S/0 vacation planning. How far out do you plan?

[teatimefor2]

It depends on the trip, honestly. For a long haul two week trip, we might book it six months out or more, but just going to the Caribbean and within the US, definitely less.

[pupcake]

Since I need to request vacation a year in advance if I want any hope of getting off, we plan our vacations early. We have known for a couple months that next year in October we want to go to Vegas. I will request probably two weeks off for a one week vacation this way our departure and return days are flexable and then I will cancel what days off I don't need when we book the trip.

[Deleted]

We mentally plan out our vacation days up to a year in advance but we don't necessarily buy the tickets until 3-4 months out.

We plan a little bit further out now that we have a kid because we're less flexible. We planned our trip to Japan just two months before we left. But we would have literally gone almost anywhere in the world. With DD, we're a bit more limited.

[chicago]

It depends, but I'd say 9 months out is the average. I can only travel during school breaks though.

[magpie]

it depends. We usually plan 9-12 months in advance, but tend to book 6 months out. We are both on academic schedules, so there's really only one time when we can travel (summer). I like to have an idea of what we're doing in the summer 6 months in advance so that I can look forward to it

[magpie]

oh, but for little weekends and 4-5 day trips, we'll plan those a month or two in advance. Usually, we just drive to LA or fly to SF to visit friends/family, so there's not a lot of planning/booking involved.

[catbus]

General considerations? Six months, maybe. Actual nailing down details? 2-3 months.

[Deleted]

We used to plan a few months out but now much farther considering we already booked Disney for Nov 15 last.month lol

[grosnl19]

Maybe a month or two. We are coming to the States for a wedding in mid-October and still haven't booked our tickets yet.

[ECB]

Depends on the trip. But in general, we have an idea of where we want to go and when about a year out. But making official plans will depend - tickets usually a couple months out. If we have to rent a house- depends on the time of year on how far out we need to do that.

[dojo]

Lurker from April 2012 chiming in. We start thinking about it really early (usually about two years, but we don't go on many vacations and we often borrow my parent's time share which means we need to ask to go before anyone else does or they make plans of their own). We start saving then too. In terms of purchases, it will depend. Our next vacation is Disney in two weeks. I researched it and a lot of people seemed to think that flights to Orlando are cheapest if you book far in advance. We booked ours at the earliest opportunity (13 months I think). I haven't monitored flight prices carefully since booking but looking on Expedia now I paid roughly $60 less per person a year ago.

[ginkgoleaf]

Depends on the trip. Usually we just go to see family, a 2-3 hour flight, and we book as soon as we can nail down the dates. Right now we're not booking anything past Christmas since we're TTC and DH couldn't get time approved for next year yet anyway. We just booked a cruise for after thanksgiving and haven't booked Christmas flights yet. So 3-5 months is prob average for us.

[dragonfly08]

We started planning our last vacation - 2 weeks in Greece - a little over a year out. That's when SIL announced she was getting married there. But we didn't book flights until 6-7 months in advance. We only needed two nights in a hotel (the rest of the time was at my ILs condo) and didn't book those until about 4 months out.

Next summer we're planning Universal Studios, b/c DD will be 11 and *really* wants to go to WWoHP. We're talking about it already, looking into what we've got in hotel points and frequent flyer miles, but not making any reservations yet.

[lolo]

It depends. In the past year, we have:

Booked flights for Christmas six and four months in advance

Booked a trip to see family two weeks in advance

Booked a family vacation two months in advance

I would prefer to book some things further in advance, at least booking off the days, but that is not DH's style.

Next year will be tough because we have two Boston weddings so we will have to figure out what can work.

[cinco]

Usually 6 months in advance.

[mrsGreeko]

We use miles to book tickets do we book as early as we can. If I have DHs drill schedule for the next year and the dates have been opened up for miles I'm good to go. We booked for Hawaii 11 months out, the outer banks around 9 months out.

Then we just hope and pray they DH can go with us. . I'm currently chomping at the bit to schedule next years, but don't have DHs drill schedule yet and it's driving me nuts.

[whitepicketfence]

It's really hard for me to schedule time off from work so we have to plan at least 1-1.5 years out if I'm going to need more than a day or two off.