Post-mortem

   Summer Vacation  Project FAIL....

      Picture it, a tropical vacation, a cruise ship, two single mom's with their teenage sons, setting out for the "BEST" summer vacation ever. A few years ago one of my best friends and I decided that we were going to go on a summer vacation. We sat down and came up with our project plan, hard to believe you would need a project plan for a vacation, but you don't know me. I have never been able to actually take a vacation, money is always my issue. So here we were, we decided we were going to take a family vacation for the summer.

    We sat down one winter night and tossed around what type of vacation, so we priced Disney, Disney cruises, an all inclusive trip to Mexico, a trip to the Virgin Islands, or a cruise. We proposed the ideas to our team (families) the vote was for a cruise. Now we had to come up with a budget. Our budget was $1600 per family (family size is 2 and there are 2 families). We divided the work up, we had a project manager, drivers, supporters and even an observer or two that were outside the project team. 

      Most of us took our job seriously, we did our research on airfare, hotel costs, planned excursions, chose destinations, researched cruise lines, we wanted to get the absolute best deal for our money. Various factors would come up along the way, but we had our budget, plan and we were determined to make this work. However, we quickly found out that if you don't get buy in from all parties, including some very vocal observers, you will get more headaches and eventually the entire project can begin to fall apart. 

        Our project was moving along swimmingly for several months, we had chosen the cruise line, we had picked a few options for location, we were working on dates, this is where we started to lose control, the best friends ex husband, father of one of the teenagers going on the trip. He wasn't buying in to our project, when it would come time for us to run date options by him, he would often delay his responses, or not respond, sometimes would agree to a time frame only to come back with a no, we would come up with another option, and then would meet with budget constraints. In the end the family vacation was never taken. It is still a goal and I am hoping that in the next few years my son and I can go on a cruise, hopefully before he graduates high school.