Travel question for parents with small children . . .?

We are planning a family vacation overseas. We have a choice: 1. Fly direct 15 hours to our destination (no lay-overs). 2. Fly 10 hours to London, spend the night, and then continue our flight the next day. The ticket prices are almost the same. Question: Has anyone done this type of trip with young kids? What was your experience? Which would you choose? We just want to make it easiest on the kids.

I would fly 10 hrs... kids can sleep most of the way, if you can get them to.

I haven't done it, but I think I would go with the 15 hour direct flight. With the 10 hour flight and an overnight, you are creating more of a headache I would imagine. Just getting through the airport an extra time, dealing with all the bags getting to the airport and back...yuck! How old are your kids though?

I would do the 15 hour flight and get it over with. If you O/N in London, you'll still have to go through customs, find the hotel, get settled, not sleep due to jet lag and start all over again the next day. Once you're hunkered down on a long flight, 15 hours doesn't seem a lot different than 10 hours. Just make sure you put lotion on the kids (air is really dry in an airplane) and make them drink plenty of water.

I've done it both ways with just myself and I vote for the layover. I did a 6 hour layover in London on the way to Italy and you can see a lot of London in 6 hours.

yes we have done this kind of trip with our (at the time) 7 month old and 5 year old. We were flying from San Francisco to New York. We found that a non-stop trip was the best way to go our kids had plenty of snacks, color books, stories and the airline had little TVs behind the seat that I found to be most useful! good luck! We did the trip again 3 months later only that time we had a 1 hour layover in Chicago and that sucked! our kids were very unhappy and were not at all amused with the Chicago airport.

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