It seems to be common practice that when people schedule a vacation they typically depart on the weekend and arrive back the following weekend. I suppose the logic is that you use the least amount of vacation days. However, I have several reasons why I prefer to do it during the week:
Flight Prices
I don’t want to make a grandiose statement of “Everybody knows that you should travel on Tuesdays” because I don’t like to assume things, because I’m usually the one who didn’t know that allegedly obvious fact. Also, it’s not always true. I have learned that a big part of traveling is the ability to be flexible. If your flight is going to be 100 dollars a day before or after your initial trip—if you can afford the extra stay at the hotel—you should take it.
For my most recent trip to Disney I had a layover in Baltimore for an hour. My travel agent (who luckily is my boyfriend’s aunt so we were casually telling her our plans) told us this was a terrible idea. Airlines have become quite unreliable lately and if it is even a little late departing we are going to miss our connector flight and never start our vacation. She instead suggested we go a day early and get another flight that had no layover. Unfortunately that flight is at 7am, meaning we’ll leave at about 5am, but I’m hoping the excitement of Disney will keep me awake to make it through the day.
My point is flight times, usually, are going to be lower during the week for the exact reason you’re hesitant to do so. Weekends are peoples’ times off and no one wants to waste their time on a weekday traveling. I see this opposite.
Time to Pack
I’ve had two couples have vacations recently go from Saturday–Saturday. And both admitted to having issues packing. This is something I think people overlook. I like taking my time packing because I am a little obsessive and want to make sure I have everything. I’ve had my list for Disney set for months now; but you don’t have to be exactly like me.
I will advise considering using the weekend to pack though; how many times have you forgotten something because you panicked packing? Sure, you could pack during the week, after work, and cooking, taking care of your kids, doing any personal hygiene, taking any semblance of time for yourself…you get my point.
If you leave the weekend open to pack then you have only that to really deal with, except I guess still taking care of your children. But you don’t have to worry about doing it on top of all the other things you have to during the week. Plus, if you do it early, you can realize you didn’t pack something as you compulsively check over your packing list in your head 20 times. As everyone does.
Ease Back Into Work
If you leave in the middle of the week it’s likely you will be arriving in the middle of the week as well. If you were to leave from Saturday–Saturday then you have Sunday off and then are instantly thrown into a full week of work again and it’s quite jarring. However, if you instead place your vacation in the middle of the week, sure you have to go back to work, but it’s only for half of it. Kind of like when the first week of school was always on a Wednesday and then the following week there was always a holiday. I distinctly remembering it was around week 3 where I finally had a full week back in school, and by then you’re already used to it.
Bonus Tip: Recuperating Day
This was (sadly) probably my boyfriend’s favorite part of our Disney trip: The Recuperating Day [I have now coined the phrase “Post-Vacation Relaxation. Patent-Pending]. Now this day is probably unnecessary if your vacation was all about rest and relaxation, but if you have a trip that requires a lot of activity your vacation may not really feel like, well, a vacation. In comes recuperating day. Being the two introverted non-active people we are, doing about 13+ hours of walking for 8 days straight was tiring. When we came back and just had a day to do nothing was exactly what we needed. I remember my boyfriend lying on the bed saying “I love this idea”.
And after being in quarantine for over a year, working at our desks that are right up against our bed, and continuing to be the inactive people we are, I have a very high suspicion we’re going to be needing our resting day.
Plus, it pushes our go-back-to-work day to Thursday so we now barely have any work week at all!
