Senior Year Trip Ideas
The high school senior year includes senior year activities and events, college preparation or alternate career preparation, graduation, and some optional extras. These extras include graduation parties for your son or daughter and senior trips.
How much does a senior trip cost? Senior trips can be costly, but there are also some more reasonably priced options. There is no way to say exactly how much your trip will cost because there are so many variables. I have listed some senior trip ideas below by budget category.
High School Senior Trip Ideas
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Senior Year Trip Ideas On a Budget
There are no senior year trips that are free (unless someone is giving it to your senior as a gift), but these are some less costly options.
- Do you know anyone with a lake house or other not-too-far away vacation home? A weekend at the lake with their closest high school friends will be treasured.
- Stay Local: Is there a fun hotel in your town or one within a few hours drive? A hotel with an amazing pool or other cool amenity? The hotel may still be costly, but the travel costs will be minimized.
- A concert or other event trip: Get tickets to a concert or other event within a few hours drive and stay in a hotel nearby.
Senior Year Trip Ideas with a Larger Budget
- A step up from the friend’s lake house is renting a super nice one. Splitting the cost among several families can make it pretty affordable. A cost advantage of a rental home is the ability to prepare food rather than eating at restaurants for every meal. Check out sites like Expedia, VRBO, or AirBnB for ideas. Sharing the cost of VRBO is a great way to make a trip more budget-friendly.
- Another coveted rental home idea is one on a beach. If you live within a days drive of a beach, a long weekend at the beach is a dream for the new graduates.
- Visit a city within a days drive. Some cities are more expensive than others. I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There are several cities we can get to in a day that are not too pricey and have many fun activities, shopping, and restaurants. They include:
- Kansas City, Missouri
- Dallas, Texas
- Austin, Texas
- San Antonio, Texas
- Nashville, Tennessee: One of our sons lives in Nashville, so we have had several opportunities to check out the activities and amazing food available there. You can read my Things to Do in Nashville post.
Senior Year Trip Ideas: Expensive Options
Things start edging up in price when plane travel is added.
- Fly to a fun city or beach town.
- Disney World
- Some of the more expensive cities with tons and tons of fun things to do are New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Diego
- A 3-4 day cruise
- Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas: My daughter and I flew to Nassau with another mother and daughter. I had some airline miles and we chose one of the cheaper towers at the hotel. It was perfectly nice. No one spends too much time in a hotel room when you are in the Bahamas. We did a one day excursion to another island. We had fun feeding the pigs on the excursion. Another day was spent entirely at the resort playing in their water park and enjoying the pools.
Senior Trip Ideas: Go All Out
If there is a large budget for the trip, then you will have many more options. We were invited on a trip with a group during my daughter’s senior year. It was at an all-inclusive resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. The price was around $5000 per person (in 2019) for the spring break week. Fortunately my daughter did not want to do a big group trip and I was not excited about paying $10,000. (The trip required that each student have a parent with them.)
I think that kind of trip is what many think of as a “senior trip.” If your student wants that and you don’t mind paying for it, then go for it.
Some seniors may need to be brought to reality. The senior year includes so many expenses in addition to a bonus trip. There are many options for a memorable trip without breaking the family bank. The important thing is for them to experience a joyful respite with their high school friends before they all head out on their post-high school journeys.
Related posts to Senior Year Trip Ideas:
Top 8 Senior Year Expenses to Prepare For
Bible Verses for Moms of Seniors
How to Survive Senior Year Conversations as a Mom
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