This past June, we had a trip that I would want to do over, or at least figure out how to do things better. In order to understand the situation, I will describe the cast of characters. We are a family of 3, with a 15 yo son, and we live in Indiana. We were staying at a 1BR villa at Kidani. My husband's cousins live in Tampa. His cousin is 66, retired, and has health issues that make it difficult for him to walk. His wife is 62, and in average health for a woman that age; generally keeps up pretty well physically, but is a bit nervous. Their adult children are a daughter aged 35, and a son aged 32. The daugher has an autistic son aged 12, and the son has a wife the same age, and a daughter who is about 4.
Usually, when we go to Disney, which is normally at least once or twice a year, we take a day out of our vacation to visit the family in Tampa. When we go, we visit them, take them out to dinner in the Tampa area, don't usually go anywhere special. Sometimes, they come over to Orlando, and we do the same type of thing. This time, though, was different. This time the daughter arranged to dove tail her cruise vacation with our vacation. The daughter, her son, the cousin and his wife were all on the cruise, and they planned to go Disney when they got back to Orlando. The son decided to join us there, too. So, we got to experience Hollywood Studios with an autistic 12 year old who enjoyed Rock N Roller coaster so much that he wanted to do it again,and again...That evening, the son came over from Tampa, and we all had frozen pizza and vegetables and dip in our room, which is a crowd in a 1BR villa. The 12 year old autistic child decided he liked our bed better than than the sofa in the living room area, and needed to be redirected an number of times. The 4 year old daughter of the son had been sick with vomiting the day before, but, came any way. There weren't enough places for people to sit, but, that was OK, because I was running constantly to be sure everybody had enough to eat. Then, finally, those who needed to go back to Tampa because they had to go back to work the next day left. So, our little family was left to enjoy the rest of our vacation as a family.
Until 3 am, when my husband awakened me with his vomiting. He and my son had caught the vomiting disease (or else, they had caught food poisoning). I had made reservations for us to attend the Spirit of Aloha Show in December for that evening. We went, anyway, because they were over the worst of the illness. I had unwisely also paid for the meal plan. I am glad the guys caught the vomiting disease the second to last day of our trip and not the first day. But, we left counter service meals unused.
And, then we went home. Basically, I feel like my entire vacation was ruined, although others with me may not share that opinion. Definitely, I felt like I needed a vacation from my vacation.