One Vacation a Year

[TwistGrl101]

If you could only afford ONE vacation a year, would you go to WDW every year, or do it every other year with a different vacation in between?


We will be at the BC the 3rd time in a row this coming summer. And although I have researched and priced a ton of other destinations, we just feel that with the ages of our children (6,4,2), Disney is the best place to go.

Of course, I realllllly want to do an all-inclusive resort, or take smaller weekend trips, etc., I really don't know if I can take being away from WDW for 2 years

In the future, when we make more money, we do plan on taking two vacations a year, but right now money is tight and we are saving every last penny to afford vacation this summer.

I just feel like I'm missing out on other things and depriving my children by ONLY going to WDW!!!! But, those other places will still be around when they're older and we want to explore more, right?

 

[laliwalden]

I would stay at a cheaper hotel. Then you could do Disney plus other weekend trips.

Sorry- I didn't actually answer your question. We only do one "big" vacation a year and for now it is Disney. I think when DD is older we will start going to other places but for now Disney works well for us.

 

[arthur06]

We would probably mix it up with other destinations. I am very thankful that we can afford more then one trip per year, so we don't really have to choose.

We love Disney and go a few times a year. We also mix in a few other weekends or a close by trip that we can drive to. DW turns 30 on Saturday, so we are taking the kids to Wisconsin Dells (Wilderness Resort) for a weekend of swimming and fun.

 

[sk!mom]

If no place else interests you, then it's fine. Especially since all your children are young. You might do that for a few years and then, as they get older, skip Disney far a few years and explore the rest of the world.

I actually agree that there are few places as fun to travel with little ones as WDW. In a few years, however, there are ski trips, Hawaii, NYC, and so on.

 

[LoriKutchey]

When my daughter was younger we went 9 years in a row. Now we will combine a week at the beach (longboat key) and tag a few days of disney on.
Now when she hit late teens, we did Sedona, AZ and now in the spring we will be going to Hawaii, we are tagging on a few days at Aulani though.

 

[hsmamato2]

well, by vacations, do you mean anywhere at all? I can only afford one 'real' vacation per year....didn't know there were other options!
we do weekend camping trips,etc etc but one major one- we've gone to Disney almost yearly for 17 years......this is our first winter without plans for a Disney trip....but we're talking about heading back next fall or so.... We don't get bored there, we love the resorts,to us it feels inclusive.....
(last fall we took our 'big trip' of the year to California with a nice helping of Disneyland for dessert LOL) so my DH is coming to realize that anywhere we go we try to find Disney......

 

[hsmamato2]

oh..also over the years we've always added something unique to each trip, we spent time in Universal, some of the lovely state parks in FL, beaches,manatees,etc- so it wasn't just Disney we incorporated other interesting things also

 

[Sagginit]

well i only take one vacation a year. if i wasn't paying off student loans or making other financial moves i could easily go on two, but living it up on vaca while the interest builds is not my style. when i was younger we did WDW twice, williamsburg VA, hershey PA, and washington DC. DC was the only trip without a theme park. as an adult i decided i needed to go to adult only places while i can so after two years of WDW i went to AZ and vegas. i want to go back to disney but might do a shorter stint and combine it with somewhere else in florida. my brother actually refuses to go to disney with us, saying its for when they have kids, so i think you need to do what works for your family, even if it is WDW every single year.

 

[Marionnette]

If you could only afford ONE vacation a year, would you go to WDW every year, or do it every other year with a different vacation in between?


We will be at the BC the 3rd time in a row this coming summer. And although I have researched and priced a ton of other destinations, we just feel that with the ages of our children (6,4,2), Disney is the best place to go.

Of course, I realllllly want to do an all-inclusive resort, or take smaller weekend trips, etc., I really don't know if I can take being away from WDW for 2 years

In the future, when we make more money, we do plan on taking two vacations a year, but right now money is tight and we are saving every last penny to afford vacation this summer.

