If you had $5000 for a week's family vacation, where would you go?

[daniele_ut]

Unless you book REALLY far in advance or on a "kids sail free" promo with Disney Cruise Line, I don't think you would be able to meet your $5000 budget when you factor in airfare from the west coast. We looked into a 4 night cruise on the Disney Dream in an Oceanview (we wanted inside but it wasn't available) for a cruise this August and the quote was well over $5000 before tips. Another member of this board had booked the same cabin class on the day booking opened for that sailing using the past guest discount and I think she paid in the neighborhood of $2800.

We are going to WDW for 7 nights instead and taking a 4 night cruise on Carnival and the breakdown for cost for our trip looks like this:

Airfare: $820 (used a companion ticket for 1 and FF miles for 1)
First night at Hilton DTD: $70.00 including taxes on Last Minute Travel
Rental car for 12 days:$303.00 using carrentalsavers.com with Enterprise
Gas for the week: $100.00
7 day park hopper plus Water parks tickets for all 4: $819.00 using the Disney YES Individual enrollment program
Exchange fee for 7 nights in a 3 bedroom timeshare condo: $140.00
Food for the week: $700
Parking at WDW: $100
Parking at Port Canaveral Park N Cruise: $20
Cruise totals for 4, inside cabin: $1136.00
Tips for 4 on cruise:$160.00
Planned excursions: $250.00 (Beach days in both ports)

That puts us at $4618.00 with some wiggle room in the $5000 budget we allotted. This is by far the most expensive family vacation we've ever taken and we won't do another like it for a number of years.

[mom2binsd]

I know a lot of friends from Canada go to Dominican Republic and stay at some family friendly resorts, and it's pretty reasonable and very safe.

[clc053103]

I was at grand wailea last year. We didn't bring DS, and we made the right decision. there really isn't much for kids to do but sit on the beach and play in the mini watermark area- which is ridiculously overcrowded, they rope drop at 7 am for chairs. the coworkers who brought kids quickly regretted it. They did find some sort of train ride for entertainment but not much more As a family, we would much rather do WDW (6 yo ds is going on his 5 th trip this year) or Disney cruise (April 2012!)