We are planning a trip to Disneyworld an ddue to school are limited to Christmas or summer. I hear the weather is torture in the summer but the crowds are horrible over Christmas. Any suggestions on which is the better of two less than perfect times to go?

The best advice I can give you is to take your kids out of school for a week and choose a better time to go. We've done this the last two years and have gone the 1st week in March and 1st week of November, both wonderful times weather and crowd-wise. My children's teachers were very supportive of our decision to do this. By the way, we saw many other school-age kids there, too!

Is there any long weekend that you can tack a few days onto, or a spring break? We've gone over Veteran's Day, for example, and this year we're tacking a day onto the Rosh Hoshanah holidays in mid-September to go. (Our town gets Jewish holidays off.) We take the kids out of school just one day, and that gives us four or five days.

When our kids were younger, we took them out of school for two days at a time, but now that they're in 8th and 10th grades, we feel that one day is really all we can do with any conscience.

Depending on your kids' ages, you may want to be there only about five days anyway. It's the optimal length of a trip there for us.

Veterns Day is a Sunday this year. If your school is closed on a Monday you could tack on Friday and Tuesday and still have a 5 day vacation. We went to WDW in Nov 99 and the crowds were very moderate (except Sat night at the Magic Kingdom). But we also went in Jun 2000 after school ended and though more crowded not uncomfortable by any means. MK was the most crowded, MGM and Epcot we walked onto everything with no wait. Animal Kingdom always seems crowded because of the design of the park.

My suggestion would be Nov or late June.

We did what a few others suggested: Found a Monday or Friday off and added two days. We went in late Sept. a couple years ago. The kid was off a Friday and I think a Monday also. (Something about teacher conferences...) We left Thrs. after school and came back Tuesday. Plenty of time. Crowds not too bad.

How old are your children and what all do you want to see and do? I think this makes a big difference. When our kids were elementary age, we took them out of school for a week but now that we have teenagers we do Disney during spring break. Yes, it's busy but we have never found it overwhelming. The parks stay open later and if you go with an open mind that you will NOT see everything, you'll have a great time no matter what time of year you go. Personally, if I had to choose between summer and Christmas, I'd choose Christmas because I don't know if I could tolerate the summer heat and all the walking, but whichever you decide if you plan ahead you'll do fine.