(MONEY Magazine) – As summer approaches and hotel chains roll out their usual "kids eat free" and "kids stay free" promotions, perhaps you'll find yourself longing for those carefree days--before parenthood--when travel meant sharing romantic sunsets on a tranquil Caribbean beach, or sampling Beaujolais in the French countryside. Now the logistics of traveling with children make such interludes impossible: You're left herding the kids through theme parks by day, sharing a hotel room with them by night and relying on Happy Meals for sustenance.

It doesn't have to be that way. In fact, you could spend your next vacation with the kids in a European villa or a condo on Maui for less than the cost of a long weekend at Disney World.

How? By skipping the kid-focused hotel offers and by instead adopting a strategy that most family travelers overlook: renting a house, villa or condominium. This real home away from home can cost half as much as a hotel, gives you more flexibility on meals and, best of all, offers a lot more privacy than those specially designed family suites at some hotels.

Consider: Four nights at even a moderately priced hotel near Disney World runs a family of four from $1,000 to $1,200; add in park admissions, and the total quickly reaches $1,500. Compare that with a two-bedroom home in the Caribbean for $1,300 a week. Or a two-bedroom condominium on Maui for $1,400--including car rental. Or a cottage outside Florence, Italy, for about $600 a week.

Skeptical? So was 41-year-old Theresa Nelson of Oakland. As a parent, she'd followed the traditional travel path in the past and knew its downsides. "Particularly in hotels, breakfast with your kids is the worst," she says. "And you have to pay $10 for their whole breakfast even though they're only going to eat a half a piece of toast and two bites of eggs."

So last summer, she and her husband, their 6 1/2-year-old daughter and her in-laws rented an apartment near the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris for about $1,500 a week, which they found through Travelling with Children (510-848-0929), an agency in Berkeley. They would have spent $400 a night for two rooms in a comparable hotel.

While it's easy to see the advantages of this strategy, it isn't so easy to find advice on how to go about it. So MONEY checked in with an array of travel experts, as well as with parents who have firsthand experience. They showed us the ropes for Hawaii, the Caribbean and Europe--the three places where such vacations are most easily doable.

They also offered some caveats: Your itinerary may be less flexible and require better planning than usual, because reservations during peak season at popular destinations may be required as much as a year in advance. Also, houses must generally be rented for at least a week, and in some cases a deposit of 50% of the total rental may be required up front, with the balance due months before your arrival date. (Credit cards are usually--but not always--accepted.)

Moreover, the details vary, so you'll need to ask a lot of questions before you commit. For example, does your rental company have regional representatives you can rely on if something goes wrong? And while some rental companies can easily accommodate the needs of small children, with cribs, child beds, childproof rooms, high chairs and babysitting services, some European homes don't provide towels and bed linens. Similarly, you may want to find out whether a housekeeper is available. Finally, ask about refunds--there often are none for cancellations, so you may need cancellation insurance.

And you'll want to be particularly diligent if you choose to rent from an individual instead of through an agency: You'll find advertisements for such properties in the classified sections of major newspapers, travel magazines, and alumni magazines.

Beyond that, the specifics depend on where you're going.

HAWAII: This is probably the easiest place to turn; renting a condo here is as easy as reserving a hotel room. There are thousands of condo units on the islands--just about any travel agent can help you find one. Maid service is standard, and apartments usually have fully appointed kitchens and living rooms; some even have in-room washers and dryers. A good number also offer supervised children's programs. The cost? Comparable to that of an average hotel (and sometimes less, based on higher occupancy).

Two examples we found: Aston Hotels & Resorts (800-922-7866) represents 18 resorts on the islands of Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island of Hawaii. Prices start at $120 a night for a one-bedroom apartment that sleeps four.

And Outrigger Hotels & Resorts (800-688-7444) manages more than 9,000 rooms in the Hawaiian Islands, including studio suites on Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island and condos (from studios to multiple-bedroom apartments) on all but Oahu. The Maui Eldorado Resort, for example, rents studio to two-bedroom units for as little as $150 to $260 a night.

THE CARIBBEAN: Villas were a way of life in the Caribbean before the development of massive resort hotels. Today, popular destinations like Barbados and Martinique have an abundance of private houses, villas and condos for rent.

How to find one? One resource is West Indies Management Co. of Newport, R.I. (800-932-3222), which arranges more than 6,000 villa vacations yearly in the British Virgin Islands, Grand Cayman Islands, St. Bart's and elsewhere. (The company also rents European villas.) Most have swimming pools and rent from $1,300 week for a two-bedroom house during the summer. On some islands, maid service is included in the rental.

Another option is to call the French West Indies Tourist Board (202-659-7779) for information about companies that rent houses on French-speaking islands such as Martinique and Guadeloupe, sometimes for as little as a $800 a week.

As in Hawaii, keeping the kids entertained isn't much of a challenge, notes Travelling with Kids owner Dan Hallinan.

He should know. A few years back, he let his daughters (then nine and 13) choose between a return trip to Disney and a return trip to the Caribbean to visit Jamaica. They picked Jamaica. More recently, he and his family paid $140 a night to stay in a two-bedroom house on Virgin Gorda--where three of the five hotels are superluxury resorts charging as much as $600 a night--that was "two or three times" the size of a hotel room.

EUROPE: Finding the right deal might take a little more effort in Europe, but "self-catering" is well established, and there are thousands of houses and apartments for rent. Some agencies handle properties in multiple countries.

British Travel International in Elkhart, Va. (800-327-6097) can place you in England, Italy and elsewhere; the average cost for a house rental runs $700 to $800 a week for a two- or three-bedroom house sleeping four to six people. Another option is Families Abroad of New York (212-787-2434).

But for the widest selection, the best approach may be to pick a country first, then work back: Write or call that country's government tourist board, usually located within its consulate in major U.S. cities.

In France, there is a national network of gites (guesthouses) in every town and hamlet. Write to tourist boards in specific regions or to the national headquarters at Gites de France, 59 Rue St. Lazare, 75009 Paris (or call from the U.S.: 011-33-1-4970-7575; the operators speak English and French).

Admittedly, this vacation strategy might entail some extra legwork on your part. But from the point of view of an experienced family traveler like Theresa Nelson, the payoff is worth it.

Those nightmare breakfasts? They're history. In Paris, Nelson's family stuck with cereal at the apartment in the morning and ate out when they wanted to. Her daughter still talks about buying pain au chocolat from a bread van when they visited a small country town.

Says Nelson: "I will never stay in a hotel again if I don't have to."