HOW?!

[Texans_loyal]

I am jealous of all this PTO!

 

[BadPinkTink]

I am jealous of all this PTO!

move to Europe, Mcdonads, Starbucks, KFC, Forever 21 and all the other employees of American companies in Europe get 24 days of paid vacation days every year!

 

[Texans_loyal]

move to Europe, Mcdonads, Starbucks, KFC, Forever 21 and all the other employees of American companies in Europe get 24 days of paid vacation days every year!

Wow, and to think these American companies only give their American employees 10 days/year.

 

[BadPinkTink]

@Texans_loyal so basically the minimum wage burger flipper in McDonalds get more paid vacation days than someone earning double their wage in an office in America!!

 

[Texans_loyal]

@Texans_loyal so basically the minimum wage burger flipper in McDonalds get more paid vacation days than someone earning double their wage in an office in America!!

Oh the irony...that is insane.

 

[Ddaba1]

#1 Have a job with tons of vacation and hopefully they let you use it LOL
#2 Buy enough DVC points if you want to go every year.
#3 Buy annual passes and use them two years (yes you can do that depending when you buy/use them)
#4 Have a secondary job where you can supplement your vacation income.
#5 Get a good tax return from IRS and use it to buy airfare/annual passes instead of charging LOL!

 

[BriLovesDisney]

Buying annual passes help, as well as not eating at as many TS. Most of it comes down to job income though.

I don't think I would want to be in Disney for longer than 8 days, to be honest.

 

[Catvondita]

Also the people who go for 2-3 weeks and stay at deluxes the whole time. Do any of them want to adopt a 28 year old lady with a husband??? I have nothing to offer but my self deprecating jokes and I make some pretty good pasta.

 

[BriLovesDisney]

Also the people who go for 2-3 weeks and stay at deluxes the whole time. Do any of them want to adopt a 28 year old lady with a husband??? I have nothing to offer but my self deprecating jokes and I make some pretty good pasta.

I make good baked goods if you can find a family that will adopt me too LOL

 

[KrazeeK120]

I don't understand how you all have the TIME to go! Meaning how do you get so much dedicated time off work? Even if you get a few weeks of vacation, isn't some used up with taking care of sick kids, travelling to visit family at the holidays, child care over the summer, covering teacher institute days at your kids' school? DH gets a few weeks off each year, but it is impossible to use that time EXCLUSIVELY for vacation. So many days get frittered away here-and-there by.... you know, LIFE. Grown up things. Staying home to meet the plumber. Taking grandma to the dr.

Don't get me wrong.. I'm happy for everyone. I just couldn't fathom how to make it work in practical terms.

I agree. I’m a stay at home mom and our son isn’t in school yet. My husband gets plenty of PTO (and he never has to cover for a sick kid or a plumber visit), but there’s no way he’d be able to take 2 consecutive weeks off from his job and ever get caught back up! It’s difficult for him to even take 1 week! He mostly takes a day here and a day there.

 

[RocketCityMama]

We are going for 2 weeks this summer, staying one week at a Disney resort and a week at my fil's timeshare (free to us) with 10 day park hoppers. We have only done 6 days in the past for any trip but we knew that the next time we were at Disney we would want nearly 2 weeks of park time. There is a lot to do there, and this way we aren't trying to stuff it into 5 days and be exhausted by the last day. This allows us to have more downtime, sleep in occasionally, enjoy the pool etc.

In regard to time off, I am a sahm, my dh gets 4 weeks a year plus a certain number of holidays. We typically use 1.5-2 weeks for vacation and the rest is banked and used for personal time off, illness etc.

 

[mrsap]

.

 

[happymommy]

I don't think it's only a matter of income, but rather how you choose to spend your vacation time and money.

I've taken my kids (just the 3 of us) for 15 nights, and I live in Maryland. We flew the last 2 weeks of August for minimal cost (maybe $600 or less total round trip). Our rental car was $250 total. I got us Interval International "getaways" (we own a Marriott timeshare) for a combination of Grande Vista and Sabal Palms for about $700 total. I cashed in Marriott points for gift cards, which I used to pay for our tickets the first place (Grande Vista allows this; Sabal Palms does not). I cooked in almost every meal; only sit down one we did was at Macaroni Grill nearby. We brought a cooler to the water parks, with sandwiches and drinks. We only did counter service at the parks. The whole trip was $2,000 or a bit more. Seriously.

I'm a stay at home mom, so have time to scout deals. I also have time to take my kids while my DH stays home and works.

