Popular Family Vacations
What are some popular beach and warm weather family vacations?
You can go anywhere, from Maine to Florida. Florida is always popular year-round. Hawaii is probably one of the most popular beach vacations around. There are lots of other beach vacations that people don't necessarily bring right to mind, such as all the beaches on the shores of the Great Lakes, where there are wonderful beaches. There are some really great beaches in Texas as well - South Padre Island is very, very popular with families. One of the things I like about South Padre Island, for example, is the fact that they have a lady there who raises turtles. They call her the Turtle Lady, and she protects them. You can actually go and watch the turtles come up the shore to give birth, and then they go back into the ocean. When the babies are born they have to get themselves back to shore. It is very popular among families, even these days at resorts. I did it once at Sea Island, Georgia, at The Cloister, which is really fabulous. They do it at Amelia Island, which is another wonderful family resort. There are also all these resorts in San Diego and Oregon. No matter where you go where there is a beach, it is popular. Hopefully you're wearing lots and lots of sunblock - one of the things that is very good to remember with kids when you go to the beach is to bring a sunblock that you can spray on, that you don't have to rub onto them. The thing they hate the most is having to have the sunblock put on, so if you have one that's spray, that's a piece of cake.
How can my family enjoy the beach and avoid the crowds?
If you're concerned about the crowds, you might want to consider going in the off-season. One of the most wonderful things I ever did was go shelling in Sanibel, which was wonderful because there was nobody there. There are days you can't even get to the shells because it's so crowded. Simply walking along the beach at Hilton Head, any of those barrier islands are really wonderful, because they have long, big, wide beaches, and you can just walk along them and enjoy yourself. If you go to a hotel, usually it's only the guests at that hotel, or at that resort, that are using the beach. One of the things that I find very interesting, is in Cancun - the beaches are usually very, very crowded but every hotel built along the beach in the hotel zone, never has anybody at the beach except a few people from your hotel. Also, at resorts you get families doing other things - you have families on the beach, but you also have people playing golf, and other people playing tennis. People are doing different things, so the beach itself is not very crowded.
What are some popular cold weather family vacations?
Near the mountains, you have the Sierras in California where you can see Lake Taho. There are white mountains in New Hampshire, and the green mountains in Vermont. You even have southern skiing here, skiing in West Virginia, and there's each mountain in North Carolina, and in the mid-West. They may not be as high as you think, but it doesn't really matter. If you're not a skiing family, then I wouldn't necessarily go to a ski resort to enjoy outdoor fun, because you are paying a premium to be at a ski area, when you can go cross-country skiing or snow shoeing right in your back yard anywhere. With regard to backyard, there are resorts that actually have what I call backyard skiing - that's a little mountain, or a hill, and you can learn how to ski there. They have that, for example, in Bossoms in New Hampshire, at the Homestead in West Virginia, and at Pinegrove Guest Wranch in the Catshills.
What winter activities can my family plan if we don't ski or snowboard?
By enjoying the great outdoors, you can go sledging anywhere. We used to actually have a plastic bag that we kept in our car, and if we found a great hill we would go sledging on the hill with our plastic bag. You can go ice skating, which is always fun. You just have to make sure that everybody is careful, and make sure that the ice is working. If you know how to snowshoe, you can do that. Snow mobiling is very popular - a lot of the bike trails that have been developing all around the country are now open to snowmobilers. The choice is yours - take what it is that you do and introduce your children to it.
What is an 'all-inclusive resort'?
An all-inclusive vacation is one that will include your accommodation, your food and your activities. It may even include other things - there are places where they not only include liquor, but also include cigarettes. It really depends, but the basic formula is that it will include your accommodation, your food and your activities.
What are some types of all-inclusive family vacations?
The group that started all-inclusives was Club Med. They marketed themselves as all-inclusive, whereas other places that are all-inclusive were not marketed that way, such as dude ranches and cruise ships. Family camps are also all-inclusive. Almost every beach resort in Mexico, in the Yucatan, seems to be all-inclusive. One advantage is that you know what it is going to cost you up front, except for some additional extras. What I like most about it is that you get to say yes to your kid all the time. Can I have another soda? Sure, go have another soda. Can I go sailing again? Sure, go take the sailboat out. The things that might nickel-and-dime you at other resorts are not going to do that there.
What questions should I ask at an all-inclusive resort?
