I'm senior enough that a couple years ago I shifted from using vacation to get time off to using schedule bidding to get time off. Vacation isn't completely just a money grab for me, but I need far more than 3 weeks off to fully participate in family stuff and training keeps trying to move my training up into my vacation month every single year. So I've shifted to aiming for 50+ TFP per vacation week and just trade/drop/whatever to get time off for my family.

if/when I upgrade it'll be a slightly different story for a while. If it sucks more than I'm willing to accept or they try to displace me, I'll probably just bid back to right seat and wait it out.