Many families don’t go on vacation because planning them is simply too stressful and time consuming. If you go about planning your vacation in a systematic way you’ll find that planning your vacation can actually be a lot of fun and will leave the whole family more excited than ever to actually enjoy spending time away from home together. Family vacations don’t have to be a thing of the past; you just need better planning skills.

The first thing that you need to do is decide how much time you have to take off of work and school and other responsibilities and what time of year you’ll be able to do this. This will affect how far you can go and where you will be able to travel to because of weather and other considerations. For instance, if you can only take four days off you couldn’t fly from the US to Australia and back again but you might be able to go to Florida and enjoy the beach as a family.

Planning your next family vacation? Dreading spending ten hours in the car followed by five days dragging your kids to the beach, the hotel pool and a local restaurant that doesn’t offer a children’s menu? If you’re looking for a vacation that will show both you and the kids a good time, cruising could be it.

Cruising can be expensive, but most family cruise vacations typically cost about $500-$1000 per person per week. Add up the cost of all the hotels, meals, souvenirs and mileage that your last vacation cost you and compare it to that figure. You’ll quickly see that a cruise vacation budgets in at about the same rate as a full, family vacation.