Even in economically stressed times, there are two things people are not giving up: entertainment and travel. They're just having to think outside the box to continue enjoying both.

Pretty much gone are the days of booking a trip with a travel agent and dragging the kids to a nice hotel room to spend a week tripping over luggage, fighting for bathroom rights, and stumbling over pull-away beds. Why?

For one thing, this doesn't sound so much like a vacation as it does a collision course; but more than that, this uncomfortable scenario is quite pricey. So what's a family to do?

Some people have opted for timeshare or vacation club programs. After all, the resorts are generally very family friendly, deliciously roomy, and quite nice to enjoy for a week or more. But this option has its drawbacks:

1. Priced at 10s of thousands of dollars, timeshare programs are quite costly.
   
2. Vacation clubs aren't any better. The top three vacation clubs (Hilton, Marriott, Disney) cost over $20,000 each.
   
3. Both timeshare and vacation club programs have limited options. Again, the top three offer around 40 venues each.
4. Both programs feature costly annual maintenance fees, some ranging upwards of $1,000 per year. And that's whether you get to take your vacation at your scheduled time or not!
5. Trading timeshare weeks can range from maddening to down right impossible, and
6. Many programs have blacked out or blocked dates as well. That's not really a problem until that's the one time you have to take your vacation.

So more often than not, neither timeshare nor vacation club purchases are a family's best travel option. But the venues are certainly better than the collision course. So now what?

Enter vacation membership access programs. These are programs that provide access to thousands of resorts around the world but at exceptionally reduced rates and with no maintenance fees or blacked out/blocked dates.

Although vacation membership access programs in themselves are not new -- Travel Services, Inc., for example, is over 25 years old -- their online counterparts are. And these online options are giving the travel industry a real run for its money.

It is the vacation membership access program that has caught the attention of thousands of travelers who want to continue taking family vacations without sacrificing quality, variety of venue, or quality of stay.

But who are quite happy to "sacrifice" the high price of travel.

With the arrival of the online versions, people who have started thinking outside the box for great discount vacations are finding them.

The two online vacation membership access programs, Global Resorts Network (GRN) and MOR Vacations will be compared in a separate review.