I know folks who spend lots of clothing, buy new cars more often than I do. I like vacations, and take a lot of them. Already this year my DH and I have been to Mexico, I'm going to Disney with my youngest on Monday, DH and I are going to Mexico in April, then he and I are going to Disney in May. We're 51, have saved and can afford it, and he's approaching retirement.

When we were in our 20's, of course we couldn't afford what we can now, but we've been cautious with money so can do so now.

 

[JerseyJanice]

My job is the only thing stopping me from staying for two+ weeks. I get 4 weeks of vacation per year, but I have too many responsibilities to be gone from the office for more than a week and a half at a time.

Transportation expense is almost the same whether you go 4 nights or 14 and whether you’re driving or flying. Tickets cost less per day for every day you add. If I were going for a longer trip, I’d consider purchasing the water park option for my ticket. I would schedule some non-park days there and at the resort pool and Disney Springs.

If you can get a good hotel rate, why not stay longer?

 

[disneyvoice]

I'm sure the reasons that people are able to go for extended periods are varied. Unfortunately I think there are way more people who are going into debt for a WDW vacation of ANY length than those who are able to financially afford it, but that's their choice. We have taken vacations of up to 10 days which was glorious but in general we typically limit ourselves to 7 or 8 days because we just don't WANT to spend more money than than that since we go several times a year. Could we? Yes. But we choose not to.

We are very lucky because my husband works from home and has pretty much unlimited vacation days. He keeps his phone with him in case something is going on that needs his immediate attention and he often schedules early morning conference calls (having lots of international employees makes that a pretty easy option) and if there is a meeting that he absolutely needs to call into we just schedule our day around that or he finds a quiet place to call from (he always gets excited comments from staff when they "hear" WDW in the background). We are pretty laid back on our WDW vacations these days so "working" a bit on vacation just isn't a big deal. I have also been a stay at home mom so my schedule is entirely flexible for the most part.

I will add that although we are able to go to on multiple trips a year we decided that it makes more sense for us to move close to WDW so we can go all the time and not have to spend as much money. We are currently building a house and moving there in July. We had planned to retire somewhere close to WDW but we decided to do it a few years early.

 

[ENJDisneyFan]

We are currently building a house and moving there in July. We had planned to retire somewhere close to WDW but we decided to do it a few years early.

You're my hero!

 

[pigletgirl]

We make payments with our trips. It’s budgeted into our monthly expenses. My husband and I collectively decide what we can afford and go from there. Sometimes it means cutting back on what we want in Disney.

 

[Queen-Bee]

You save for it. You choose wisely. If you can afford to do it every year, great! If you can't then you may have to choose between shorter yearly trips or that long one every couple of years. We all make choices with our money.

Absolutely agree with this, I have been travelling to Disney World almost every 12 months since the early 90’s when my parents took me. They saved and saved to be able to take me and now my fiancée and I do the same thing.


I didn’t go last year to be able to have a longer trip this time, Our Honeymoon in October is 1 week in Disneyland CA and 2 weeks at WDW.


We don’t drink or smoke and we don’t eat out a lot, I don’t want it to sound like we don’t have lives when we are at home but I always think to myself that the money could be spent on WDW and trips and that fuels my “need” to save to go back.

 

[SaintsManiac]

We went for 11 days last November and honestly, it was enough. If we were to ever go that long again we would have to stay in a condo. Even a deluxe room gets old after a week. We timed it with Thanksgiving, so school and work was out already for part of it. We saved up for 2 years for it. We sacrifice a lot in order to take vacations.

I don't want to go anywhere for 3 weeks, even Disney. I have pets and a routine at home.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Our max on days gone is 10-11 normally it's 7-10 days and that's utilizing 2 weekends but 1 M-F work week. We don't have kids yet but we have other financial commitments. We largely live debt free with the exception of student loans, a mortgage and using a credit card (but paying normal payments) for reward points.

We typically go on vacation each year but we are usually looking at it from a budget friendly standpoint. We wouldn't be able to go to WDW for 2-3 weeks unless we saved for several years AND my husband was done with his current project and not yet assigned to another one. He has the vacation time for sure but he just can't use such a large chunk while on a project. Otherwise it's not a true 2-3 week vacation because he would need to be able to do work at various times during that long of a vacation and it wouldn't be feasible when you need to have conference calls with people in China, Germany, Mexico, etc. His project managers, while normally lax, wouldn't approve that long of a vacation if he was needed.