Traveling with Your Parents

While my family loves WDW, I'm the only true FANATIC, so its been a relatively easy transition to me making all of the plans. When planning I usually give everyone a few different choices and let the majority rule. For example, our upcoming trip in October its me, my parents, my brother, sister in-law, niece and nephew. I knew we wanted to stay at a moderate resort, so I printed out details and pictures of several different moderates and let the family vote. Fortunately everyone liked POFQ (which was secretly my first pick). Then with ADRs, I thought it would be fun if we each picked at table service restaurant. I chose Kona Cafe, my folks picked 50's Primetime Cafe, my brother and sister in-law wanted Wolfgang Pucks, and my niece and nephew wanted a character breakfast (ultimately we chose Tusker house). Even though I'm planning (i.e. picking what days at what parks), and putting a schedule together, I want everybody to feel like they have a say!

When we go with my parents, since they go in April/May as well... they let us be in charge. We pick our ADR's, where we want to go for the parks, sometimes lunch (if were all together). I love my parents to be honest. Even as a kid, I got to be in charge of what we did.

I took a trip with my mom a few years ago, and then a trip with my dad more recently. They were great trips. There were differences in our theme park touring, but you'll have that when traveling with anyone, unless your lucky and go with someone who has the exact same likes as you. I like long trips and to be at the parks for rope drop, stay a few hours, and then go back to our resort for a break, and then go back to the parks at night. And food is part of the trip for me.

When I went with my mom, we were fortunate enough to be able to go during Food and Wine, and Epcot is my mom's favorite park too, so we spent a lot of time there. And she liked trying the different restaurants. But she would rather sleep in, and go to the parks around lunch time and not bother with breaks. That wasn't really an issue though, since after the first couple of days, (this was a nice long 11 day trip,) I would just go to the parks for RD, tour solo, and we'd meet at lunch time, and we'd do more restful things in the afternoons, like the shows.

When I went with my dad, he was always up and ready for rope drop, as waking up at 7:00 AM is sleeping in for him. (He was actually shocked that I woke up at 7:00 AM every day since I like to sleep as late as possible when I can at home.) He however, was very go, go, go, the entire day, with no breaks or down time. He also didn't like to repeat attractions, and thought once was enough for everything. Where I could do certain things several times in one day. He also didn't want to waste park time eating, so it was all CS that trip, except for our AK day when I went to DTD alone one night, (since it's "just shopping" there,) and had a nice dinner at Fulton's. Actually one day of that trip I wanted to eat at Captain Cook's, and that drove him crazy cause I had us leave MK, to go take the monorail, and I went on about how the monorail was like an attraction, but he sees it only as a mode of transportation, and then he refused to even eat anything out of stubbornness. He also wanted to skip Epcot completely, but I insisted we had to spend one day there. My dad was also anti-park hopping, I rarely want to spend a full day in the same park with no breaks.

Then there was some drama with sharing a room. I don't live with either of my parents anymore. I think I was still living at home when I went with my mom, but I can't remember for sure, but my mom and I started having space and organizing issues. I think that was due in part to it being a longer trip, since we had more stuff. But at least we were mostly on the same sleep schedule. With my dad it was the opposite, space wasn't an issue, though he likes to go to bed early, so we'd get home from the parks, I'd go for a swim or something, and I'd come back and he'd be out. And that wasn't late night swims that was 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening, but I felt that I had to be extra quiet and couldn't even turn on the TV or anything. Plus with the counter space, I basically turn the sink area into a Bath and Body Works, not an issue with my mom, since she likes my stuff and I don't mind sharing, but my dad had to ask me at least once a day why I needed to bring my entire collection with me. (Which it wasn't, not by a long shot, he has obviously never seen my bathroom closet, lol!)

But as far as it being a parent - kid trip, and feeling like vacations I took when I was little, it didn't. I don't think either one of us was in charge exactly. I did all the planning and booking the resorts and stuff, but that was it.

We are planning a trip for next March with my mother-in-law. I don't think either one of us will be "in charge." We are planning the restaurants and the resort because she wants to go where the grandkids will be happiest. She has COPD so she will tour the park much slower than we do, but that's fine we can take breaks in the afternoon and swim while she refills her oxygen tank and rests. She has had a lot of changes in the last year so we are just trying to bring a smile to her face and make her think of good things.

Before my father had his stroke and FIL became paralyzed we had a fantastic grand gathering trip in 2008. I think it's great that you got to go with your parents. Disney is for all ages.
Dee

Who's in charge?!! Me of course LOL

In all honesty though, I'm the planner and get input from them on what they want to do/join in with and plan around that. My parents are park lovers like us, whereas Hubby's parents like to spend more downtime, so we try to space the park days so they are getting a mixture rather than just all of their rest days together and all of their park days together.

I am the one on the disney fourms and the one 'in the know' with everything, so everyone is cool to leave me to plan as I will always try to get the most out of our trip.

We have the same stamina for our park days, we dont rush to get there for rope drop - it just wouldn't happen in our house! We go about 10/11am and stay till late. My mum is now wheelchair bound so she can keep going longer than anyone as she's just sitting down all day (this is what she says anyway!), I am worried for my dad on our next trip though (if they can come-fingers crossed) as he needs 2 new knees they will be done on our return. He will need ot take it much easier, he isnt one for complaining though so it will take a lot before he will tell us that he's in pain, will try to plan lots of stops and rests around the parks.

Scrappy and I are the only really true Disney Lovers in our families. The kids like Disney and we took them all two years ago. Scrappy planned everything, but we all had separate rooms and told everyone, if they wanted to do something else, have at it! Now our parents , well , they don't see the "Love for Disney" at all. So we just take our friends Tom & Del anytime they can come, because we infected them with the Disney addiction and they like to do what ever we do!

My mom and I love Disney equally, so it's always a joint venture.

When you go with multi generations, do you split up, do different things, or try and stay together?

For about 20 years we made family trips to Disney twice a year with all the kids and grandkids. We always went to Ft.Wilderness. As soon as the grand kids were old enough to Know their campsite address, to tell a bus driver, everybody was on their own. Everyone did what they wanted to do and go where they wanted to go. Disney, we found and believe, is a safe place. No ONE was ever in charge. Of course if the grandkids got hungry they better find their parent because the parent had the money. Never was any problems.
pix is all 3 of our family motor homes.
Joe

What was the largest group you went with, people-wise, Joe?

What was the largest group you went with, people-wise, Joe?