Family Vacation Central

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Winnipeg is the capital city of Manitoba in canada and is a nice place to visit as a family. There are a lot of attractions including the famous “Coldest Street Corner” in Canada at Portage and Main and the Forks which is where a lot of the winnipeg festivals are held.

I was in Winnipeg last week for work and purposely stayed at the Winnipeg Four Points Sheraton. The Winnipeg Four Points Sheraton is a great Airport hotel that is situated right acoess the street from the Winnipeg Airport which is great for travelling quickly overnight but if you are staying in Winnipeg for vacation it is not so good. The sheraton Four Points hotel and the Winnipeg Airport are about a 45 minute bus or 30 minute drive from downtown Winnipeg.

In staying at the Winnipeg Four Points Sheraton I had a chance to check out the amenities and dealt with the staff. First of all for some reason my room card failed to work in the morning at the hotel so I needed to get it reactivated and the staff did this really quickly, because they were a little short staffed they switched the card and then advised me that if it did not work that they would go ahead and send someone up.

The girl at the front desk knew exactly where my room number was on the floor and told me that there is a courtesy phone on a desk right behind me if I need to call them from outside my room. Read the rest of this entry »

I just ran into the greatest camping checklist. This is soemthing that I have looked for for a while as every time that I go camping I forget some stuff, overpack, take things that I thought would matter but don’t and of course I worry about getting cold so I take as many blankets as the car will hold.

Bookmark the camping checklist and use it the next couple of times out camping and see if you start to pack better as well.

Happy Camping

We really have to come up with a better name for this but in essence multigenerational travel is when parents bring their kids and their parents on vacation together. Here is what Dorothy Brown from the Philidelphia Inquirer described it as:

Some call it “multigenerational travel.” Others call it “grand tripping.” But the idea of grandparents swooping up children and grandchildren is one of the fastest-growing segments of the travel industry, according to the Travel Industry Association.

While the Web and guidebooks are full of tips on what makes for a successful three-generation trip, my husband, Larry, and I didn’t read any of that before going.

We didn’t even give a moment’s thought to rerouting to a kid-friendly spot such as Disney World. We were in love with the villa-in-Tuscany idea, no matter how arduous the logistics. And the Bryn Mawr agency that helped us book our villa, Doorways Ltd., assured us we were not pioneers.

About half of its bookings (about 3,100 people last year) are for grandparents taking their entire families, a share that’s been growing since 1994 when Kit Burns launched her villa rental business.

“When we first started, the renters were mostly couples and some families. Now it’s caught on with three-generation families,” she says.

The grandparents “can stay home one day or baby-sit while others go out. Also, it’s a different way for teenagers to experience their grandparents.”

Have you tried a holiday like this? I am sure that it is much more common than we really tend to notice. If you want to make multigenerational travel work well for you then it is best to make sure that everyone gets their space, kids, parents, and grandparents because having so many people together in a foreign place could be very stressful.

This though is the perfect opportunity to have a great vacation that no one could forget.

Susan Sessions Rugh has written a great book about the history of the family camping or at least car driving adventure. The book is called The Golden Age of American Family Vacations and in it she captures some of what I grew up with in the 70’s the travelling of the family to the campground and prts unknown, the excitement of family vacations.

Americans have been making fun of family vacations from the time they came into style after World War II. The emergent medium of television captured some of the travails of the traveling family in late-night variety shows. Morey Amsterdam opened his show one evening in 1949 with a monologue reporting that he was just back from a vacation to Florida with his family: “I steered, my mother-in-law drove.” He commented on the expense of the vacation: “It cost us $400—a day.” It was “ten dollars for an aspirin.” He suffered the usual fate of the New York tourist in Florida when he admitted he went out on the beach and “walked away one big beautiful blister.” Morey Amsterdam’s jokes made television viewers feel better about spending the money and putting up with their families on vacation because they could laugh at themselves. Perhaps at least they recognized they weren’t alone in their stupidity!

In their comedy show on NBC television in 1952, Bob and Ray satirized the summer vacation by offering for sale a summer vacation kit “for people who want to be uncomfortable without leaving home.” It included a dozen items, among them “a bathing suit that makes you look kind of silly” and “a hard table so you feel like you have slept in a camp cot.” It came complete with a beach umbrella, along with a “handsome lifeguard to divert your wife’s attention while you are setting up the umbrella.” Finally, the sound effects man added the sounds of a day in the country: bullfrogs, owls hooting, crickets chirping, waves pounding on the beach, moose calling, the horn of a passing train sounding. Summer vacations were a lot of trouble and not really much of a vacation, but the men were caught up in this travel ritual for the sake of the family. Read the rest of this entry »

My family is yet to go to Disney World in Florida but a friend of mine has and just also showed me a great way to use Google Earth to see Video, pics and flybys of the DisneyWorld resort.

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts is harnessing the power of Google Earth to build an interactive, three-dimensional tour of Walt Disney World Resort that brings you one step closer to a true park experience. With direct links to Disney’s online travel-planning tools, Walt Disney World Resort in 3D will re-invent how people plan and book vacations.

Beginning today, Disney guests can use Google Earth, a program which offers a 3D digital model of the world, to virtually tour Walt Disney World’s four theme parks, as well as its 22 hotels and resorts. An overview of Walt Disney World Resort in 3D, along with instructions on how to get started, can be found at www.disneyworld.com/3dparks. Existing Google Earth 4.3 users can see Walt Disney World Resort in 3D by enabling the “Gallery” folder within Google Earth, or by selecting any of the 3D buildings within the resort. Read the rest of this entry »

Getting your kids involved in your vacation is essential and studies have shown that they enjoy the trip even more when they have made some contributions involving the trip. When visiting family attractions on your trip, find out as much information about the destination as you can before hand, to prepare your children. Let them help plan out which family attractions they would like to see-this will make them more interested in their choices.

Learn a bit about the cultures you will be visiting so things will be more familiar and comfortable for your children once they arrive. For instance, tell them they wear big hats in Mexico called sombreros. They will be excited when they spot someone wearing one! For younger children, try to plan out the family attractions you want to see most early on so you don’t miss out on the “star” attraction because they got too tired.

Make a game out of visiting sites to keep them interested. For example, when visiting a museum, make a game out of who can find certain attractions.

For older kids, find some sites on the Internet about your destination and let them explore. Another great idea to get kids excited, especially teenagers, is to watch some movies that have been shot on location at your vacation destinations. Contributing these tips while planning your family vacation will insure your children will have a great time on their vacation, wherever it might be.

You can make the planning of your family vacation a family event. Order some pizza and go to your local video store and rent movies that include various destinations, so that the family can collaborate together; plus its fun!