Have you ever been to Pennsylvania? If not you should go some time, it’s beautiful there. Rolling hills, mountains, and trees everywhere. They do have the Pennsylvania Turn Pike but I won’t hold that against them. My mother-in-law and I took the kids to Hershey Pennsylvania for a mini-vacation. We drove out the first day, spent a full day in PA, and then drove back home the last day. So, this trip was three days start to finish.
We had a lot of fun. The day we got to PA we had some time left in the evening so we went swimming in the hotel’s indoor pool. There’s something hugely fun about being in a swimming pool away from home for some reason. It was the most fun I had in a swimming pool recently 
Of course it could have just been the fact that my kids and mother were having so much fun and that was fun for me to watch.
The next day was our “big day”, this was the day we had planned to go to Chocolate Town see the sights and smell the smells. We also wanted to go see some other things around town. We ended up going to Penn Caves to take a boat ride through some caves and then a bus tour of some local wild life. Caves and wild life are fascinating and it was such a neat experience. The kids had a great time seeing all of the animals and I loved the caverns. But because of ambiguous information from the brochure regarding the distance of Penn Caves from our hotel the trip took all day and we got back too late to go to Chocolate Town. But, that’s okay because we had plenty of time in the morning to go before we left for home.
After our cave experience we holed up in our hotel room and had pizza with a movie for entertainment. The next morning, all packed up and checked out, we went to Chocolate World in Hershey PA. We went on a chocolate tour which had singing puppets and smelled like chocolate. The kids loved it. We also went to the chocolate works where the kids got to fill a sprocket with kisses to purchase. After that we went to the shop and bought some chocolate, which tastes freshers when you buy it directly from Hershey. And then we drove home. We had a great time.
But for all of the fun we had I think that we would have had even more fun doing a mini cruise. I tried to plan out our vacation to make sure we had fun excursions but for the most part, since I didn’t know the area, we ended up driving for a large part of our three day vacation. Also, because we didn’t really know what there was to do in the area we ended up spending a lot of time in the hotel trying to figure out answers to the question “so what do you want to do?”
We also spent a considerable amount of time trying to “figure out” what and where to eat which ultimately contributed to how much time we spent driving around.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes it’s great to get out and have a road trip just for the sake of getting out for a couple of days. However, this vacation was a great example of why cruising is such a great option, especially for those with kids. There is a lot to be said for having someone who knows the area you will be in plan out excursions that you and your kids might like, and arranging the transportation to those excursions. And having eating venues decided for you can make meal times a lot easier also; personally I hate that whole “I don’t care, what do you want to eat?” conversation, it takes too long and usually ends up with everyone deciding on a place where no one really wants to go just to get the decision made.
As far as the cost, on might argue that for a three day road trip the cost is much cheaper than a cruise and to this I would say probably not. You can get cruise rates that are about as low as what you might spend on a small road trip if you consider food, fuel, and lodging costs. You may spend a little more on the cruise but you would likely get an extra day of vacation and none of the hassles of the do-it-yourself vacation.
I loved our little vacation but if it’s all the same I think next time I will look around for an inexpensive cruise and cast my vote for it.