How often do you go to Disney when kids start school?!

[disprincess2213]

We are AP, DVC who go to Disney 4+ times a year with DD5. SHe starts Kindergarten next year and we are just really starting to think about how these Disney trips of 6+ days 4x a year arent going to happen anymore. I think we have been in denial. I am wondering how many of you were in the same boat as we are and what the outcome has been. How often does everyone go to Disney having kids in school? Do you take them out? Do you go over holidays? Long weekends? How do you make Disney work in your life with school?

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

My parents took us out of school every single November for 8 days.

I'd say you can easily still go 4 times per year but you'd want to make some of them be during school breaks.
Considering that the quieter times are now becoming the semi crowded times and the traditional crowded times such as summer are now becoming a bit less so I don't think going during some school break times would be too terrible.

 

[Upatnoon]

It's more of a question of WHEN you can go as opposed to IF you can go.

Kids have plenty of vacation time, but they often coincide with some of the more crowded times. Also, if you work, you will find you are now competing with other parents for those days off.

Also, you'll note that DVC resorts require different points for different times of year. The ones that require the most points are the ones when kids are out of school, so you'll probably run out of points faster and won't have to go as much.

Further, as kids start school, they will start having more activities and homework that will further squeeze when you can go vacation.

Then, as your child get older, they start to develop their own tastes. They may tell you they are tired of going to Disney want want to go someplace new.

Anyway, for now the whole school thing is new for you, while obviously Disney is old hat. I would concentrate for now on getting used to the school routine, as it will dominate your life for the next 12 years.

 

[jtopp]

School and activities will definitely put a damper on your Disney time. We were fortunate in that our children did very well in school, so we were able to take them out....sometimes.
Once they got to junior high, rules regarding attendance became more stringent, and colleges made it impossible to take them away. We eventually ended up taking them on their school schedule, which means we are there when half the civilized world is.

 

[vinotinto]

My kids have 180 instructional days per year. That means, they have 185 free days every year. You can go to Disney as much as you want, but as PP mentioned, summer, Christmas, holidays are crowded, so it becomes an issue of the "when."

 

[Shanti]

We are AP, DVC who go to Disney 4+ times a year with DD5. SHe starts Kindergarten next year and we are just really starting to think about how these Disney trips of 6+ days 4x a year arent going to happen anymore. I think we have been in denial. I am wondering how many of you were in the same boat as we are and what the outcome has been. How often does everyone go to Disney having kids in school? Do you take them out? Do you go over holidays? Long weekends? How do you make Disney work in your life with school?

We go in the summer, which is the "new black", in terms of being the new lower crowd time to go to WDW.

My kids have 180 instructional days per year. That means, they have 185 free days every year. You can go to Disney as much as you want, but as PP mentioned, summer, Christmas, holidays are crowded, so it becomes an issue of the "when."

Summer is actually now less crowded than fall, winter holidays and spring break. We went in late July 2016 and were stunned at how low the crowds were & how short the waits were, and how relatively easy it was to make ADRs only a month in advance...

The Disney resorts are also cheaper in summer than at most other times of year.

 

[Momoftwins+1]

We got in early summer ( late June because west coast schools get out late June )

First few years of elementary wouldn't be terribly bad to miss once for a trip but not repetitively...school is important and that needs to be taught early on.

Now with kids in Jr and Sr high during school is an absolute no go! Classes have too much volume of work to be made up especially at highschool level. Our HS sophomore misses enough classes already for school reasons like academic competitions etc keeping up with AP classes and activities just does not make vacation feasible during non breaks possible.

 

[stace1214]

It won't be hard for your kiddo to stay caught up if missing school for the first couple years. Once third and fourth grade hit, the work seems to pile on and instruction moves fast. Missing school might be more work than it's actually worth. It's going to take more points for sure, but school breaks and summer aren't bad times to go.

 

[holden]

My kids are older (10 and 15). We visit WDW at least twice a year, sometimes more. I won't make them miss more than a day of school per trip. We do our trips in summer or around school holidays.

 

[Deb & Bill]

When my son was in middle school he asked us not to schedule any more trips while he was in school because he had a hard time catching up when we returned. So we limited our trips to when he was out of school. One trip always started the day he got out of school for the summer. He would get out early in the day and we'd leave right then.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

I think a key reason that we never fell behind or were stressed about catching up was because my parents and when when old enough us girls spoke to our teachers 3 weeks in advance and asked them if they would be able to give us homework early so we could work on it a few days ahead of time and then anything that we didn't finish we would do when we got back.
In elementary school often times it was just a packet of worksheets and then middle/high school they would give us the minimum of what we needed so instead of giving us 20 math problems of the same thing they'd give 10 because they knew if we understood it it would only take 10 and if we didn't understand making us do 20 when we couldn't ask the teacher questions wasn't gonna help.
Many other classes would just give notes and tell us to study and take the test when we returned.
I think with technology now a days its much easier to work ahead or even on the go.

 

[Shanti]

I think a key reason that we never fell behind or were stressed about catching up was because my parents and when when old enough us girls spoke to our teachers 3 weeks in advance and asked them if they would be able to give us homework early so we could work on it a few days ahead of time and then anything that we didn't finish we would do when we got back.

It's a strain on teachers when parents ask for advance work packets to accommodate their vacations. It takes time to put those together, figuring out what to assign the child before the class's lesson plans for those future dates have even been written. It takes often an hour or more to plan them per child, and an hour or more to grade them, for a teacher who already has a heavy workload. And when multiple parents request this, as often happens nowadays, it just gets unreasonable. Especially when you consider the fact that many children end up returning to school without that work completed anyway.

