Family Vacations vs. 2020
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How has COVID changed your family vacation plans for 2020, either for this summer or beyond? I’ve heard of friends doing a few different things, so let’s discuss…
Some friends of mine in the Midwest are sticking to their Hilton Head plans, but driving there instead of flying — 13 hours…
Some friends who usually travel internationally for weeks at a time decided to go camping an hour or so away…
I had total Vacation Envy watching a new friend’s Facebook feed as she chronicled her family’s drive up and down the Pacific Coast, going hiking, kayaking, and more with her small kids and husband, driving hundreds of miles each day…
For us, the big Disney trip we’d planned for April was originally rescheduled for October, but at this point is totally off, money refunded and everything. Maybe 2021? We’ll see…
In fact, even our grandparent visits have been shifted this summer — both sets of grandparents are high risk, and driving for 4–9 hours just doesn’t seem appealing to anyone… We’ve talked about getting an Airbnb somewhere in the middle, but ultimately I think we’re all just comfortable in our own spaces and with our own germs. (But then my family is definitely on the more stringent side of #stayhome since we’re all high risk in different ways.)
The whole experience has made me much more appreciative of the concept of vacation, and determined to plan some really nice vacations for my family as the kids get older and the world hopefully gets a better handle on the pandemic.
I’m curious, ladies — what did you have planned for your family vacation this summer? Have you adjusted those plans due to COVID and restrictions? (Was anyone planning international travel that has now been put on hold indefinitely if Americans are barred from traveling to a lot of places?)
Stock photo via Stencil (view of lake from inside tent, with a man’s feet stretched in front of him).
My husband suddenly has a burning desire to take a cruise. It’s completely hilarious to me, I think he must be the only person on the planet who was turned onto cruising by the pandemic. We’ve agreed that we will take a Norwegian fjord cruise once there’s a vaccine. Currently debating whether we should do Disney for our preschooler or Celebrity, which seems to have a better rep for food (just to have some travel planning fun). And we will splurge on a suite with a large veranda so if we get stuck on the cruise we will at least have outdoor space :)
We are going to do two long weekends away within driving distance between now and the end of summer. One might be extra long (like Wed eve or Thurs AM-Sunday). But, honestly, our plan is to drive to Florida once or twice this fall/winter/spring for a few weeks. I get all the hate for Florida, but my parents have a house there sitting empty this time of year. So we can drive down and isolate/WFH for a few weeks when everything shuts down and we need a chance of scenery/escape from Midwest weather. If my parents winter in FL as usual, they won’t arrive until January, so if we go before that, we won’t be in contact with them. But my dad is an essential health care worker (non-Covid, though) who works two weeks on/two weeks off across the country from FL. So, honestly, they have no clue what the winter will bring for them.
We had plans to use a family member’s beach house in FL in August and maybe swing by Disney World for a day. Nope.
Currently discussing a ski trip for spring 2022 and an international trip for summer of that year. In the short run, my husband has floated the idea of renting an RV. RVs gross me out, rented RVs even more so, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Our spring break cruise was cancelled.
We booked our normal beach house rental back in Jan or Feb, after covid was in the news in China, but before it had really ramped up in the US. It’s scheduled for end of August, and we’re still going. No flights needed, and we rent a free-standing house, so no worries about exposure in a hotel.
Our typical vacation days are beach until about 2pm, then home for a rest and early dinner before heading to the boardwalk in the evening. Or, we bike in the nearby state park. I assume the boardwalk won’t be fully open, but I’m still looking forward to getting away from home.
We had tentatively planned a multi-week trip to Europe for our 10 year anniversary, but that’s not going to happen. In early February we drove 3 hours to see our friends’ new baby. In May we drove 18 hours (one way) to meet our friends’ baby who is now 11 months old. It was nice to see our friends but it was not a vacation by any means. It was more like doing normal life in another location, which was stressful during the riots. We’re still planning to do our annual friend trip to Oregon in August. I have to be honest I’m really looking forward to that trip.
The good thing about having a 4 year old and a 1.5 year old in a pandemic is that we weren’t planning any big travels this year anyway. The only thing we booked, and are still planning to do, is go to the Cape for about a week with my parents and stay in an AirBnbnb in August. I think the beaches will be open then and we’ll plan to get take-out or maybe do a couples dinner while my parents watch the kids. My husband and I typically do an annual couples trip but didn’t book it, and by March/April, we figured that wasn’t happening anytime soon. We may try to do a couples trip in December, depending on how things look.
I think the kids will be easier to travel with when the youngest is at least 3, so 2022 sounds about right for “major” travel. For those talking about how traveling with a 2 year is not a vacation, I agree, we took our then 2 year old on a cross-country flight to visit family and I never want to do that again with that age.