I just feel like I'm missing out on other things and depriving my children by ONLY going to WDW!!!! But, those other places will still be around when they're older and we want to explore more, right?

We had two vacation destinations when the children were little. Disney and the Jersey Shore. It was easier to vacation some place that we knew what to expect. So I can understand limiting your vacations to Disney right now.

We're fortunate to live in a location where school field trips included Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C. and N.Y.C. They're all within a day's drive RT. Lancaster, Hershey, and the Poconos were all weekend family trips. So real vacations were spent further away once they hit grade school (Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Atlanta, Nashville, the New York finger lake region, Boston and Boothbay Harbor. By the time they were teens, we had cruised several times and visited Europe twice.

Limiting your children's vacationing experience to a comfortable location while they're young is not going to harm them. Just remember to expand their experiences as their world grows.

 

[NYEmomma]

Oh man, I wish we could take one vacation a year. I would be thrilled!!! Right now we can only afford to do one every 3-4 years.

I dearly love Disney, but I think for *me* it would lose some of its magic of we went once a year or more often than that.

When the kids were really small, maybe I'd do it since it's so kid- and family-friendly and somewhere I know they'd love. But I really love traveling and want the kids to see the country and the world, so as they get older, we'd definitely start varying our vacation destinations.

 

[bjscheel]

We generally take one vacation, plus one week at family church camp. We have decided that WDW will be every other year. Some other places we have gone are Colorado Springs, Wisconsin Dells, and planning on Branson in June. After that maybe Yellowstone or somewhere on the Atlantic coast. The thing is DH likes WDW because he doesn't have to do any driving (he drives for a living), but DD13 and I have some other places we want to see. Every other year is a compromise.

2013 I want to do Disneyland and San Diego, which will require driving, so WDW might happen in 2014 so he gets his vacation from driving. So we may sort of have two Disney trips in a row, but they will be different.

 

[MichelleinMaine]

Probably sacrilege to say here, but I'm content with Disney every 3-4 years or so. There are just too many other places to go. We've taken our kids to a variety of places (Southern CA, Williamsburg, Hawaii, NYC, Philly, Colorado, Europe...) since they were small.

There's too much I want to see (and want them to see) to limit ourselves to Disney every year.

 

[disneybound31]

We have done WDW four times now- every other year...so in those in between years we have gone to the ocean (Tybee Island/Savannah, Ga), Mt. Rushmore (South Dakota), Washington, D.C., Discovery Cove (Florida), then we also do long weekend trips several times per year to anywhere we can drive to in 4-6 hours...i.e. The Creation Museum (KY), Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, Memphis to see Graceland...

Our kids are getting older- DS13 and DD10 so really only DD is interested in WDW anymore, so we will probably do a short mother/daughter Christmas trip after they get most of the work completed in Fantasyland- maybe the week before Xmas 2013?

So we get our Disney fix AND see other things in the world.

 

[englishteacha]

We can only afford to go on one vacation each year, and we go different places. Sometimes we camp, sometimes we go on a road trip (usually there are roller coasters involved), sometimes we fly to someplace like Disney or Universal. Even on a budget, Disney is kind of a pricey vacation for us, so we go every few years.

 

[chimilady]

Well this is our first time, and I can't see us going every year. Maybe every other, but every year? That doesn't seem very interesting. Where I live, I'm close to Hershey Park, Sesame Place and Dutch Wonderland, so I would do that in between to get my theme park on.

For now, I imagine it will be a blast, but I would love when they get older to take them to more interesting places, like the real England, or the real Germany, not just walking through Epcot. Now those will be expensive for us, but once they are in school and we're not paying double daycare every day, I imagine it will be much more affordable.

