The importance of vacation DOWNTIME

We've been visiting Walt Disney World with kids since September of 2001 and while most of the time the kids have been able to roll with us and keep going, there have definitely been times where we knew they needed some downtime.

Sometimes that downtime meant time in the room for naps.  Funny how it always seemed the kids were the ones who resisted the naps the most but the adults had NO problem taking a nice little midday snooze.  Very refreshing.

Downtime can even be some time in the parks for running and playing instead of waiting in lines.  One of our favorite places to take the kids has always been the Boneyard Playground at the Animal Kingdom.  The kids always enjoy having time to run and climb and slide to their hearts content and at times it was hard to get them to leave. 

Hollywood Studios has another great playground where we've spent some time.  As the kids get older and can ride more rides, I expect we'll visit these places less and less.

Of course, pools and water parks are another great place for downtime.  During our May 2009 trip we found that the weather there for a good part of the week was in the high-80s and 90s and was just making us want to spend less time in the parks.  Instead we made it a point to tour the parks as early in the morning as possible, then head back to our room and hit the pool for a while.  Sometimes we'd have lunch in our room, sometimes we'd take some lunch down and eat by the pool.  I think it made for a much more relaxing trip and since most of our previous trips have been during off-season times when the weather was rarely HOT this was a new experience for us.  We were lucky enough to also discover on that May trip that we still had some Disney passes leftover from our 2001 trip that had unused Water Park Options on them...2 for each of us and one for Nicolas.  We used those 3 free entrances to get us into Typhoon Lagoon and just had to pay for Noelle and Noah.  It was great!


During the years we've also had a chance to do many other non-park things.  In 2009 we finally had a chance to play Disney's Mini-Golf courses which was fun.  In the past we've also rented boats to take out on Bay Lake.  Despite the many trips to Walt Disney World in the past 14 years or so, we have yet to see or do it all.  There is already a list for this upcoming trip of things to see and do at different parks that are new to some or all of us.  We'll focus on those things as well as our favorites, but we'll still try to do our best to make time for some downtime.