Family trips derail less from bad planning than from over-planning. Children are unpredictable by design; the trick is an itinerary with room in it. These are the rules that keep a family holiday feeling like one.
One anchor per day
Pick the one thing that matters — the fort, the beach, the market — and protect it. Everything else you discover is bonus. When the anchor works, the day works even if the rest goes loose.
Snacks are infrastructure
Hangry children can out-plan any itinerary. Carry water and a snack that survives heat, and treat a planned snack stop at a café or park as a real part of the day, not a failure of it.
Plan the exit, not just the entrance
Attractions are easy to enter and hard to leave. Agree the 'we can leave whenever' rule before you go in, so nobody is trapped in a museum queue of the will. Kids behave better when they know leaving is allowed.
The blank afternoon is a feature
A pool, a park, a nap in the hotel. Boredom is where kids find their own fun, and it is often the memory they keep. Do not fill every gap with tickets.