Would you rather?

[FairestOfThemAll37]

Would you rather vacation more often on the cheap or less often with more luxury?

I'm curious as this being the budget board I see lots of posts about bringing food from home and cooking all meals on vacation.

This to me is not a vacation. I don't want to have to cook on vacation. I don't even want to cook in regular life lol. I am in the camp of traveling less often but spending more on luxury.

Obviously luxury travel and frequent travel means different things to different people, but relatively speaking which travel philosophy do you subscribe to?

 

[sonnyjane]

Would you rather vacation more often on the cheap or less often with more luxury? I'm curious as this being the budget board I see lots of posts about bringing food from home and cooking all meals on vacation. This to me is not a vacation. I don't want to have to cook on vacation. I don't even want to cook in regular life lol. I am in the camp of traveling less often but spending more on luxury. Obviously luxury travel and frequent travel means different things to different people, but relatively speaking which travel philosophy to subscribe to?

I'll throw a wrench in and say I like middle ground! I agree with you that cooking my own food is not vacation to me, but I also am happy staying at the Hyatt instead of the St. Regis. I like to do a couple of mid-range trips a year.

 

[dpswift]

We like to go budget however only once on vacation did I cook.

We book inside rooms on cruises and at Disney stay at a value hotel. We usually do both CS and TS meals at Disney as well.

 

[momto3gr8boys]

It depends on the trip for me. At Disney we mostly stay Deluxe, but I'm happy to stay moderate if the budget calls for it. I will do breakfast in the room, but won't cook. I cook from scratch six nights a week at home - on vacation I prefer to eat out.

Cruising, I need a balcony. I've done inside and porthole cabins and have come to the realization that the balcony is worth it in the "can we afford this trip right now" debate.

General travel - I'm happy mid-range - Marriott or Hyatt level is fine by me.

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

 

[StitchandPooh'sMom]

I'll throw a wrench in and say I like middle ground! I agree with you that cooking my own food is not vacation to me, but I also am happy staying at the Hyatt instead of the St. Regis. I like to do a couple of mid-range trips a year.

I like to stay at nice places, but they don't have to be the very nicest. We will get two connecting balconies on a cruise, but we haven't ever gotten a suite. At Disney, we usually stay deluxe but only rarely stay Club Level. We eat breakfast in the room most days, but we eat out for other meals and order what we want.

 

[PurpleMouse]

We enjoy cooking on vacation. On longer trips we get tired of eating out every meal and prefer several quiet dinners at home. And we all hate having to get up and go get breakfast or wait for room service every day.

That said, we prefer less frequent, more indulgent trips. With cooking.

 

[Burnedout]

We do both. So a vote for the happy medium. I hate earring out all of the time. Unless it is good food I'd rather make my own for some meals.

Our happy medium when we do t have all of is is a studio at the akl. Breakfast eggs, or a bit of oats are our usual. Lunches in the parks, and dinner wherever. Sometimes a salad from goodings, ts in the park, a light dinner at the lodge, or dinner outside the park. Depends.

 

[wallawallakids]

Luxury on vacation and travel less.

We go away around every other year and save up like mad to do so & when I do get to go, I want it to be nice. I agree OP, I don't want to cook on vacation. I cook every single day at home, breakfast/lunch/dinner. I like the week off every other year. We never eat out at home either, so going on vacation and eating out is a huge deal for DH and the kids. It might be his favorite part of a vacation. I also like nice beds and service. I have stayed in plenty of Residence Inns in my life and they are fine and I will stay in them again, but if I can swing a nicer hotel, I will go for it.

 

[Marionnette]

Would you rather vacation more often on the cheap or less often with more luxury?

I'm curious as this being the budget board I see lots of posts about bringing food from home and cooking all meals on vacation.

This to me is not a vacation. I don't want to have to cook on vacation. I don't even want to cook in regular life lol. I am in the camp of traveling less often but spending more on luxury.

Obviously luxury travel and frequent travel means different things to different people, but relatively speaking which travel philosophy do you subscribe to?

Of course you're going to see a lot of posts about bringing food from home and cooking meals while you're on vacation when you're reading the Budget Board! What else would you expect when people ask how they can make their vacation more affordable? If you went to the Restaurants Board, you would get an entirely different vibe about food and the Resorts Board would provide you with a skewed view of staying onsite.