You will need to find out, for example, what the sleeping arrangements are. Are four of you going to be in one room? And what happens if you book one adult in one room and one adult in another room - do you actually end up with different prices? That is something that I used to do when I was a travel agent. I would always try to book things in different ways, to find out which came out cheaper. And, very often, that happened. Club Med has huge family rooms - we once shared a room with our kids, but they were seemingly miles away from us. Accommodations are important to ask about. If you want to have your kids go to a group, you want to know how they break up the kids by age. If they say that the group is for four year olds to twelve year olds and they don't divide them up well, a four year old and a twelve year old have almost nothing in common. It is important to know whether or not you are going to be able to use the kids program for your own benefit, such as to go get a massage or for you to go play golf. Do something that you don't necessarily want to do with your children.
What is a 'family cruise'?
A family cruise is when you go on a cruise ship with your family. It is a wonderful thing to do, because regardless of the makeup of your family, there's something for everyone. Theres something for somebody who doesn't even want to enjoy the great outdoors. I used to think that where you stopped on your cruise was important, but as somebody who has learned to love cruising, I think it is actually not that important. I enjoy a lot of the time spent at sea, and I also like getting off the ship. For families, I think it's important too. The cost of shore excursions can be exorbitant if you add it up - if you're one person and you're paying $90 a day for shore excursion, it doesn't sound like that much. If you add in four of you, it's probably going to cost you around $270 (full price for each adult, half price for the kids). It is a lot of money if you add it up every day. For that same $100, you could rent a car and a driver right at the port, and have them take you around all day. There is a wonderful book by Candy Stapen on cruise vacations, that I think does more justice to things to do on shore excursions for families than anyone else - it's one of the best books around. But essentially, that is what a cruise vacation is. Are there trips that are more family friendly? Absolutely.
What factors should my family consider when choosing a cruise?
You want to make sure that you pick a cruise that you know is going to be family-friendly. If you're traveling with a teenager you want to make sure that they have a teen program. A teen program is something that is very interesting, because on a cruise ship they just need a place to meet and greet. With good cruise lines, that's what they do, they've figured it out. If you have a baby, you have to be careful because there are not a lot of ships that have baby care, but you want to see how they divide up the kids. Other things that you might want to consider is whether they take care of the kids when you're in port. My husband and I took our first cruise so that we could go scuba diving. They took care of the kids in the morning, we went scuba diving, we came back at lunch time, we had lunch together and we spent the whole afternoon together. We did this at three of our stops - having three dives on our vacation was a wonderful thing, especially when our kids were little, because there were very, very few places that you could actually do that.
What types of cruises are offered to families?
Every type of cruise have offers for families nowadays. You have big cruises, and you have little cruises. The most popular ones are usually the Caribbean and Mexico. What happened in the cruise industry that is most interesting to me is that you now have many more choices about where to take your cruises. It used to be that you flew to Miami, or you flew to LA, and those were your only choices. Now you can sail out of Houston, you can sail out of New Orleans, you can sail out of different places in Florida, you can sail out of Norfolk, you can sail out of New York, you can sail out of Boston. Cruise lines have taken this into account, making it easier for families to get on board ships. They can actually drive to the terminal. Some of the people who have been catering to families for a long time include Carnival, which has a tremendous kids program, taking well over a quarter of a million kids a year. Princess also does a terrific job, and NCL is wonderful. Royal Caribbean has all that exciting stuff that they frequently advertise. But, can you imagine learning how to rock climb on a cruise? It is not the kind of thing that you always put in mind, but what has happened in the marketplace is that everybody, rich or poor, is traveling with their kids. You even have three generations traveling together - cruise is a wonderful place for multi-generation vacations. There are just about so many things out there that you wouldn't believe! The Radisson Cruises now have a childrens program that is led by Jacques Cousteaus' son.
What US city destinations are good for family vacations?
I am a New Yorker, so of course I think New York is a fabulous place for families. I raised my kids here - it's a wonderful place to bring your kids. But, you have Chicago, you have Los Angeles, you have San Francisco, you have Miami, and there are also smaller cities that you can consider. I did a feature on my newsletter one year called "Small Cities, Big Changes", and we talked about all the different things that were happening in smaller, secondary cities. Philadelphia, Nashville, Cleveland and other cities, by their very nature offer things that you don't find in the rural environment or even in a suburban environment. Culture is one of them, shopping is another one of them. A city vacation is great because you need to learn to balance the concrete with the green. One of our first city vacations that we took was to Toronto. One of the first things my kid mentioned is how clean the city is. This was 1982, New York was not nearly as clean then as it is now. City vacations are great fun, and they are the easiest to plan in so many ways, and they offer so many wonderful opportunities for families to do things and to see things that they wouldn't necessarily get on another vacation. There was an organization that I dealt with way back when I was in student travel, and they set up all these cultural tours of different places, and a city vacation certainly offers all that.
