LSS, my mother is turning 65 this year, and she's announced that she wants a family trip to Disney World to celebrate her milestone birthday. DH, the kids, and me, my brother, his GF, and her daughter. You may (or may not) recall that we went with my mother when DD was three, and I can't say we loved it. There were some good moments, there were some bad moments. We were exhausted by the end. My mother has a tendency to start drama on trips--I think it's the stress of travel and being out of her routine. Not personality disorder-level drama, just dumb shit, like when
she booked a
character breakfast with Alice in Wonderland, and when Alice showed up for pictures, my mother shut her down and basically told her to GTFO. And when my brother and I were like "That was kind of unnecessary, don't you think?" she refused to speak to either one of us for the rest of that ridiculous breakfast. But then there were also a lot of happy memories to balance that out, mostly involving DD. Neither DH nor I can muster any enthusiasm for this trip, but it's super-important to my mother.
Pro-Disney trip:
- DD will have a great time; DS will enjoy it, but probably no more or less than a trip to Monkey Joe's (he won't even be 2)
- The kids can spend some quality time with Grandma, doing what Grandma loves best
- With my mom turning 65, she's hardly at death's door, but she won't be able to travel forever, either. (I think my grandmother stopped for the most part in her early eighties.) And as the kids get older, we'll be less able to travel with school, activities, etc.
- We can spend time together as an extended family, which we don't get to do very much because my brother lives several states away
- If we do it once, we're off the hook for a while (sort of like a tetanus shot)
Anti-Disney trip:
- We don't want to take DD out of school, so we'll have to go in the summer, when it's crowded and hot
- It's a lot of money, considering it's not someplace we're dying to go
- It will chew up a good chunk of my available PTO
- It's hard for DH to get away from the office for several days at a time
- It's a logistical headache
- There are so many other places we'd rather go
- There are tons of other things we could do with that money
- I can tell you right now that we don't want to travel in a big pack, and my mother will be butthurt if we try to do anything on our own--and not even "We're going to Cirque du Soleil and you're not, nah-nah!" more like "The kids are sweaty and exhausted so we're going to skip Animal Kingdom and hang out at the pool." [cue passive-aggressive sigh and sulking]
With all that in mind, WWWWD?