Is one dawn photography outing too much to ask on a family holiday?

People, dialogue, activities and prices are fictional.

‘Your birds get a time in the diary. My break gets “we'll see”,’ Sam says when Elena mentions a dawn photography outing. It would be one morning of their seven-night family holiday, with a £70 guide fee from Elena's own spending money.

Elena would leave at 4:30 a.m. and be back around 9. Their children are five and ten. In the rented flat, Sam would handle waking, breakfast and getting everyone ready. Elena says she has organised almost the entire holiday and wants four hours for the hobby she rarely gets time for at home. Sam says he appreciates the booking work but has already done bedtime alone on their first two nights while she edited photographs.

He would like a long solo lunch and an afternoon reading. No one has put that into the schedule, partly because he keeps saying he is flexible. The children have also asked for a full day at the pool, while both adults have filled the remaining days with outings.

How would you agree on time apart without measuring every minute of childcare? Does paying the guide fee herself settle anything, or do they need to change the family schedule before Elena books?