Last holiday before school starts! Where should we go?

[puglife15]

Ds1 starts school in September so we want to go somewhere fabulous yet affordable out of season which perhaps we'd struggle to afford/is too crowded during the summer holidays... Any recommendations for places which are bargainous out of season please?

Thinking of going late May/ early June. Want something fairly relaxing where we aren't having to do a lot of cooking/cleaning.

We also have ds2 who is 1 and might be walking by the time we go.

Looking for minimum 1 week, budget max £2k incl flights, don't mind sharing a room.

Late May/early June is half term so I'd go before or after that.

The TUI Family Life hotels are great for kids. They're with Thomson/First Choice.

We went to Disneyland Paris in June last year, when DD was very nearly 4. She had a fabulous time, and consequently so did we. Not exactly beach holiday relaxing (what is with a small child?) but something we thought was best done during term time.

We went by train for 5 days (arrived Mon late afternoon, left after lunch on Saturday) but could easily have stayed a few more days. Cost was £900 ish to stay in one of the official hotels with a swimming pool (half board, which was pretty much all we ate), plus about £100 on trains for everyone.

Thanks all yes need to avoid half term. We've been the week before the past few years.

We'll check out the Tui family life holidays, thanks.

Spindelina my DS isn't into many Disney characters, he's not really into characters full stop tbh, do you think he'd still enjoy it? We did talk about going there before school actually and have friends in France we could visit afterwards.

DD was aware of Frozen (who isn't?) but not really into it - she's still not watched the film all the way through. Nor anything else Disney. We introduced her to music, characters, jigsaws, kids story books etc from a few things - Jungle book, Mickey & Minnie, Winnie the Pooh, Ratatouille, Toy Story - before we went, so she was familiar with things she saw. She was quite excited when she spotted things she recognised! Meeting the characters is probably more fun if you recognise them, but you could easily entertain yourself without meeting characters - we ended up queuing to meet Mickey and Minnie at 8am every morning (not a long queue), but that was about it.

Very few of the rides really need you to understand the theme. DDs favourites were the carousel, teacups, Casey Jr (kids roller coaster), Le Pays des Contes de Fées (sedate boats through fairy tale land), Orbitron (fairground style spaceship on sticks that you make go up and down), Autopia (life-sized scalextric), Pirates of the Caribbean (more boats but less sedate), It's a small world (she knew the music before we went), the Labyrinth (Alice-themed). And, surprisingly for a cautious child, Ratatouille and the parachute drop (can't handle peril, but apparently an adrenaline junkie!). Then there are the parades, which are completely theatrical (even if you don't recognise a single character), and the fireworks (we stayed up the first night).

Check out sensatori by Thomson, very child friendly but a few more luxury touches than family life. We've booked for 3 of us in May for £1200, same price hol in Aug is well over £3000...