Does Your Vacation Ever Feel Like A Vacation?

Magic Kingdom Fireworks Show

Everyone says,”It is your vacation, you should be relaxing,” but how many vacations have you had where you actually got to rest?  While you were on vacation, did you still check your email or were you able to forget about it while you were away from the house?  How about laundry, did you pack enough for the entire trip or did you find yourself running back and forth to the motel laundry room?

My family and I just got home from a long vacation to Florida.  We had a LOT of fun, but we never really “relaxed.”  We were on the go from the moment we woke up until the late night hours when we went to bed.  I found myself working online through my cell phone whenever I could get a chance and my husband checked his email, but had someone filling in for him so he could enjoy his time away from work.

As far as our vacation, we had tons of things that everyone wanted to do at Disney, so we made sure to build our days around each park and what activities everyone had planned.  We definitely covered a lot of ground and rode tons of rides, got many character signatures and browsed several Disney Shops, but we were exhausted.  We started our day with breakfast at the Disney Resort cafeteria and on to the parks until closing  where we stood in line for the Disney buses to carry us back to our resort.  Sometimes we were lucky and made it on the first bus by standing in the isle, but we usually had to wait for at least 2 buses to pick up before we were able to get on the bus to our resort.  By the time we got to our room, and got everyone ready for bed, it was usually midnight.  Our plan was to make it to the parks right before opening hours, but we were always too tired to make it that early, but we usually left our room by 9 am every morning.

 The storm just blew in from no where and everyone is hurrying to get back to the hotel before the rain comes.

My husband was lucky enough to have another week off, so we left Disney and headed to St. Augustine, Florida where we went to the beach and shopped the surf shops.  The second week of our vacation was more relaxing than the first, but we started to run out of clean clothes since we’d been gone for so long, so off to the laundry room we went.  Next our “snack supply” started running low so off to find Wal-Greens for some goodies. Then the rain came and cut our days at the beach short so we started home a day early.  After going hard for 2 weeks, that long drive from Florida to Texas was dreaded by all of us, but the kids slept most of the way home.  I think everyone agrees that sleeping kids are better than fighting ones.

My husband and I were talking about our vacation and have decided, that maybe less plans and more time is the best policy for vacation.  When you have so many plans that you have to schedule them out hour by hour, it is hard to relax.  We had a great hotel and never found the time to just enjoy the resort grounds and pools.  For our next Disney vacation, we will take that into mind and allow for more “free time” instead of the jam packed schedule.  How was your last vacation?  Were you able to relax or were you constantly on the run?