Who does the vacation, date night, etc planning in your relationship?

[dislaney]

All me.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

For vacation part of the excitement is that we both plan together.

There are 2 exceptions: Vegas my husband has over the trips there taken the lead. He has found he really loves that place and while I do like it I know he gets excited about looking at where to eat, other things we can do, etc. For Disney I have been the primary planner but I always rope my husband in things like what places would he potentially like to eat at, what rides would he like to go on, etc. For this May trip I'm roping my husband in even more and with the Genie+, LL stuff asked for him to be more up and up on that. He actually started watching and learning stuff on that before I even asked so it all worked out. Our vacations are almost always a joint venture. I wouldn't enjoy a trip really if I felt like my husband didn't do much into it. It's our trip not just mine IYKWIM.

We don't really do date nights TBH. It's pretty rare. I think it's because we don't really call them date nights if we decide to go to the movies or dinner out but we both sorta plan that too. Sometimes it's like "hey did you want to see that movie in theaters" and other times it's like "hey we have a gift card want to go to that restaurant" or "I'm craving __ want to go" so not quite planning it out but at any given time one of us may suggest something. Our anniversary is the one time we do go out to eat and we both voice input on where we would like to go.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I love to travel and to plan trips. I spend a lot of time researching and Google mapping where I am going. It is part of the excitement for me.

lol this is totally my husband and I.

Who knew that staring at google maps, street view, aerial view, and all would be so exciting but it is. But I'll say one of my things I do at Disney is get the paper maps and I can occupy my time while my husband is riding a ride I don't want to go on with those maps (aside from people watching).

We like the researching bit too. There's always room for us to change on the fly, drop something, switch it all up and we've had to employ that in vacations past but we do like a good plan. For Disney I had a whole 3 ring binder of word and excel docs, for our Vegas trips my husband has done an excel rough "schedule" of things. My mom just laughs at us because of that although when she went to Vegas with us one time she was all about the shows so in that respect she was really on top of when and what shows we were going to see.

 

[CallieMar]

lol this is totally my husband and I.

Who knew that staring at google maps, street view, aerial view, and all would be so exciting but it is. But I'll say one of my things I do at Disney is get the paper maps and I can occupy my time while my husband is riding a ride I don't want to go on with those maps (aside from people watching).

We like the researching bit too. There's always room for us to change on the fly, drop something, switch it all up and we've had to employ that in vacations past but we do like a good plan. For Disney I had a whole 3 ring binder of word and excel docs, for our Vegas trips my husband has done an excel rough "schedule" of things. My mom just laughs at us because of that although when she went to Vegas with us one time she was all about the shows so in that respect she was really on top of when and what shows we were going to see.

I love researching and DH does not. I have so many potential restaurants for an upcoming trip saved lol! I will ask him if he’s interested in the stuff I’ve bookmarked. Occasionally I will get a hard no but for the most part he is open to my suggestions because more often than not, he ends up enjoying something I’ve planned that he never would have thought of. I do have a spreadsheet with a day by day itinerary but I mainly use it as a guideline so we’re not sitting around trying to figure out what to do. I am pretty flexible in moving stuff around as need be or just nixing something altogether. I’m also realistic on how much we can actually get done.

Frankly one of the reasons we haven’t gone to WDW yet is the amount of planning needed. I am a DL girl and it’s the one vacation where I can do minimal planning. So to have to do so much more planning is putting me off.

 

[Moliphino]

lol this is totally my husband and I.

Who knew that staring at google maps, street view, aerial view, and all would be so exciting but it is. But I'll say one of my things I do at Disney is get the paper maps and I can occupy my time while my husband is riding a ride I don't want to go on with those maps (aside from people watching).

We recently discovered city walk throughs on YouTube. So helpful to get a feel of places you haven't been and also nice to watch and reminisce about places you have been and loved.

 

[disney212]

100% me. I do run it by DH so he can request vacation.

 

[soccerdad72]

My younger son (16) made a comment that I appreciated over Christmas break. We went on a short trip to Punta Cana with another family after Christmas, a trip that our friends pretty much planned out and we just went along with whatever they chose. The trip was fine, but my son made the comment before we had even left on the trip that he "wished that Dad planned the trip out. He always does such a great job of planning out trips."

 

[lovesmurfs]

We recently discovered city walk throughs on YouTube. So helpful to get a feel of places you haven't been and also nice to watch and reminisce about places you have been and loved.

Agree. And if you haven't tried it, yet, this website is really great for planning your visit. https://www.visitacity.com/ Really helped me with London.

 

[CindysMice]

Definitely me who plans the vacations. 50/50 who comes up with the idea for the vacation. I know DH well enough to know what he wants to do and not do and what he will try. I ask lots of questions and assign some “homework” which is usually “hey watch this video tonight or else” lol. If he ever grumps about a plan or something while on the trip I politely remind him that he rather me plan. He knows everythingggg we were doing before we leave and he has plenty of time to voice concerns.

