I've only done a very minuscule part, but there are quite a few who have made it their life's work and it is really beginning to pay off.
I visited the site 15 years ago am very much looking forward to taking the family to Washington DC with a trek to Gettysburg when the kids are a bit older.
You'll definitely find it changed for the better.
The great thing about such a vacation, if the family is patient, is that fact that Gettysburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, First and Second Bull Run, Spotsylvania, the Wilderness, Harpers Ferry and South Mountain are all in easy driving distance of DC, just as the entire Peninsula Campaign and the second half of the Overland Campaign are all in easy driving distance of Richmond - which itself is only 100 miles from DC.
A dedicated battlefield tourist can cover every major battlefield of the Eastern Theater of the Civil War in two weeks without having to drive much more than 300 miles.
In the Western Theater the battlefields are generally less well-preserved, much further away from one another and sometimes located in very nasty neighborhoods.