Your Favorite Family Vacation

Our three top vacations are:

Disney World with a side trip to Vero Beach
Disneyland with a side trip to Legoland and Knott's Berry Farm
and
Kauai.

Why? Can not go wrong with Disney for our family. The whole family is happy including the parents. As the adults, we like the resorts and the fine dining (we also still like most of the rides :) ) We have been to Disney World three times starting when my two boys were about your kids' age and have been to Disneyland a countless times; the trip mentioned above was the most recent.

We finally took a leap and went to Hawaii. Turned out to be a great trip too. We went to Kauai and that was a great island for us because it allowed us to explore it at our own pace. It was extremely beautiful and some of the beaches were great for the whole family. We also did some hiking with the whole family and that was fun.

Where ever you go you will have fun if you take your time and do your homework in advance. Also, taking in account what your children's needs are will help you decide where to go. For instance, if they are not good restaurant sitters; getting a condo with a kitchen is important.

Have fun and good luck!

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For the past 2 years we have taken our kids to Virginia beach. There is a hotel there on the bay side that we have come to really like, and the water is calm for little ones (and it is shallow for a long way out too!). If you want the big waves, it's a straight shot less then 10 minutes to the main beach. Our kids were 6 and 3 when we went this year. It's not a big ta-do, just a nice relaxing time at the beach, which is why we love it :)

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Our favorite would be the 2 trips to Hawaii and whale watcing trips.

When daughter was 2 we started the DisneyWorld thing and did it every 2 yrs until she was 14. We always loved Disney and our hotel of choice was always the Polynesian. We never stayed anywhere else. Worth the $$

For the last 5 yrs or so, we go to SanDestin, FL and stay at the Hilton Golf Resort and Spa. LOVE that place.

Personal vacation..... I LOVE South Beach in Miami, however, it is not appropriate for children at all.

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My favorite family vacation is anywhere outside of the United States. Somewhere totally different, with different cultures. I think it helps children learn more about other people, their language and their culture.

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our favorite vacations are our mini vacations. Ok, If i ask my kids, they will say it's our disney trips they love the most. But my husband and I don't share the same feelings. Disney is very exhausting, and not just the material aspect of it. When you know you're paying a kidney and an arm for it you get that feeling of trying to get the most out of it, which is exhausting.
We do an annual trip, for a week, to our home in Florida. We stay at our house and do things around town, beach, outings, parks, sightseeing. Yet we come home every night and chill. That is our favorite vacation. We're all relaxed and happy.
We also love our hershey park/dutch wonderland annual trip. We do that right after school's out for a few days. We find these two parks smaller, not as exhausting, and more fun for kids (compared to disney). Our kids love going to these parks.
Then we do a winter getaway to a cabin somewhere. Sometimes in PA, this year in MA. We do snowtubbing, skiing, hot chocolate by the fireplace at the end of the day. Dining out etc. This one causes me stress (i do not like snow, getting wet, frozen fingers and toes) but seeing the kids with red cheeks, screaming their heads off takes my mind of my frozen discomfort.
We also go to Europe once a year to visit family. While there we visit 1 neighboring country. My husband finds that fascinating. He loves it. My kids love it too, and i get to eat my mama's homecooked meals. Can't complain about this one either.
I am really wanting to add a tropical vacation to our annual thing. I don't think we can afford it anytime soon but that is what I want. The tropical vacation is solely for me. I would like to rest my bones on a beach, in an all inclusive hotel for 1 week.

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My favorite vacations are camping with my kids. Packing up for the weekend and getting away from EVERYTHING!! My boys remember and talk about our camping trips more than they do the Disney trips we have been on.

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we had a lot of family vacations. we went one year to memphis tennessee. we stayed in a hotel and did some site seeing. the mountains in tennessee are really pretty. we went to the peabody hotel to see the ducks go up to the roof. we went to biel street to hear some blues music, there is a gold pyramid in memphis. another year we went to mammoth cave in kentucky. in indiana there is a corvette museum, in illinois there is a neat little town called galena. total tourist trap but for a day or two its fun. in georgia there is a coca cola museum. I am a big fan of museums lol. we always have a destination place to be heading towards but each kid always got to pick a bill board thing and we would go. thats how we found the corvette museum, somewhere in southern indiana we went to one of the coolest children's hands on museums I have ever seen. we saw it on a billboard and drove probably 5o miles out of the way but it was well worth it.

Lancaster Pa is fun for little kids, steam train rides, Christmas Center, buggy rides, farms etc

Our favorite family vacations are the ones where we rent a house right on the beach! Any beach...as long as there is real sand-not that rocky stuff we have here in WA!

We usually try to stay a whole week...we all have so much fun and it really is relaxing sunbathing with a book! The kids can spend hours in the sand or surf and so can I!

Renting a house with a kitchen is a plus because you can grocery shop and make your favorites and have food on hand when ever you want to snack...and we always end it with a HUGE crab feast! YUM! Can't wait till next summer...

Camping is cool too though!

when my son was six we flew to florida and went to universal and disneyland. then we rode the train home to california. we missed our train in chicago (went to see the sears tower and didnt make it back in time) and ended up spending two days in chicago waiting for the next train. had real chicago deep dish pizza! we had a sleeper room on the train which worked for our very active boy so he wasnt driving other passengers crazy. he loved the nets that keep you from rolling out of bed! we also had a nice long break in washington d.c. and got to go see alot of the monuments, etc. it was the best trip ever!

We haven't taken a "real" vacation yet--but we have gone on lots of little short trips or 2/3 day weekend trips as a family. We really enjoyed going to the zoo in Fresno---they LOVED it and also Storyland. As far as my hubby and I, we went to Hawaii for our honeymoon and that was fabulous too! I am the type that loves being together as a family-so I don't really care what we do, I just like to be together.

M

My favorite family vacation was just last year in 2009. And my kids were 15 and 19 at the time! The short version is that we were flying to Atlanta for a day or two before a big family, (20 members of extended family) vacation in West Virginia. Our flight got cancelled. So we're sitting in an airport restaurant trying to figure out what we're going to do and my husband says "Let's just drive to West Virginia."

So we go and get the car out of parking (it's been there a whole sum of 3-4 hours) stop by Walmart and buy a cheapy portable DVD player, double head-phones, a couple of pillows a few snacks and head out! We stopped somewhere 1/2 way to sleep then got up to head on in to our destination.

But what it so much fun, as a mom, is that because our family is either here or so far away, we really had only taken a driving vacation on a rare occasion. And because the kids were older teenagers, we had so much fun. The interaction between the kids still cracks me up. At one point they were having a spirited discussion about which movie was better, Jurassic Park or Dark Knight. . . . "Jurassic Park totally kicks a**! I'd like to see Batman take on a T-Rex!"
Another time, my daughter (the 15 year old) said she was bored, I told her to draw me a picture, "What am I, 3?" And she drew me a picture entitled "What am I, 3?"
And then one of them wanted to stop or detour to see something and I made some kind of comment about we couldn't because it would throw off daddy's schedule. "We are doing this on a whim, since when did we have a schedule?"

As a mommy, it is so heartwarming to see that even as the kids get older, they can and do get along and actually like each other and have fun!