When our kids were little we tried this with too many other families and tried too hard to over schedule and plan to all do everything together. It was a nightmare and we actually ended up leaving early.

Since then we've stuck to only 2 families we'll travel with and we all fully understand that each family can do whatever they want. If we both want to go do the same thing, great! Let's all go. But if your kids want to go do something and my kids don't, we'll see you when you get back to the house. We will try to plan one or two meals together but even then it's something easy like spaghetti or ordering pizzas, but overscheduling is a recipe for disaster.

We'll happily meet up at a resort where we don't have to share living space or meal responsibilities. Happy to do activities both together and separate.

No shared houses. Hard pass. I don't want to work around anybody else's sleep schedules or food rules/preferences on my vacation.

I love vacationing with friends and family.

Anonymous wrote:We vacation every year with friends: 4-5 other families who we like* and our 10-12 kids (despite an 8 year spread) get along really well. We started doing it when the kids were young—everyone pitches in and there are no raging drunks among us. The wives are close friends. The husbands are friends because of us, but are friendly enough to do guys’ nights without us at other times during the year.

It helps that we are all fun and have similar parenting styles. We co-parent all the kids that week: If someone is being a little a$$hole we just correct them and move along. (No divorce for us…we’re just extroverts.)

*One couple got divorced and we couldn’t be more thrilled about not seeing him this summer.

I travel successfully with other families and think that this is key to making it work for us. The families that I don't travel well with have different parenting philosophies which makes it harder.