 

[marie1203]

Well we usually do two vacations a year and one is WDW. I find the value for what we get overall in WDW is the best. With that being said it really depends how you like to vacation. We are the people that have to go go go while we vacation. We also live 5 min from the beach so that is not vacation for us. We are not big fans of the snow even though in the past few years we have gone to NH and CO in winter but not for too long . We have gone outside of the country every other year and hoping that by then end of this year we will visit Peru/Ecuador and a cruise to Panama and some islands (the cruise is someone gift to us ). We have done WDW twice and even 3 times in one year. We love it we enjoy it and even though we travel to other places our "home" is in WDW. I know it sounds silly but we really don't get as exited for our other vacations. We are hoping we will do a 2 month trip to Europe in two years once I am done with college and dates can be more flexible.

 

[disykat]

We usually take one real vacation a year. Any other trips are weekend getaways or visits to family. Currently our plan is WDW every TEN years - shocker!- and DL in between if we visit Southern California. For us, WDW is a big deal since it's across the country.

Our vacations only involve air travel every couple of years - again due to expense. We have too many places we want to go to have the only place we ever fly to be WDW!

I consider myself able to travel more than the average person. That just happens to be way less than the average DISer. I know very few people IRL that are able to take an annual vacation in addition to traveling to visit family, weekend getaways nearby etc. I hope people realize that the DIS is not necessarily representative of the average person's vacation habits!

 

[elainesj]

For now, we're really into Disney. So I say it's whatever your family wants to do that year.

We went for our first trip in Oct 2010. Within a month, I had us booked for another trip in Jan 2011. A month or so ago, I booked us for Aug 2012.

I find DH and I are interested in different things every few years. Right now, while we are into Disney, we're going to keep going back as long as we are interested. I'm pretty sure we will be lifelong Disney lovers...but more than likely in a few years, we won't be going as frequently as we are right now.

I want to go to England one year - but haven't been able to fit it into our vacation schedule yet. Maybe 2014...but who knows?

 

[Colleen27]

I don't see anything wrong with Disney being the only destination when all the kids are young. We've got a big age gap between ours (14, 10, and 3) so we take non-Disney trips in addition to going to Disney every year or two and to be honest Disney and the beach are the only ones I really get to enjoy. Other destinations tend to be great for the older kids but I miss out on a lot by being on "baby duty" when she gets bored or simply can't handle activities that the older kids are interested in, we don't do as much nice dining out because the sort of restaurants we enjoy don't tend to be very welcoming to preschoolers, and the vacation as a whole is never quite as satisfying or relaxing as going to Disney.

Enjoy your Disney phase. Soon enough the kids will be older and interested in seeing more of the world, and you can branch out more then. In the meantime, I think a previous poster had a good idea - scale back to a less expensive resort (POR still sleeps 5) and use the savings to dip your toe into the non-Disney vacation waters for a weekend somewhere else.

 

[Claire&TheBoys]

For us, Disney is a fairly affordable vacation because we can drive a reasonable distance (6 hours) and we have been able to get good discounts being Florida residents and military. We can make it very affordable by only going for 3-4 nights instead of a whole week, but we do week-long trips every year or two. Like a pp said, we like to GO on vacation - we are not sit-by-the-beach people. Plus, we live in a beach community so vacationing at a beach holds zero attraction for us. We rarely drink alcohol, so all-inclusives with free-flowing booze are not appealing either. So, for us, Disney has perfectly fit our vacation plans for the past several years. Our almost-6-yr-old made his first trip at 18 months and has been 7 times.

As our kids are ageing, though, we are thinking of other vacations. We would like to take them to DC in a year or two, when our youngest will understand more about the history and significance of what he's seeing. Right now when he talks about going to DC, all he cares about is the Spy Museum he's seen on Disney Channel because Lightning McQueen was there last year. I took the kids to see family in Oregon in 2010 and we may do that again this year in 2012, foregoing a trip to Disney this year. In the future we'd like to take them West to see the Grand Canyon and other sights, but right now long-distance traveling is more headache than pleasure. When we do those vacations, I want to enjoy it. Right now, I wouldn't.