Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We’ve done it in the Caribbean where we hire a chef for most meals and I think it’s worth doing. It’s not entirely stress-free but it makes a lot of memories and brings people closer.

Where in the Caribbean and can you recommend the chef?!

If you find a large villa somewhere it is very common for the rental agency to offer a chef as an add on (or at least to have a referral if you want it).

Puerto Rico, Mexico (either coast— near say Cancun or Puerto Vallarta), Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, etc are all possibilities.

Thanks! Where do they advertise for villas? Is it super expensive?

If you go Christmas week it’s super expensive. If you go offseason it’s much better. Just look on the internet, or if you want the names of realtors (vs say VRBO) usually you can find those on the tripadvisor forums.

No. These fall under obligatory family reunions for me and I detest them. After one too many “of course 6 families with 12 adults (4 of whom are elderly and 2 of those elderly have mobility issues) and 9 children can fit in a 3 bedroom house! Why would you (son) and your wife mind sharing a two double bed room with your brother and his wife for a week??? Look, we even got a place with 1.5 bathrooms this year!” experiences, we now rent our own place for our family to much gnashing of my parents’ teeth.

Anonymous wrote:6 family units under one roof with one kitchen? No. No matter how lovely everyone is, it's just a nightmare to feed and clean with so many people.

All inclusives and cruises are great for this. Each family has its own space, meet up for meals, and retreat to own rooms when needed.

It's also hard to go out for meals with this many people when you rent a house. I second all-inclusive resort or cruise.

We have done this so many ways, and the one thing we usually coordinate is who cooks dinner each night. We take turns/rotate, and it works for us. Sure you are cooking for a crowd twice a week, but the rest of the time you are not cooking at all. 3 families, each cooks twice and one night we eat out. And for us, it is usually summer, so grilling is super easy.

Camping. Each family has their own site, and decides if kids bunk in their tent or their own tent (some tween girls/cousins usually end up sharing a tent), grandparents rent a cabin. Families rotate cooking nights on their site for dinner. Breakfast by family on your site at your time, lunch is usually every family brings sandwiches or salads but shares watermelon or cherries or brownies or whatever at the lake.

Townhouses on the beach. Every family gets their own, meet up when it is convenient and/or for dinner Also rotate who cooks dinner.

Cruise (pre-covid). Let me be clear, I not a cruise person, and never in a million years thought I would agree to this and/or enjoy it. We ranged from tweens to 90s. Everyone loved it (including me). Every family 100% did their own thing all day (on the ship or on an excursion), but we all met up for dinner. Not infrequently families got together during the day on the ship for trivia, music, a show or whatever. Teen clubs were amazing, it was now many years ago, and my kids are sill in touch with people from around the world that they met on the cruise.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We do family vacations at all-inclusive resorts. No cooking, cleaning, or resentment around that. Kids can roam in packs, relatively unsupervised, and still safe. It's kind of a doubletake to see the kids at the swim-up bars, enjoying their Shirley Temples. DD's favorite vacations are always these, and although we haven't done one since 2019, she still remembers them fondly.

We have done this a few times as well and it has worked out great! The grandparents have treated (we are very lucky!) and the only requirement is that everyone has dinner together every night. Most of the group is pretty chill and we all tend to hang out together most days at the beach or pool. Some choose to do activities together during the day (snorkeling, biking, spa, etc) but most of the time we just hang out together.

+1. And also why multigenerational cruises were/are so popular. Everyone has their own cabin and there are tons of activities both on/off the ship. You can all gather together for meals where no one has to cook or clean. YOu can be as active or lazy as you want, and will likely have family company doing so.

Anonymous wrote:We do family vacations at all-inclusive resorts. No cooking, cleaning, or resentment around that. Kids can roam in packs, relatively unsupervised, and still safe. It's kind of a doubletake to see the kids at the swim-up bars, enjoying their Shirley Temples. DD's favorite vacations are always these, and although we haven't done one since 2019, she still remembers them fondly.

We have done this a few times as well and it has worked out great! The grandparents have treated (we are very lucky!) and the only requirement is that everyone has dinner together every night. Most of the group is pretty chill and we all tend to hang out together most days at the beach or pool. Some choose to do activities together during the day (snorkeling, biking, spa, etc) but most of the time we just hang out together.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We’ve done it in the Caribbean where we hire a chef for most meals and I think it’s worth doing. It’s not entirely stress-free but it makes a lot of memories and brings people closer.

Where in the Caribbean and can you recommend the chef?!

If you find a large villa somewhere it is very common for the rental agency to offer a chef as an add on (or at least to have a referral if you want it).

