How Early Do You Plan Your Family Vacations — And What Are You Planning Right Now?
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We’ve talked before about how early is too early to start vacation planning — as well as how everyone’s family vacation plans in 2020 turned out. So I thought it might be an interesting discussion today: What vacations are you planning right now? WHEN are you planning to go on your next family vacation?
Because my family is high risk (yay genetic blood clotting disorder!), we have been super careful, and that is also reflected in our vacation planning. We DO have an Airbnb (with a pool, despite our bad experience with the last one!) booked for June 2021, at a halfway point between us and the grandparents (also the distance we can drive without having to pee), and we can’t wait to see them.
{related: here are our best tips for how to survive a road trip with kids}
I feel like once all this (*gestures vaguely at everything*) is over I want to book a date trip with my husband (a vacation without kids!), at least one friend trip (probably with husbands but no kids so… a multi-date trip? double-date trip even though it might be five couples?), and a multi-generational family beach vacation with grandparents, and the kids definitely want to go back to Orlando for either Universal Studios or Disney World.
Where do you want to go next? What are you actively planning right now? In general, how early do you plan your family vacations? (Are you going to do your usual family vacation or try something new?)
Ugh, this is so hard. I’m due in July and would LOVE to have a weekend away baby moon before then, but there’s no way my partner is going to be vaccinated this spring. If covid numbers are okay and we get good weather we’re hoping to do a driving trip to a nearby city in May and just focus on outdoor activities and dining.
I feel like our wedding is on perma-hold. We’re thinking March 2022 but I’m still so hesitant to plan anything, even with the vaccine roll out. Big parties and international travel for honeymoons just seem like such far off dreams.
In normal times we book a year or so in advance. I like the anticipation!
Currently the only thing that’s rock solid on our calendar for 2021 is a trip to the family vacation home in New England in August. We have to fly but otherwise it’s very safe (private property, spend all our time outdoors) so we’ll be doing that regardless of vaccine status. On the off chance we get the vaccine before my late spring birthday or Mother’s Day we’ll do a weekend trip then but I’m not optimistic. I hope to visit my best friend this year but she’s in California and we’ll obey their travel restrictions so not sure when travel there will be permitted. I’m still holding out hope for our usual Caribbean resort vacation in December. My husband is a professor and normally can’t travel late August-mid December but this year he’s on sabbatical so if it’s permitted we’ll probably head to Europe in the fall (work for him, vacation for me). I’m not very optimistic about the borders opening though.
We’re not waiting for our kids to get vaxxed before we resume hotels/flying/outdoor dining. I’d be a little hesitant to head to a kids museum or indoor play place with un-vaxxed kids unless numbers drop a lot because those are such petri dishes even normally. Going away just us two is definitely a priority as soon as DH and I both have the vaccine. Lockdown has not been great for our marriage. Grandparents are already vaxxed and moving to our area soon, so we’ll probably start doing kid sleepovers there by April or so, which will be almost like a vacation.
Ugh, this is a very contentious issue in my house right now. DH wants to book several trips, including one with flights, on the theory that we can always cancel if we are not comfortable. He wants some things to look forward to. I think that canceling is a pain (and the refundable tickets are way more expensive), and canceling a trip is more depressing to me than not scheduling one at all.
We’re planning a normal family beach resort trip, and considering a grown-up trip to Vegas (both in summer). If they don’t happen, fine, we can always cancel, but I’m not seeing the argument for staying home if the hospitals are clear and the vulnerable have had the chance to get their shots. (I’ve had mine, husband is fairly low risk so we’ll see, kids of course aren’t expected any time soon.)
In a normal world, we plan our vacations 2-3 months beforehand. In a Covid-world, we’re not planning anything with the kids for this year. Once we’re all vaccinated, we will likely drop the kids off at my parents’ house and do a short husband+wife vacation.
Kids under 11 aren’t even getting vaccine trials yet, so we are not planning any family vacations for our family of 4 with two under-11s. I was really hoping to spend Thanksgiving-Hanukkah with family in November, but it’s just not looking good. (They’re a 2-day car ride away from us).
We’re planning summer camping on weekends at this point, and that’s it.
I don’t feel good about planning anything, no matter how COVID-safe, until our family has been vaccinated. I expect that all of us (me, husband, teenager) will be eligible at varying points between early spring and fall, and I wouldn’t want to miss out on an opportunity because we were out of town.
I’m hesitant to plan anything before October, realistically I think we’ll get vaccinated late summer? My parents bought a house in Southern Europe pre-pandemic (to live full-time post retirement) and haven’t actually been able to get there yet, so as soon as we get vaccinated we’ll head there to see them. We do have a long weekend at a farm booked – it was booked for November and felt Covid safe, but we’re not able to leave our local authority area. And I promised my husband a trip to Amsterdam for his 40th (last year), so will likely book post-vaccination for Spring 2022.
Normally we’d do an Airbnb by the sea but we’ve moved and are 15 minutes from the beach now, so it hardly seems worth it.