We also rarely do official date nights. Maybe a couple times a year. Date night to us means dressing up. Usually when my parents are in town we take a night to ourselves. He usually comes up with the ideas and I execute.

 

[CallieMar]

Agree. And if you haven't tried it, yet, this website is really great for planning your visit. https://www.visitacity.com/ Really helped me with London.

This website is new to me, thank you! Another tool to use for planning my upcoming trip.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I love researching and DH does not. I have so many potential restaurants for an upcoming trip saved lol! I will ask him if he’s interested in the stuff I’ve bookmarked. Occasionally I will get a hard no but for the most part he is open to my suggestions because more often than not, he ends up enjoying something I’ve planned that he never would have thought of. I do have a spreadsheet with a day by day itinerary but I mainly use it as a guideline so we’re not sitting around trying to figure out what to do. I am pretty flexible in moving stuff around as need be or just nixing something altogether. I’m also realistic on how much we can actually get done.

Frankly one of the reasons we haven’t gone to WDW yet is the amount of planning needed. I am a DL girl and it’s the one vacation where I can do minimal planning. So to have to do so much more planning is putting me off.

I totally understand about WDW. With all the new stuff I was totally down for more help for this upcoming trip. Most of our stuff is already figured out from 2017 trip but there's new things at Universal to explore and a few new things at WDW. We went to DLR twice in 2019 and I had told (and well many other posters feel the same way too) that if you've done WDW then DLR feels like a breeze, it's like WDW is the ultimate so other parks don't feel quite as hard, but it's hard to do the opposite just because WDW can feel so daunting.

It was different getting used to MP at DLR just because of needing to purchase something and the way the FP distributions were like the old way at WDW where it was just next time available vs WDW where you picked what you wanted but using an app to get your FPs and stuff was the same. It was super nice at DLR to have the 2 parks next to each other like it is a Universal Orlando (bonus you can ride Hogwarts Express between the two).

 

[GreatLakes]

My wife usually plans date nights, at least the time and dates, since she is who generally arranges babysitting. I do the majority of the vacation planning but she is involved in the overall details.

 

[disneyseniors]

My husband and I discuss various destinations we would like to go to. Then we narrow it down to a place and a time frame. We always agree. When it was disney only, I would do all the planning using a travel agent. But now that we are not planning on going back to disney in the near future, we have agreed to 2 other trips this spring. I do most of the planning and all the packing. I don't mind doing either. If I left the packing to my husband, he would have one pair of undies and sox and one shirt. Sooooo, I don't mind

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

We recently discovered city walk throughs on YouTube. So helpful to get a feel of places you haven't been and also nice to watch and reminisce about places you have been and loved.

Def. a great idea, youtube is so great for that stuff, easy to save or create playlists, swap out videos, etc

 

[Boopuff]

Me. Now that my oldest DD has become a planner we usually work together to plan our dis trips. She’s the spreadsheet type, while I research restaurants, rides etc.
our non-Disney trips I plan it all. I love to plan our road trips (we rv so rarely fly). I love those oddball places to stop and my DH loves that we get to see some great out of the way places.

 

[CallieMar]

I totally understand about WDW. With all the new stuff I was totally down for more help for this upcoming trip. Most of our stuff is already figured out from 2017 trip but there's new things at Universal to explore and a few new things at WDW. We went to DLR twice in 2019 and I had told (and well many other posters feel the same way too) that if you've done WDW then DLR feels like a breeze, it's like WDW is the ultimate so other parks don't feel quite as hard, but it's hard to do the opposite just because WDW can feel so daunting.

It was different getting used to MP at DLR just because of needing to purchase something and the way the FP distributions were like the old way at WDW where it was just next time available vs WDW where you picked what you wanted but using an app to get your FPs and stuff was the same. It was super nice at DLR to have the 2 parks next to each other like it is a Universal Orlando (bonus you can ride Hogwarts Express between the two).

Yeah, we had been DLR AP holders for several years, so other than strategizing over a new ride, there was very little planning that needed to be done besides booking a hotel. We could basically wing it knowing it’s so easy to go back. Probably the most work I did is checking out the updated menus and figuring out what we wanted to try. As you can tell eating is a big part of our vacations lol. I think we’ll get to WDW someday, but there’s so many other places that we’re trying to get to first.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Yeah, we had been DLR AP holders for several years, so other than strategizing over a new ride, there was very little planning that needed to be done besides booking a hotel. We could basically wing it knowing it’s so easy to go back. Probably the most work I did is checking out the updated menus and figuring out what we wanted to try. As you can tell eating is a big part of our vacations lol. I think we’ll get to WDW someday, but there’s so many other places that we’re trying to get to first.

haha we go to Vegas for the food and Bellagio fountains. We've done the shows in the past but our 2019 trip only had 1 show, our two 2021 trips had none. It's the food and the fountains Okay maybe some others things too but let me tell you so much of our research is "hmm wanna try out this restaurant??"

And agreed about getting to so many other places, I like going back to places that I really like (which have been just a handful) but with so many other adventures to be had it's fun to plan vacations to places we've not been before too.