Puerto Rico, Mexico (either coast— near say Cancun or Puerto Vallarta), Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, etc are all possibilities.

Thanks! Where do they advertise for villas? Is it super expensive?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We just did it. Three separate condos for each family. It was ok in terms of relaxation. The most stressful part IMO was dinner. My parents paid so we had to do what they wanted and they wanted to go out to dinner every night, which meant finding an outdoor restaurant for 11 people every night after a long day outside. All of us (except my parents) would have preferred to do takeout on one of our gorgeous porches, or even cooked (we had a kitchen!). So that was a bummer imo, and kids would absolutely melt down / fall asleep (teenagers/ elem kids) by the end of each three hour meal. No way to get faster service where we were.

That sounds painful. Honestly I'd never vacation with them again. What kind of self-centered grandparents insist on long sit down dinners when the kids are having meltdowns?

Haha that’s my parents for you! At one dinner my incredibly diplomatic husband finally lost it and declared “no dessert tonight. This has gone on long enough” to my parents shock, being so out of character for him

Anonymous wrote:We just did it. Three separate condos for each family. It was ok in terms of relaxation. The most stressful part IMO was dinner. My parents paid so we had to do what they wanted and they wanted to go out to dinner every night, which meant finding an outdoor restaurant for 11 people every night after a long day outside. All of us (except my parents) would have preferred to do takeout on one of our gorgeous porches, or even cooked (we had a kitchen!). So that was a bummer imo, and kids would absolutely melt down / fall asleep (teenagers/ elem kids) by the end of each three hour meal. No way to get faster service where we were.

That sounds painful. Honestly I'd never vacation with them again. What kind of self-centered grandparents insist on long sit down dinners when the kids are having meltdowns?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We’ve done it in the Caribbean where we hire a chef for most meals and I think it’s worth doing. It’s not entirely stress-free but it makes a lot of memories and brings people closer.

Where in the Caribbean and can you recommend the chef?!

If you find a large villa somewhere it is very common for the rental agency to offer a chef as an add on (or at least to have a referral if you want it).

Puerto Rico, Mexico (either coast— near say Cancun or Puerto Vallarta), Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, etc are all possibilities.

I’m pp and I should add that my parents would have been extremely hurt if one family skipped out on even one nightly dinner so we all had to go. I’m the cross poster who wrote that I tried to sit away from my family at the pool for just one morning and was asked several times if i “want” to move next to them.. “we have a chair for u!! Don’t you want to join us” — ONE morning!!!

We just did it. Three separate condos for each family. It was ok in terms of relaxation. The most stressful part IMO was dinner. My parents paid so we had to do what they wanted and they wanted to go out to dinner every night, which meant finding an outdoor restaurant for 11 people every night after a long day outside. All of us (except my parents) would have preferred to do takeout on one of our gorgeous porches, or even cooked (we had a kitchen!). So that was a bummer imo, and kids would absolutely melt down / fall asleep (teenagers/ elem kids) by the end of each three hour meal. No way to get faster service where we were.

Before we had kids we used to spend a week in a big beach house with 5 or 6 IL families whose kids were teens. MIL and her daughters (moms of the teens) are very tight and between them they had the kitchen and common space under control. I just went with the flow and tried not to get in their way. It was a good way for the ILs to spend time together.

We also went to an AI with the adults only. It was very relaxed. Not the kind of vacation I'd have chosen for just us, but for family time it was a nice set up.

Since we've had kids, we've done beach house vacations with friends who have similar aged kids. It's easiest when the friends we share with have the same speed and vacation style as us. But even with the most compatible family, we've found that 3-4 days are usually enough. More than that it starts to wear you down. The kids have a lot of fun, but it's also a great deal of work for the parents. And this is just two families sharing a house. Add in more families and different personalities, whoever ends up holding the bag, be it cleaning up after everyone, or organizing activities and ensure supplies, will be resentful, while others complain that their preferences are not met.

In short, I would not do a multi family vacation under one roof.

I'm the main cook in my house, so a vacation for me includes NO cooking or cleaning. Beach houses are a hard no. Happy to meet up with everybody at a resort.

Anonymous wrote:I have gone where everyone gets their own space in say, an apartment building. But we would be in and out of each other’s apartment, cook and eat together, etc. Truly I loved it but I love my in-laws and the trips meant a lot to DH, cousins,

My suggestion would be to make sure you have space to retreat to if needed and everyone needs a good solid quiet place to sleep.

Separate units in an apartment building is the ticket. Then kitchen duties are manageable and very family can do things on their schedules but still have togetherness and do activities