For me, it all depends on the nature of the vacation. If I'm staying in a regular hotel room, I'm not going to boil spaghetti in the coffeemaker or use the iron to make grilled cheese sandwiches. I'm going to dine out for most meals. However, I'm not above having breakfast items in the room for a quick energy source before we head out the door in the morning. If we're staying in a condo at the beach, I cook. I happen to enjoy cooking, so I don't mind. However, I refuse to make beds or scrub bathrooms. The escape from the drudgery of housekeeping is a vacation for me!

 

[Happyjen27]

I'm a little bit of both. I love to do little getaways which are a little more thrifty, like NYC where we didn't eat anywhere super posh to keep costs down. Or, we will bring our own wine and soda on a cruise ship. (The $15 per bottle fee for the nice wines we bring is still cheaper than buying it tableside)

I also like to enjoy a higher priced vacation, and try really hard to get one of these a year. The vacation where I don't think about the cost of a single thing.

Even on my "I don't care about money" vacation I bring my own snacks and maybe breakfast food, not because I'm being thrifty, but because of my health. My belly gets very angry at a lot of eating in restaurants. I also don't want to have a lot of weight gain, even the healthiest meal out to eat is usually more calories than a similar meal at home. So, making my own food is not always about saving a buck, it's about health.

I also love to cook though, and love to cook for my loved ones, so when we rent a beach house, I don't mind being in the kitchen with the music going and a glass of wine in my hand and some chatter from my extended family, or my girlfriends on girlfriends weekends, that's my happy place!

 

[Gumbo4x4]

Cooking or not depends on where we're going. Last Summer we did a road trip & it's just not real conducive to cooking. So, we ate out most meals (donuts in the room for breakfast). At Disney, we stay offsite & cook a little, but it's hard to pull that off when you're in the parks at mealtime. No problem bringing in Subway sandwiches though. At the beach or lake, we cook quite a bit. Nobody even wants to get dressed

Accommodations don't need to be fancy. We will pay a premium for location. If it's a beach trip, we have to be ON the beach. And a place with lots of activities is worth some extra $.

We do like to go yearly for a "real" vacation & maybe some weekend getaways thrown in. And we will gladly pinch pennies to make it happen. I would not skip this year so next year can be grand.

 

[DonaldnDaisy5]

I don't think I need a luxury vacation but I don't want to plan and cook meals during a vacation, that is my daily life.

My dh's family has a cabin and when we go there my mil and I are lucky enough to be the planners and cooks oh and clean up crew...and then they wonder why I don't want to go spend a week there....

 

[threecrazykids]

I don't think I need a luxury vacation but I don't want to plan and cook meals during a vacation, that is my daily life.

My dh's family has a cabin and when we go there my mil and I are lucky enough to be the planners and cooks oh and clean up crew...and then they wonder why I don't want to go spend a week there....

I completely understand your pain...although I didn't have a MIL with me. It was just my family.

We had gone to the same summer cabin in northern MN 5 times in around 7 years. The last time we went I'd finally put my foot down. I told my family (really, my DH) before we left that it was my vacation too and me doing all the meal planning, shopping, cooking, and clean up was no more fun at the cabin than it was at home - it was a matter of logistics.

Somehow I think because they know how much I love to cook, they thought it didn't bother me. I actually didn't mind the cooking as much as the clean up. At home, my kids always help clean up - but somehow on vacation they seem to not want to have to do those chores...huh, what a concept...ME EITHER!!

Just having them recognize that I too was on vacation, made them all pitch in and it was a much happier week for me.

 

[Eureka]

Would you rather vacation more often on the cheap or less often with more luxury?

I'm curious as this being the budget board I see lots of posts about bringing food from home and cooking all meals on vacation.

This to me is not a vacation. I don't want to have to cook on vacation. I don't even want to cook in regular life lol. I am in the camp of traveling less often but spending more on luxury.

Obviously luxury travel and frequent travel means different things to different people, but relatively speaking which travel philosophy do you subscribe to?

I am with you. Cooking all week is not a vacation.

The only time I don't mind cooking on vacation is when we go to the beach and stay in a house for a week. We make our own breakfasts and lunches *most* days and share cooking dinners with the friends we go with, but also probably eat out 3 dinners and probably 1 each breakfast and lunch. So, really, not cooking the entire week, but saving money on eating meals out just means more money for ice cream!

When we go to Disney, we have breakfast items in the room (granola bars, dry cereal) but also supplement from the food court (we stay value) when needed/wanted. I've only eaten one breakfast at a TS at Disney, it was last summer at Kona Cafe and it was fabulous. But the rest of my family would rather skip a big breakfast and tour more.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

I have no desire to cook on vacation either and I won't stay in a questionable hotel either.
We usually do one "vacation" per year and that is Wdw or DcL for 8-10 days. On that trip I go all out. We stay deluxe, fly, eat out all meals, etc.