We live in an area that is doing well with the virus, so we only drove about 90 minutes away to a rural VRBO near the largest man-made lake in Illinois. We rented a pontoon boat for one day, hiked and swam, and had a couple long weekends at home. To tell the truth it did not feel like much of a vacation even though with the 4th of July holiday I was off work for 10 days. It’s the first time I really missed eating in restaurants. We ordered the same gas station pizza (Casey’s) there as we get at home.
one constant disagreement in my house is that i always want to travel and my husband hates the hassle with little kids. so this pause makes things more peaceful for us. i just read that we shouldnt expect things to get back to normal until summer 2022. at that point my kids will be almost 5 and almost 8 and will be really good travelers. my 5 year old is already planning the trip she wants to take to the galapagos, and is ok with waiting a few years.
we hadnt firmed up our summer plans when covid hit, although i was secretly thinking costa rica. now we are going to be renting an airbnb in a national park for a week. the kids are excited, and since it wont have reliable internet i think it will be a real vacation. we are looking at another national park for next summer as well.
Heh, this is moot for our family. Husband was in a full-time STEM PhD program and is now job hunting; finances remain iffy. We haven’t traveled for anything other than seeing family or friends since 2014, but I will be taking plain old time off work (and stay at home, and take the kids to trails and beaches – anything outdoors, essentially) because I am so burned out. We recently drove a couple hours to see family, stayed in an AirBnB, played at local playgrounds, and either cooked or got takeout – not much different from the average weekend, just in a novel location!
DH and I had a vacation to Hawaii planned for May, without the kid, for our 10-year anniversary. We rescheduled for November, but I’m pretty convinced that’s not going to happen now. We may try to plan a stay in a cabin somewhere within driving distance in November instead.
We usually spend a week at the beach with my MIL in the summer. We couldn’t make that trip this year.
We had a summer vacation to Edinburgh and Amsterdam canceled and we chose to cancel several domestic plane trips, mostly to visit family. My parents live a 6 hour drive away and have been visiting us (this will cease when we resume daycare) and we did an AirBNB for a week in Michigan which was fun-ish. It was nice to spend time outdoors and felt no less safe than home, but it was weird not going to restaurants or doing any kids’ museums which are normally a staple of domestic travel for us. I’m not optimistic about airplane travel in 2021; I wish I were.
We were planning to go to Scotland with our one yr old daughter. Instead, we rented a house in upstate NY with a pool and have plans to rent another house in August. It was still relaxing – we made simple meals/grilled/got takeout and just hung out by the pool. We live in an apt, so it was nice to be in a house and the pool was great. We normally like to travel, so this year’s plans are more roadtrips/local and low key. We haven’t made plans beyond August, but considering if a trip to Maine will be feasible in the fall.
Funny you should mention this. I was just mentioning to my DH that I feel completely bored and stuck in my surroundings, yet vacationing doesn’t seem like a great idea. We were supposed to have our first Disney trip back in June. Now I’m not sure when we’ll go, or if we’ll ever want to set foot in the state of Florida again. I suppose we could do a road trip + air b&b situation, but it sounds more exhausting than fun. Plus, I worry about being in public rest stops, we wouldn’t want to eat in restaurants, activities would be limited. What’s the point? Yet I see family vacation pics all over FB and feel so jealous.
I badly need a vacation from everything (including parenting, if I’m being really honest.) I’ve been trying to hit the trails and use neighboring state parks as much as I can, but the appeal is starting to wear thin.
We had planned an end of summer week at the beach with my family. I had just started looking at houses when COVID hit, so never booked anything. Given the rates of spread at the beaches, I’m definitely not comfortable going now even if we could find a house now. We had also talked about a girls’ trip in December to celebrate my sister’s 30th in Montreal, but thankfully that wasn’t booked yet either. Instead, we have been going once a month to drive to see my parents (2 hours), and both of my sisters stayed with them for a period of time so there was some good auntie time too.
I started thinking about holiday logistics, which are going to be challenging. Thanksgiving will be us only assuming preschool is still open. We will want to quarantine for 2 weeks after preschool ends for Christmas before visiting any parents given their respective ages and health. My inlaws (local) prefer to wait 2 weeks after we see my family; my family is comfortable waiting 1 week after seeing the inlaws. So maybe it will be preschool gets out, we wait 2 weeks, we see inlaws, wait a week, and then see my family right before preschool starts up again (all assuming preschool stays open, otherwise it will be “easy” because we can just keep doing what we’ve been doing).
We had planned to meet my parents in Portugal. Now the plan is to go spend a week at the seaside, about 30 minutes drive away. We are going to ride bikes, build sandcastles, and have socially distanced drinks with friends who live nearby.
It just doesn’t feel right to go to a rural area and potentially bring Covid19 or get ill while there.