Planning Your Family Vacation

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By Polly | June 10, 2008

Families with purpose are families who dream together and work together to make their dreams and goals a reality.

I spent hours and hours planning our family vacation to Disney world. I read the right books, visited and subscribed to all the popular websites, made reservations in advance, and when all of it was done I had detailed plans day by day of how we would spend our days at Disney World. My carefully crafted plans minimized wait times, allowed for rest times in the afternoon, and had us blissfully enjoying our 7 day stay at a comfortable pace. Though my plans were extremely thorough they didn’t take into account my husband’s theme park strategies. Strategies he had developed over the years of standing in long lines and having limited funds. A strategy that was a combination of engineering ingenuity and a Superman like pace that no human (including me and the girls) could keep up with. Don’t get me wrong, his strategy had some great points and if we had talked about his strategies BEFORE the trip and BEFORE I had spent hours and hours of planning things would have gone a lot smoother.

Avoiding arguments is just one reason why it is helpful for families to spend some time prior to their family vacations planning them together rather than leaving the planning up to the parents or in our case just one parent. Planning family vacations together makes kids feel involved, gives them a voice, and teaches them how to plan. Planning family vacations together also helps build cohesiveness and closeness in a family by allowing families to share excitement and a sense of fulfillment after the vacation is over and all has gone well.

So to get your family vacation off to a great start this summer try these family planning suggestions:

To get things rolling, start by scheduling a couple of times on your family calendar or in your planner when you and the family can sit down together to discuss the vacation. The bigger and longer the trip the more time you will need. Also, take into account the ages of your kids. A general rule of thumb is the younger the kids the shorter the meeting. It is better to hold several short family meetings rather than a couple longs one if your children are young. Make sure everyone knows about the family meetings.

If married, talk with your spouse beforehand about any specific parental decisions that need to be made. Things like budget, activities that are off limits, sleeping arrangements, and means of transportation (car or plane). Parents should be united before the meeting on the big things so that it doesn’t distract from the other decisions that the kids can help make.

If your children are small (ages 3-7), print off pictures or have brochures handy to show them what the vacation spot will look like and what their choices of activities will be. Don’t overwhelm them with a lot of choices. Pick some of the more interesting ones, and let them choose a few. If your children are older (ages 8 and up) get them involved by asking them to do some research on the computer before the meeting. Let them look up possible activities and outings and interesting places to stay and have them come prepared to the family meeting with their findings.

Negotiate the differences of opinions by taking votes and possibly splitting into two separate groups for a while. For example if your son absolutely loves alligators, but your daughter would prefer to skip them, make plans for one parent to take your son to see the alligator exhibit and another parent to either stay behind with your daughter or to do something she enjoys. Just be careful to not let your FAMILY vacation become a fragmented vacation. It is okay to split up for some things, but try and make sure that the majority of the vacation is spent together. Another option is to just compromise and spend time at exhibits and activities that everyone enjoys.

If your children are old enough, give them responsibility to pack their things by giving them their own travel packing checklist. If they can’t read yet, but are anxious to pack their things, make them their own packing list using pictures rather than words.

Use your family journal to help keep notes of your discussions and decisions. Put one of the older children in charge of keeping the notes.

If you feel comfortable telling them, share the vacation budget with the kids and let them help you keep track of how much everything is going to cost. This is a great way of teaching the kids the value of money and how to budget.

Let the kids help plan the travel games or car activities and get them packed for the trip. Using a DVD player to help pass the time? Let the kids each choose a couple of movies and give them responsibility for getting them packed.

Once all the plans have been finalized, ask one of the kids to update your travel organizer with the itinerary and important contact information. While on vacation, let the kids get involved by entering in the vacation expenses.

Lastly, document your memories. Give each of your kids a disposable camera and let them take pictures and write about their vacation in either your family journal or a travel journal.

Though our family vacation to Disney World was a great time and is the source of some wonderful memories for all of us, it did result in some stress along the way; stress and arguments that could have been avoided if we had just taken some time to plan the vacation together rather than separately. So give yourself and your family the gift of a wonderfully pleasant vacation by planning it together!

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