going with another family, help

[sandyplayer]

Five years ago we planned a trip with cousins. My Husband and I have three kids and they have two. We stayed in different resorts and toured separately, meeting about 4 or 5 times for meals and a few hours of touring. It was perfect.

We are going next year and we asked them to join us again. We are doing a split WDW stay at BWI and Universal at HRH. I am worried about spending too much time with them.

The problem? We recently went away with them for 3nights and it became clear that we cannot tour together. I love them. Its not that. We just do things differently. I think we will lose out on so much, and end up standing around a lot if we do it together. Also, because they have two kids, it always leaves one of mine out when its time to sit next to another on a bus, at dinner, etc. For some reason, when my three are alone, the odd one out does not mind sitting with one of the parents, but when it is because their sibs get to sit with a cousin, there's a meltdown.

I also anticipate different ideas for what to see and do.

How do I bring this up? I don't want to come across as not wanting to see them, which is just untrue. I am hoping they feel the same.

 

[crisi]

Be honest and do what you did last time - meet up four or five times around meals - or pool time if you are staying at the same resort - or a waterpark.

 

[brymolmom]

Well...I'm a bit confused why you invited them if you were afraid of it being an issue...but that aside:

I think you just have to be honest and upfront. Specify exactly what amount of time you want to spend together. Maybe bring up the last visit and say how perfect it worked out with some family time and then some together time.

Make a full itinerary and sit down with the cousins with it....Talk about which parks, which restaurants, pool time and then try to map out meet-up times.

Also prepare your kids for the 'one left out' situation and just make sure you're taking turns there. They're a lot older now so I'm guessing that meltdowns won't be an issue this time around.

If it was me and I was invited by a cousin's family to go on a trip with them - i would expect quite a bit of together time. So definitely talk about it upfront or it is potential for causing a rift that will last a long while.

 

[sandyplayer]

When I invited them, it was more of a discussion about us going and them saying they wanted to go againa nd us saying of course. I assumed it would be the same way as last time, different hotels, different itineraries because we both agreed after last trip that it worked. When I told the, the resort I chose, they booked the same. I was nervous, but not very because we can still tour separately and stay in the same place. Bul being in the same resort may make it harder to do that.
Then when I told them we were doing HRH too, they booked that.

We were booked for WDW before we took this 3 night trip which really made me realize touring together was not possible. If we had done the trip first, our WDW/US trip discussion would have been different. I won't go into the things that happened, but I got the feeling during the trip that they might want to spend more time at WdW together, while I was having the exact opposite thought!

I guess I need to just be brave and bring it up.