The vacation packages are a better value even if you you cannot actually use the hotel stays. The hotels are available in cities where timeshares do not exist. However, if you CAN'T use or give away your week hotel stay, you can redeposit the week.

AFAIK, the point/award are as follows:
50K Miles = 125K points
120K Miles plus 7 days cat 1-5 hotel = 235K points

You can redeposit the hotel stay for a small charge ($20) and get a credit of 45K points for the 235K award, 50K points for the 250K award and 55K point for the 270K award. Obviously, if you plan on not staying anyway - buy the cheap package and redeposit the weeks stay for a net of 190K points.

You could do this twice and transfer up to 240K points onto almost any of the major ailines and have 120K points left. If you went the miles only route, you would only have 200K miles. Also, my advice is to NOT turn the hotel stays back in for points until 11 months have passed, this keeps the OPTION of using the week open and still allows you to redeposit the week once you're sure you don't need/want it.

Which airline to transfer the points to is a more complex questions. Most airlines offer coach flights to Hawaii for 35K miles, but FC is 60K with United and 75K on Delta and American. Availability will most likely be your biggest concern/issue - not getting enough points for the family of 4. You only need 140K miles for four coach seats on United but finding availability is tricky. You will need to search other forums for the best advice on how to do this - but plan on planning early. You can pay twice the number of miles on most airlines and get a seat anytime there is one availabile.

Hope this information helps.

Billy