I'm a teacher and our district now has a no-advance assignments/no make-up assignments policy for family vacations taken on school days, because the numbers of them have gotten so high. The kids don't get zeros for missed work or anything, their grades are simply averaged without those assignments. In theory, their parents are supposed to catch them up on missed content, but in reality, that typically isn't going to happen and is still extra work for the teachers. With state testing in math, reading & science and strict accountability standards, we're held responsible for each child knowing the content, regardless of how many vacation days the child took while instruction was going on.

That's a lot of unpaid extra work to ask someone else to do to accommodate your vacation.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

It's a strain on teachers when parents ask for advance work packets to accommodate their vacations. It takes time to put those together, figuring out what to assign the child before the class's lesson plans for those future dates have even been written. It takes often an hour or more per child, for a teacher who already has a heavy workload. And when multiple parents request this, as often happens nowadays, it just gets unreasonable. Especially when you consider the fact that many children end up returning to school without that work completed anyway.

I'm a teacher and our district now has a no-advance assignments/no make-up assignments policy for family vacations, because the numbers of them have gotten so high. The kids don't get zeros for missed work or anything, their grades are simply averaged without those assignments. In theory, their parents are supposed to catch them up on missed content, but in reality, that typically isn't going to happen and is still extra work for the teachers. With state testing in math, reading & science and strict accountability standards, we're held responsible for each child knowing the content, regardless of how many vacation days the child took while instruction was going on.

An established teacher generally knows what they are doing as they follow what they've done in previous years.
My sister is a teacher and she could hand a kid homework for a few months from now.
Its not to say she doesn't come up with new things each year but she has many things that she has saved on the computer and can print off at any time.
BTW we almost always did our work ahead of time or on vacation during relax days so not having it done was not a problem.
My parents would not have taken us out each year if we fell behind.
In our district the only "consequence" is you can't go to a school dance if you miss more than a few days in the marking period. I was much happier going on vacation than to a dance so not a problem.

 

[Shanti]

An established teacher generally knows what they are doing as they follow what they've done in previous years.
My sister is a teacher and she could hand a kid homework for a few months from now.
Its not to say she doesn't come up with new things each year but she has many things that she has saved on the computer and can print off at any time.

That's in a district that doesn't have to meet continuously evolving state standards and instructional practice. Our plans are written as a team and change significantly year to year, as we continuously fine tune and improve instruction, integrate new technologies and instructional practices, and meet altered state standards. Frankly, it sounds like a lower-quality school, where a teacher's instruction isn't evolving under a continuous improvement model, and where student work routinely takes the form of worksheet packets.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

That's in a district that doesn't have to meet continuously evolving state standards and instructional practice. Our plans are written as a team and change significantly year to year, as we continuously fine tune and improve instruction, integrate new technologies and instructional practices, and meet altered state standards. Frankly, it sounds like a lower-quality school, where a teacher's instruction isn't evolving under a continuous improvement model, and where student work routinely takes the form of worksheet packets.

I'm in NYS so pretty strict.
My sister works in the Williamsville Central School district which is pretty well known for having very high test scores and its a pretty diverse district with many many programs.
My sister is a co leader for FBLA, Masterminds, and Science Olympiad. So lots of academics as well as sports going on in her district.
Teachers must also go to a certain number of classes each year that provide them with new technology and teaching techniques.
They change things that need to be changed and don't fix things that aren't broken.

 

[robinb]

We went twice a year. Once over Christmas/NYE and once over the summer. It worked for us. I only took my DD out of school once for a vacation and that was to Japan. She started a week late. I don't think it's a big deal to take kids out of school for a week when they are younger as long as the teacher and school district is OK with it. Once they hit middle school, though, it's too hard for kids to keep up after missing that much school.

 

[loves to dive]

My son and I started going when he was just shy of 3, we went every other year after that until about 4 years ago when he started going with me every year, I go at least twice a year, once with him and once by myself (he's an adult now). When he started school we would go in August just before school started back again. I was a single mom so it took me two years to save or we would have gone more often than we did. I wouldn't have taken him out of school for it but if I could have afforded it, we certainly would have gone during breaks.

 

[disprincess2213]

I truly appreciate all of these responses- so helpful. DD will be in Kindergarten this coming year and we are hoping to do 2 weeks off- a total of 8 days with holidays that we are planning. We are SO new to this and have no idea of how it works. We know that our vacations now have to work around her and her school. I also am aware that in a few years, game changer (and harder as time goes on). We LOVE our family trips to Disney and cherish every moment. We hate for it to have to end (going so much during the year) but hope to just modify the times we go. Thank you all so much and any other experiences are truly appreciated!!

 

[quandrea]

We homeschool so we travel when we want. Even do school while away on our three week Disney stints!

Dd will enter regular high school in September and she will not be taking school time off any more for Disney. I’ll take her and her siblings in August. She already will miss for swimming so missing for Disney isn’t possible.

Dd was in school for grades one and two. We took her out then quite a bit. She was a good student and it never affected her work.

I’m a teacher and I’m sometimes really disappointed when I see how much instructional time is wasted during a school day. I think that is, in part at least, why missing school was not a big deal for dd. They just didn’t accomplish all that much in the one or two weeks she missed.

 

[MainMom]

We took our kids out of school up until my oldest was in 5th grade. They are in advanced and AP classes and once middle school hit, it was just too stressful on them. Now we have sports, band and other things to plan around. So we stick to school breaks and summer.

DD is 16 and really wants to see WDW at Christmas. However, when I mention the crowds she’s not too keen on it. Maybe when she’s in college we can work on that.