A friend is wanting to tag-along on our trip

[deekaypee]

My advice: don't do it. It's very hard to find people to vacation with that have similar styles to yours, especially at WDW. It could totally ruin your vacation. My vacations are very important to me (I only have a couple of weeks a year to call my own), so I would hate to have someone else there that might cause me stress.

If you are worried about hurting her feelings, you might say something like, "If you're planning to be there at the same time, maybe we could meet for dinner on _______." That sets up the expectation that they will be on their own vacation, and you can meet up when you want. If she presses the issue, say "We are really looking forward to spending this vacation alone as a family, but would be happy to meet you for dinner one night."

Here, Here! A good solution. I often do this with conferences, when people start to try and arrange shared hotel rooms and social plans. It works out great!

 

[jsmla]

I appreciate what you're saying. We've travelled with the lady before any of us had children. We enjoyed those vacations and therefore think it could be fun - in concept - to vacation with her again. I just wanted to hear success stories so that I could pattern them. And I wanted to hear the horror stories to be entertained and to not pattern them!

I have a success story to share! One of my girlfriends and I took a total of seven kids to Ft. Wilderness in July! Seven kids ages 12-4 in one camping trailer and a tent. Both of our husbands thought it would be a disaster and refused to have anything to do with the trip. Well, we had a blast! What made it work was that everyone was willing to be flexible. Some of the group wanted to go, go, go while some were more relaxed. At some point every day I usually took the younger ones back to the campground to nap and swim while DGF stayed on with the older crew. DGF's family likes to eat out at the CS places a lot, my family (make that me, the big, tight, veggie pushing meanie) usuallly brings in snack lunches or eats back at the campground. On this trip we ate CS more than I would have liked and less often than DGF would have preferred but no one really minded because we had so much fun just being at Disney together! I think it's when people have this "it's my way or the highway" attitude and can't compromise that trouble starts. DGF gave up riding Space Mt. over and over and over, I gave up dorking around in the World Showcase. Maybe if this had been our only trip to WDW we would have felt differently but the the companionship and togetherness we experienced far outweighed any inconveniences we may have encountered along the way. JMHO

 

[Daydreamer64]

Been there =done that too many times! What I say is: "Great we will be there at the same time. We'll be glad to meet you all there. Lets make plans to meet for supper".... I had one family swear "We'll do everything that you want us to do, we just want you to be our tour guides"

I don't think so - I gave them "our" plans and said that we were following this plan and we'd be happy to let them follow us if they wanted to be on our schedule BUT- since we have a special needs child, our plans are apt to change and that we would be on time or early for all park openings or may need to rest or go back to the resort with no notice before hand ect... They were with us about 5 hours - our day started at 5:30 am -until they decided that they wanted to strike out on their own. They left 2 days early, we thought that we must have done "something" and upset them because we did indeed follow "our plan for our vacation" too bad - they were the ones who invited themselves - found out later that the parents were filing for divorce and they were trying to "save" the family with vacation?? I'm glad that they didn't bring us down.