Wow ish holiday with teens next summer

[SB1971]

Next summer hols my DD will have just done her A levels so we would like to do something a bit different holiday wise with her DH and DS 13.
We have always done all inc apart from a
trip to NYC this year.
We can only go in school hols and not till summer cos of exams.
Budget around £8k.
Any ideas?

Road trip. West coast US/blue mountains or florida and south states. Something like that where you can do things that will appeal to different interests.

Id say something that will have elements that appeal to the 13 year old too is likely key to making it a great holiday...

With your budget and age of children I’d do Costa Rica.

Thank you-we have thought about this actually but not sure who I would book with? We haven’t really done anything like that before so any tips would be great.
I sound like a right dullard don’t I?!

Yes,this could be an option but would need some chilling out by a pool/beach time for DD-thank you!

Safari?

Caribbean cruise?

Interrailing and let the kids pick the destinations

We did BC in Canada (not with a travel agent though).

Borneo is also good at that time.

Safari

Cape Town/safari

To be honest with a budget like that I’d just go for the nicest, most luxurious all inclusive hotel you can find - maybe Mexico, heard lovely things about the Rui hotels there, or even Planet Hollywood (there’s a mix of reviews for that one but generally the Facebook pages are very positive and full of people saying how much their teens have enjoyed it). Or even somewhere like Tui Blue Aura in Ibiza or Tui Magic Life Belek and spend some of the money left over on boat trips / days out etc.

Any of the Explore or Exodus family adventure holidays. We had some amazing trips, just at the time the teens started to think they didn't want to come on holiday with us.

I’d ask the kids what they would like. We did Cape Town with mine and they loved it but it’s not the best weather then. Kruger would be decent though.

Have you asked your DD if there is somewhere she's always wanted to go OP? If she'll be 18 it could be one of the last (or the last) time you all go away on a summer holiday together.

As for your budget, 8k sounds like a lot, but actually you'll struggle to do something really fancy on that if you want to go outside Europe. A road trip around the West Coast US in the school summer holidays is around £5k per week for four people, Costa Rica for 10-14 nights is more like £12k for a family of four. So yes, go on the Tui website and put in your dates and try and few different destinations and see what you come up with.

Why TUI? All the chaos this summer would not make me go to them first. Iceland is wow. Doable on the budget if you don’t do 2 weeks.

Why Tui? Because it does a huge range of destinations inc. Mexico, Costa Rica, Caribbean, Europe, family-speciality resort hotels, and you can get a ballpark idea of prices for the various options.

You can definitely do Costa Rica for your budget if you organise it yourself rather than do a package like Tui. We were due to go for 9 nights and it was going to be 5.5k all in for a family of 4. That was flights, private driver taking us to three different locations, good hotels in each place, all activities and food.

You could also try Trailfinders, if you give them your budget and what you’d like I’m sure they’d come up with some great itineraries.

Have a look on Exodus or The Adventure People for great trip ideas ifyou all want some adventure.
People have mentioned Iceland. That is fantastic if you hire a large 4x4 to travel across the island. The different areas are so different from each other!

The chaos is due to the baggage handlers, not Tui. The chaos is across the board, Tui just seems to get mentioned more as one of the largest travel providers.

Vancouver

Also looking for something different for similar age teens so watching this thread. I thought about croatia and doing 2 areas of coast. Also Italy, however unsure what would suit them - fine balance of not just sitting on a sun bed yet not being on the go constantly that we get whinged at.

Also following as we are planning a WOW next year. So far a cruise in Hawaii has been mooted! Or NYC and a cruise.

We are at the Hard Rock in Mexico at the moment and it's great, very teen based with lots to do. This is also a post a level trip! It's on Riviera Maya so there are lots of excursions available, Maya sites, snorkeling, adventure parks etc.

Alaska /Hawaii cruise. Or med cruise. Good value and a bit of wow.

Or we flew to Niagara, train to NYC the cruise to Canada and back. 7 ports kn way

your budget is 2k per person you might get an 4 berth balcony cabin but it might be tight with four in there

We want to do similar next summer (will be post A Level and post GCSE here). Costa Rica (with some US time tagged on) seems to be the front runner.

Also discussed US West coast road trip, and a Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos trip. Also Japan.

Nothing seems particularly affordable 😭