Just what the doctor ordered.
Hotels and resorts across the US are increasingly offering “schoolcation” packages — encouraging frustrated parents to hit the pool while someone else deals with the Zoom calls. The deals come as parents say they’re at their wits’ end working from home while their kids attempt to remotely learn under the same roof.
At Disney World in Orlando, Florida, travelers staying at the Four Seasons can pay for their children to attend “supervised schoolwork sessions,” which cost $50 for a half-day and $100 for a full day, reports NBC News. In sessions of six at a time, students will work at socially distant desks in a hotel ballroom.
In addition to child care, students will do arts and crafts, swim and play volleyball. They can head over to Explorer Island water park for recess — a major upgrade from schoolyard swings.
Also in Florida, the Shelbourne South Beach hotel in Miami offers classes and cabanas. Kids can get their work done thanks to the complimentary high-speed Wi-Fi and snacks, and relax in a cabana when the day is done.
If heading down south isn’t for you, the Midwest is also booming with options.
In between recess waterpark breaks, visitors at Timber Ridge Lodge & Waterpark in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, can enjoy a boxed lunch, snacks and monitored schooling. After-school fun includes arcade games, archery and horseback riding.
Great Wolf Lodge locations around the country offer similar packages.
Montage Hotels and Resorts, located in Utah, Laguna Beach, Calif., Los Cabos, Mexico, and Bluffton, South Carolina, have started their own Montage Academy for students ages 6 to 17. Along with virtual tutoring from Tutor.com and monitored study hall, visiting pupils can partake in yoga, woodworking, art and culinary classes for $175 a day or $725 a week.
At Auberge Resorts, parents can get in on the learning too: In addition to in-person and virtual tutoring from Advantage Testing to help with the usual reading and writing, adult-education classes in statistics and Latin American art will also be offered.
Before packing up a suitcase of swimsuits and notebooks, parents should be sure to check state travel guidelines and get tested for COVID-19.