Whether a vacation for your family means packing up the car and driving across the country, pitching a tent and camping out in a state park for a long weekend, or spending a week at a theme park resort - those family vacations are probably among your favorite family events of the year, and have created the fondest your of memories.
For the first few years after our son was born, my wife and I didn’t even entertain the notion of taking a family vacation. Not only was he a real handful during those first few years, but we also saw our level of discretionary income drop to about, oh, 10,ooo dollars a year or so. Family vacations, though, are memorable parts of our childhoods, so we wanted to find an affordable option that would allow me, my wife and son to have fun together as a family.
Orlando Family Vacations
When my wife and I started talking about family vacations, the first place we thought of was Orlando. It’s tough to beat Orlando. It has Disney World after all! The more we looked into it, the more we found that Orlando had a lot more to offer than just Disney World. Water parks, amusement parks, affordable hotels, beaches, and terrific dining opportunities caught our eyes quickly.
Perhaps the biggest attraction for us, though, was Cirque du Soleil. I’d seen them a few years before in Las Vegas, and my wife really wanted to check it out. Our son was just turning five, and we thought that the strange combination of music, theatrics, and circus tricks would bowl him over.
Southern California Family Vacations
We wanted to make sure that we chose a great vacation, so we continued to look into other opportunities. We found that Southern California has a number of family vacation attractions. It’s a little far from home for us, and would require a plane flight, but that wasn’t a big deal because my wife has some family in San Diego. We figured we could make up for the cost of air travel by bunking with them for a night or two.
Now that we had decided to take a family vacation for sure, we got our son involved in the conversation. He quickly learned about Legoland from a friend of his. Our son is obsessed with Legos, and he insisted that this was the right place for our first of many family vacations. We also decided that Southern California has many similar attractions as Florida, such as Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood.
Choosing Family Vacations
As I talked about family vacations to the other young parents at work and in my circle of friends, they offered their own advice. Some of the top pieces of advice that added to our family’s vacation success include
- Choose a place that you and the kids want to visit.
- Choose a place that you can afford. You don’t want to find yourself stranded without any money when something unexpected happens.
- Budget your vacation: decide how much you’re going to spend each day, and stick to it.
- Take lots of photos.
We ended up choosing Southern California because it fit into these parameters best. My wife’s family had plenty of extra room for us, so we really saved a lot of money, and we got to visit places that interested everyone in the family. The only unexpected expense: I had to purchase a new external hard drive to hold all of the pictures we took!