For the rest of the year we have several "trips" that I wouldn't call a vacation. We use Hilton points that DH gets for traveling for work, so that is a nice trade off for his time away during the week. We use those for places like the beach or mountains, etc. these trips are generally 2-4 nights. For these trips we get free breakfast at the hotel, bring along snacks, drinks, and premade sandwiches for lunch. We only eat out for dinner. That's my idea of roughing it.
Other trips annually are to see family in MI and SC. We usually fly on SW points there as well, but now that the kids are older we might start driving. Those trips are practically free other than getting to the destination.

As you can see, I save my vacation dollars for Disney and the other trips we do out of our normal monthly budget.

 

[katie111]

I prefer the middle ground. I don't mind saying in a value resort & eating breakfast in our room. But I have to do at least one table service meal a day.

For non-disney trips, I like to stay in the nicest hotel we can afford but I have no problem staying the lowest category room. You get all the same amenities as anyone else staying there but you just might not have the best view. We never spend much time in our room so that doesn't bother us at all. I don't pay for suites, club level, etc. As long as there are 2 queen beds, we always manage to make it work for our family of 5 (luckily my kids are tiny for their age).

I also spend a LOT of time planning our vacations (my DH jokes that it is my full time job). People often cannot believe the deals I have found on hotels, airfare etc. We vacation a lot but our vacation budget is usually much less than our friends that only vacation once every year or two.

 

[kirstenb1]

As others have said, I don't equate not cooking with luxury. We're DVC'rs and stay in a 2 br villa at WDW. I find it much healthier and less stressful to cook a quick easy meal, then trying to go out with the family.

 

[Claire&TheBoys]

We're more middle-ground-ers, too. I can't imagine only getting away every other year. We need a shake-up from the regular routine more often than that, so we're happy to be moderate in our vacation choices. My kids have only flown one time, that was to see my brother's family in Oregon, and the flights were the most expensive part of the vacation - we stayed with them and did eat a lot of meals in. We drive to vacation spots to keep costs down (Disney World is only 6 hours away) and stay at mid-range hotels like Hampton Inn, Country Inn & Suites, Holiday Inn Express - somewhere with a decent breakfast. We typically eat fast food for lunch and at a chain restaurant for dinner. When we go to Disney, we usually stay at a Moderate, take breakfast items for in the room, then eat a mixture of CS and TS meals.

We're hoping to go to DC next year and will fly, but my cousins offered us their house just outside DC in Virginia (they only live 6 months of the year there and said they'd arrange to be at their vacation home so we can have their house). For that trip, I expect to cook breakfast every morning and some dinners to save on costs.

 

[eliza61]

I'm am so a luxury gal. For me these are my top reasons...

1) during my real life I'm a budget gal so for 48-50 weeks out of the year I'm thinking about cost. My vacations are my escape from reality so I splurge.

2) I know this sounds bad but as far as hotels go, I don't want to travel worst than I live at home. For me a hotel is more than a place to shower and sleep so I want to be at least as comfortable as I am at home.

3) I can do "staycations". I do know a lot of people who can't "stay-cation", I can. I love my region of the country, so much to do that If I'm on a non travelling budget I can usually have really nice weekends close to my home, pretty cheaply.

4) now cooking for me is a no-no. I love cooking but what I find is that in my family, often the person who does the cooking rarely sits down and enjoys the meal and then there is the clean up. I cook for my "men-folk", they're all sitting down enjoying the meal while I;m the one up checking food, turning stuff off and wiping down. uh, I think not. When we stay at a villa we do pick up cereal, entemmans, eggo waffles etc etc but the only thing I'm putting heat to is the water in the tea kettle to make some tea.
LOL I use to joke with my dh that, that was why God made the Broadwalk bakery.

We tried to do values 1 time and both dh and I said, we'll stay home and save up if the values were all our budget could handle.

 

[dennise]

I am middle road, I like to go for 10-12 days each year. Being a 36 hour drive, we have to fly, which is the biggest expense for us. I don't cook or make beds on vacation. I like to have a fridge and microwave for leftovers. We don't mind staying at Springhill Susite type accommodations, our requirement is clean and in a safe area. We do splurge when we go to the beach, beachfront hotels are always a premium price. We usually only do one Disney park per trip as we have other interests. We do a few 3-4 day trips a year.