Family Travel Resources

Both my cousin's rave review about a simple but effective hotel experience and my own desire to figure out how my family will spend spring break has got me googling. I have been looking for family-friendly resorts as well as good ideas on how to spend spring break with a six year old and two five year olds (and a mom and dad who would love a tiny chance to relax sometime during the week).

I haven't solved my personal dilemma (has anyone ever really solved the dilemma of getting relaxation time for mom and dad? Or is that just called "death"?), but I have found some very useful sites and blogs for family-friendly travel. Hopefully they are useful to you, too:

1) familyvacationcritic.com: Family Vacation Critic was a great find. With lengthy lists of family resorts around the world, oodles of travel tips, and a section on deals, it had pretty much everything I was looking for. My only complaint is some pages are "thin" in their content. For instance, I checked out Salt Lake City, just out of curiosity, and the three scant paragraphs and little bullet list just didn't cover it. But I was looking for a resort, and the list of resorts worldwide was lengthy and helpful.

The Family Vacation Critic Blog: The blog section of familyvacationcritic.com was fine, but the collection of links to helpful family travel sites was very good.

2) TripAdvisor.com: Family Vacation Critic is actually a "Trip Advisor Site." We use Trip Advisor all the time when planning trips. It's an excellent and comprehensive review site for hotels around the world. We always check reviews and "Top Hotels" lists for destinations we are considering. It is difficult to search the site specifically for "family friendly" accommodations (which is a weakness they should fix), but individual hotels can be reviewed based on their family friendliness. So you can find out of a specific hotel or resort is good for the family or better for just the two of you.

3) Parents Magazine List of 10 Best Family Resorts (and 50 Runners Up): This was published in 2006, so it may be dated in the details, but I still found it to be very helpful and pretty comprehensive for U.S. family resorts. In fact, I recently went to one of the runners up (Enchantment in Sedona, AZ) and my husband and I definitely want to take the kids back for a visit. So it gives me confidence that the other suggestions might not be far from the mark.

4) Kidventurous.com: A family travel blog with destination-specific information as well as various tips for adventurous travel with the fam. For instance, the post for today was about city guide apps -- a great thing to have, especially if you are visiting a new and unfamiliar city.

5) FamilyTravel.com: A well-organized site that broke down family travel into sections such as "Family Camps," "Beach Vacations," "Voluntourism," and "Eco Travel." But the best section of this site was "Trips by Age," which grouped trips best for various age groups -- from infants to teens.

6) TakingTheKids.com: Another travel blog with several good ideas. I was especially drawn to the "Super Spring Breaks" page, given my current need for a super spring break. But there were other helpful pages. The blog seemed a little self-promoting of the woman who author's the blog, but I suppose that's her prerogative as long as the blog provides the information she claims it does. (And it seems to.)

There are so many more, but these were a few I found helpful.

As for me, I'm still doing my research. Where will we go, where will we go?