I have a bit of an OT question; but it relates to travel so I'm hoping this group of well seasoned expert travels can lend of levity to a discussion in our household. If too OT, I can delete it.
As with all of you, we are trying to find more and better ways to maximize travel opportunities. The last few years have been great and this group has really allowed us to take some trips we would never have without you. I'm planning more and more exotic trips all the time and finding ways to get there efficiently using points and tips from this thread. But.... we are debating sending DS12 to a private school for 7th grade next year and through high school. Our local schools are good, better than average, used to be top notch but falling over the last 10-15 years. The private school has some social and intangible values we are high on as well as being one of the top education programs. But, it's not cheap and it is a much more rigorous program study and homework wise.
Now the question: this year we took the kids DS12 and DD8 out of school for a week in January for a cruise. No problem, DS12 caught up after a few hours of homework. DD9 had nothing to catch up. Next year I'm concerned that may not be so easy. We have always traveled during school sessions due in large part to the much lower costs (lower crowds help too). Advice from those of you with older kids? At what age do you think it's too much to take kids out of school for travel? And, how hard (or easy) is it to utilize all these travel award points programs to travel during the peak seasons of summer, winter break, spring break? Looking at cruise prices and they are at least 50% more for those weeks. It dosn't help that Chase UR cannot be used for
DCL anymore - buggers.
Sorry again for OT.