Traveling is a family affair

April 14th, 2008 by Melissa - NWA WorldVacations

When it comes to family travel I know a thing or two about it. Although I don’t have my own kids, I do travel with my family of 7 many times each year. My family includes my parents, my brother’s family, 2 kids (8 and 11), and myself. We have all been traveling together for years. Even when the kids were young we would travel all over the world. My nephew reached Silver Elite status with Northwest Airlines at the age of 3 and my niece had her first trip to Bangkok at 6 months old. We have become experts on how to plan and organize succesful family vacations!

Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years that we find very valuable:

Don’t be afraid to split up.
My brother’s family loves Disney World. They would spend 24 hours a day there if they could. My parents on the other hand enjoy it, but not to the same extent as the rest of the family. When we visited Disney this past summer we took to the parks in shifts. We would all go to the park in the morning and around lunchtime my parents would leave. They took the car and did their own thing while we stayed at the park. We would meet at the hotel and have dinner together and then all headed back to the park at night. It was a great way to do something together, but also keep everyone happy.Keep activities age and time appropriate. When we travel overseas, my dad loves to take full-day tours to see the sights. We found out very quickly, these aren’t the best activities in which to include the kids. We have found that if we take half-day tours in the morning and do some exploring on our own in the afternoon, we have a much happier family. It’s all about keeping the balance.
A pool makes everything better.
No matter if we are in the fanciest hotel in the world or we are in a motel during a roadtrip, as long as there is a pool the kids are happy. They will sit through the craziest tours and activities just for the opportunity to go swimming later that day.
Don’t waste your money.
Think about what your family loves to do and spend your money on that. An example is when we were in the Riviera Maya this year and my niece and nephew wanted to go snorkeling. They had all their gear and spent the whole morning getting ready. We wanted to practice, so we went out to the beach at the hotel and started to look for the fish. There were fish everywhere and it was amazing. The only thing we didn’t realize is that my niece was scared of the fish and spent the whole time screaming underwater into her snorkel gear. We ended up snorkeling a total of 15 minutes. There was no need to spend money on a snorkeling trip when we were just as happy at the hotel beach swimming around.