part of being in a family is taking turns / doing what others want at times etc. & you get your turn to pick too. This is also good because sometimes you end up really liking something you wouldn’t have picked yourself!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Places we have been that went poorly: Portland/PacNW, Colorado, NYC.

What are you trying to do on your vacations, aka what do you consider fun? If the best vacation so far was Disney, sounds like your family might benefit more from a beach or other laidback vacation rather than a city-based one built on sightseeing and restaurants? Totally not knocking that, just trying to identify what worked at Disney and what didn't work in those locales. Maybe it was the resort element of Disney that appealed, even without the theme park, so pick a resort setting in a locale that you like.

Yeah before kids our vacations were either cities/museums or hiking. So we were, I guess, trying to keep that going. And now I guess it’s time to pivot to more of a resort type vacation, which isn’t something DH or I would pick otherwise. So I’m sort of at a loss.

You could do a staycation so you don't have to worry about sleeping arrangements. Find new hiking trails, new museums, etc.

Or how about try a resort place in Arizona - you can get some hiking in AND still chill by the pool. Just don't over-schedule it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We’ve done Disney and just skipped the parks. We stay at a Deluxe resort, where the pools are nicer and have slides, and poolside activities for the kids. DH and I park it on a chaise, order drinks and snacks, I read and watch the kids, DH sleeps, we trade. We spend the evenings in Disney Springs. We visit the water parks, play mini golf. Last time I even ran a pop-up fun run at the resort. The resort had child care so we did that and spent an evening at Epcot alone.

You know what, this is good advice. DH liked the park hotel just not the park. Limiting park time to one partial day, maybe just me and DD alone, could be the ticket.

My DH and I still talk about this trip and how it was the most relaxing, chill vacation we’ve ever taken. The kids were awesome the whole trip, we felt super relaxed. It was nice having no real plans and nowhere to be accept at the pool. We slept in (as late as the kids let us, which was later than usual), ate meals at a relaxed pace (again, nowhere to be), swam until the rain came in in the afternoon, changed and headed to Disney Springs, ate wherever looked good that night, stayed out late just wandering around, letting the kids get ice cream while we sipped a cocktail. OMG, I want to go back!