Sorry for going anon for this one as probably quite outing. Background is I have 1 DD with ExH who is now remarried with a stepson similar age to DD. I have a DP and we have a much younger DS together. Relations between us are all excellent, we all get on very well.
Last year we started planning a big family holiday for this Easter just gone and as usual, I ran our plans past ExH before we booked anything. Turns out they had also been planning a holiday to the same destination but for 2020 to celebrate a big birthday. He apparently hadn't discussed it with me yet as it was so far away but was clearly not keen on the idea of us taking DD there before them and 'stealing their thunder. ' Anyway even though I did think it was slightly unreasonable seeing as the two holidays would be over 18 months apart, in the interest of maintaining good relations we agreed not to go. I did understand their point that it would take the shine off it being DD's first time and also could see I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed and I'd been planning something with DD that ExH then wanted to do first. He's also never been obstructive before in any of our other plans so felt like it was fair to back down on this one. It was left that we'd have to discuss it again at some point as we'd still want to go and brief mention was made of how this could maybe work with the 2020 plans.
So fast forward to now. Obviously we would still like to do this holiday (and there are good incentives in place for booking it soon). I have suggested to ExH that maybe we could look at going at similar times and splitting the time so that DD spend somes time with both of us out there. But he's completely slammed this saying that he wants me to be understanding and appreciate they are there to celebrate a big occasion and want DD with them for the whole 2 weeks.
I genuinely want honest opinions here on if what I'm asking is unreasonable. DD has never been apart from me for as long as 2 weeks before so that's one issue alone. I also feel that we have shown compromise in not going before them, even though I had been the first to discuss going. So feel there must be a way to compromise so that we both get to go to a place we want and get to spend some time there with DD (even if we don't do 50/50 and the lions share of the time is with them and only 3 or 4 days with us). Or another option could maybe be to overlap by a week so that DD is out there 3 weeks altogether although I already know that they will be planning to do the very last 2 weeks of school hols due to the date of the occassion and therefore the only option would be for her to be with us the week before they arrive so we are then back to the "first time" issue. And yes, we could go another time after them but then it would have to be the following year and we don't really want to wait that long. There's also some benefit to doing it this way in that we have some time out there with only DS so that we can do some things more suited to his age that DD wouldn't be interested in. And we would obviously be willing to pay half of DDs flight costs etc.
Or AIBU to suggest being on holiday at the same place and time as them (there'd be very very little chance of bumping in to them as its a huge place and also our plans would be quite different having a younger DS with us). I don't want to be seen as the nightmare ExW gatecrashing their holiday! Our 100% aim would be they only see us for any handover.
Thanks if you've got this far and looking forward to hearing thoughts. I genuinely want to know if this is fair before deciding what we do next. If anything.