I don’t think the NYT piece is to the contrary of your thinking at all. It’s telling to me that the author describes these great bonding moments he had with family members who he doesn’t live with full time (his 80 year old father, his niece, nephew, etc). His piece may be titled “the myth of quality time,” but in fact that’s exactly what he was doing – a week with his extended family, instead of two days, flying with his father to the vacation instead of meeting there. I would contend that in fact you’re a lot more likely to get the kind of intimate moments he recounted when you have a somewhat limited amount of time with the person, rather than it being someone you see day in, day out.
At any rate, you’ll have plenty of time to re-connect with your son, even if it doesn’t work out that you spend every single one of the days you have listed above with him. I do think there’s something to be said for going away with your kids, to remove other distractions (wanting to see friends from home, or the girlfriend from school, etc). I don’t think it needs to be entirely unplugged in order to get the benefit of being away from distractions. We try to get away with the kids every year for a ski weekend and a longer trip in the summer. I particularly find that traveling in the summer helps us all connect – every year, we go somewhere that the kids haven’t been before, and they get involved in helping plan the trip – even if it’s just deciding between various options for what we’ll do the next day. While they might still be sending the occasional text to their friends, or tuning out to watch some video on their iPads, we’re still spending the majority of the day doing something fun and interesting together. And no sooner have we come home than the kids are talking about what they liked best and where they want to go next year.