New to ABD...need some info

[Minnie824]

DH & I started looking into trips for 2010, and are considering doing an ABD trip in the US. I just now started looking at the boards here, but it appears that trips being cancelled happens quite a lot? We're looking to go next summer sometime, with our DDs then aged 8 & 6. The Boston/NY one sounded good, but it appears that was cancelled. We're also considering the Hollywood/Disneyland, and the northern California. Has anyone done these with kids? Any tips for us? Thanks!

 

[sayhello]

DH & I started looking into trips for 2010, and are considering doing an ABD trip in the US. I just now started looking at the boards here, but it appears that trips being cancelled happens quite a lot? We're looking to go next summer sometime, with our DDs then aged 8 & 6. The Boston/NY one sounded good, but it appears that was cancelled. We're also considering the Hollywood/Disneyland, and the northern California. Has anyone done these with kids? Any tips for us? Thanks!

In the past, there have been a few cancellations, but this year, it appears they over-estimated the economy, and expanded the number of trips they offered at just the wrong time. So they went through a period of cancelling and consolidating departures. There haven't been a lot of cancellations reported since that large "purge". However, there have been a couple of new itineraries that were both cancelled before any trips took off, apparently due to a lack of interest. The Boston/NY trip this year, and a Northern California last year, which was re-vamped into the Yosemite/Northern California trip being offerred for the first time this year.

I haven't seen any reports yet for the new Northern California trip. The Signature trip has already happened, but the first of the "regular" trips is happening right now. You may need to wait a bit for a report on that one.

There have been several reports for the Hollywood/Disneyland trip, I'm sure somebody who has been on it will reply here.

Sayhello

 

[Phil1019]

Hi Minnie 824, I did the Hollywood/Disneyland Adventure April 2008. Although I did not have small children, two families did have a child as young as eight and teenagers 15, & 16 years old. They truly seemed to have enjoyed the trip! The guides also involved the small child by giving him his own camcorder to record all of us including hilarious interviews with us. I have not seen this trip cancelled since it is VERY popular!
This year was the first time that the Boston/ NYC trip was offered. I live just outside of Boston and thought that this trip seemed quite expensive. I have noticed that many families with children have done The Spirit of America trip. Please know that your adventure guides work their hardest to involve EVERYONE on the trip. I even had a 80 yr. old Grandmother on my trip and she did great! Any ABD trip is an adventure of a lifetime. You get to do so many things that you probably could not do on your own.

 

[kristilew]

Minnie, and ABD rep was on my Southwest Splendors trip this June. She confided that Disney had taken extreme steps to avoid the cancellation issues for the 2010 season. I would expect to see far fewer inital offerings when the new trips come out in August.

ABD does reserve the right to cancel a trip if they don't meet their miniums by a certain time, or for other reasons, but I think they are going to try not to have to do that as much next year.

Backstage Magic did have some cancellations the first time it ran, but I think is doing better. There was a grandmother/grandson pair on our SWS that had done BSM last year and loved it. Grandson was 8 at the time.