Deciding on Disney

If you've never looked into Disney Cruises, I highly recommend at least checking out what you are getting for the price. If you are traveling with small children, the higher price might not look so high once you see what you get. Now, this is all based on looking at the Disney Magic, so some info might be different for other ships in the line, so do research!

Pros

• Bathtubs--every room has one. Ideal for traveling with infants, toddlers. It's tough to get a bathtub kid to take a shower in a weird environment.
• Split bathrooms--in one you have a sink and tub, in the other sink and toilet. Awesome.
• Larger rooms--compared to most other cruise lines, the rooms are larger. Basic interior rooms are 184 sq ft, the deluxe are 214. Seriously, when traveling with kids, the more room the better!
• Kids programs--we've never been on Disney, so I can't rate these, but they look pretty awesome for the 3+ crowd.
• More kid-focused--most of the cruise lines cater more toward adults. But Disney is really focused on the entire family having a good time, not just the 18+ crowd. Not sure how much fun teens would have, it seems more 10 and under would enjoy, but that's just based on what I see online.
• Small splash area by the pool for diaper wearing babies/toddlers. This is great, because I know Simon will want to get in the water if Max is in the water. And really...no one wants to swim with babies in diapers in the water. Gross.
• Castaway Cay--private island with free food, family beach, adult only beach, childcare. Yes please!
• Pirate party AND FIREWORKS! Fireworks at sea. How cool is that?!

Cons

• Price--definitely costs more than pretty much any other cruise line that we looked at. 4 day cruise is almost the same as a 7 (or more) day cruise on Carnival
• Have to pay for nursery time. $6/hour for the 1st kid under 3. And (this is from what I've seen, I'm not sure about actual limits) looks like there's a 10 hour limit on 3-4 day cruises. That's not even enough to have dinner and a show each night. I have heard that if they have room in the nursery, they will fit your child in, but you can't rely on that.

There are more pros and cons for us, but those are the big ones. The pros definitely outweigh the cons in our case, but when you are paying so much for a cruise, it's a really good idea to make sure that there are more pros!

So, after a few days of research, not only on the Disney site, but also reading reviews, deck plans, and such on other sites, we decided on Disney.

We will be cruising Disney Magic in April for 4 nights. We booked a Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah . The price is just over what our budget allowed, but we figured it would be worth it. A bigger room would have been nice, but that would be so much out of our price range. Those suites are insanely priced on Disney. (or...I'm cheap. Either way, we can't afford it!)

We did include travel insurance. April isn't part of Hurricane Season, but after the insanity that occurred this year with Hurricane Irene messing up cruises, we aren't about to take a chance.

So...once you book, then what?

Narrowing down the choices

We started trying to narrow it down by price. Well, Miami is the cheapest embarkation port for most cruise lines (I'm pretty sure this is because of the huge number of ships leaving from there). It's also the farthest (on East coast) from our home in Indiana--24+ hours to drive. Yikes! Last resort.

It took much hemming and hawing. Hours and hours of me agonizing over amenities, activities, room size, location, price, distance to drive, dates. You think I'm kidding? Ask my husband. I'm sure I drove him absolutely insane.

We decided initially on a cruise out of New York. 8 days on a Carnival ship. Longer than we wanted (my husband has limited vacation time from work), but the deal was amazing. And the New York terminal is only 13 hours from our house. Then it came to budgeting.

The thing with cruises is--you have to pay them off WAY before you even start packing. Like 75 days before. That's the good thing about planning a cruise years in advance--longer to pay them off.  However, this cruise was pricing at $3200, and that was just slightly over our possible budget without making us eat beans for 7 months.

So then what?

In saunters @CruisesForLess. Simon, the lovely TA that has held our hands, found us an awesome deal on Disney. Disney, which we pretty much dismissed out of hand because of the high prices. But, as pretty much all of my cruise people on Twitter told me, Disney is worth it. From what I was told, even though Disney is almost double (if not more) the price of Carnival, Disney is worth 4 times as much.

So back to researching Disney Cruises.

How the internet helped us decide on a cruise

So one of us (probably me) mentioned a cruise. Cruises are pretty inexpensive, just about everything is included (we don't drink/gamble so that is not an issue for cost), and they have kids programs!  Just one little problem--Simon wouldn't be 2 yet (still looking at early spring at this point), and Carnival, the most affordable cruise line, starts kids programs at 2. (the rest start at 3, with the exception of NCL--2, and Disney--12 weeks)  So we moved our searching forward to after Simon would turn 2.


If you have ever tried to research cruise lines, individual ships, rooms, amenities, travel distance, terminals, requirements, etc., you will understand the frustration I faced over the next couple of weeks. The best piece of advice I have? Networking! Seriously, if you don't have a Twitter account--get one. The people on Twitter that know cruises, plan cruises, and go on cruises are amazing. I had so much advice pouring out to me just on Twitter.


If you want a list of the awesome people that helped me most from Twitter during my researching here they are:
@CruisesForLess
@CCLSupport
@RichTucker
@CruizeCast
@dclblog 
@CruiseRadio 
@CruiseDeals
@CruiseLineFans
@SimonTravels

But Twitter isn't where I stopped. The best sites I found for research were:
Cruise Critic especially the forums!
Cruise Deck Plans which you might not think is useful, until you realize that the room you want to book is right above/below a bar/dance club/pool deck.
Cruise Advice which has a section for best cabins/deck, to help you find where the best rooms are

I also spent a ton of time on the websites for Carnival Cruise Line, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Disney Cruise Line. There's tons more cruise lines, but those all have kids clubs that start at 2 or younger. Yes, there are other, much more expensive options (like Cunard, who has on-board nannies for children 12 months and up) that handle little ones, but...you know...budget and all.

After discussing it, we decided that yes, a cruise is a viable option. Now....how on earth would we choose one?!

An inkling of an idea

It started out as just a dream of a vacation. Somewhere to take our boys (currently 4 years and 17 months), where we would all have fun. Last year we took Max (our oldest) to an indoor water park resort for a couple of days and left Simon with my parents.

So we picked a time-frame for this dream vacation (Spring 2012), and started throwing out ideas. A return to the water park resort was at the top of the list, financially speaking. We could go for a long weekend for under $1000 (for the cost of the room) but we would have to go in February for the best rates. And in February, all the areas of the park wouldn't be open, or be open only on the weekend, which meant that a couple of our days would be spent just in the room.

So...we tabled that idea as a "maybe" and moved on to another idea.

Tropical family all-inclusive resort?  Flying. Flying with a toddler and preschooler. That does not scream "VACATION!" to either of us, especially with security (aka TSA molestation) being what it is lately. We would fly if we had to, but neither of us wants to do that.

We live in Indiana if you didn't know. So that means that anywhere we want to go is far away.

I looked into all-inclusive resorts here in the continental US. Yeah....most are open seasonally, Memorial to Labor Day. The best one that is open year round--Club Med in Florida--is so ridiculously priced that it was never an option. 

Looking at other resorts in warmer weather areas (because we were looking at early spring at this point and were thinking to maybe take a beach vacation), the price for rooms is so nuts that it wasn't cost friendly. On top of the price of rooms in most resorts, we would have to pay for food and activities. And many don't have any activities for preschoolers or toddlers.

When you have a budget, and a relatively small one at that, it's very hard to find a vacation idea that will work for both adults and small children.

Honestly, going to one of those all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean would be the best for us--kids can play outside, nice rooms, food/drinks/childcare included. But...out of price range, plus flying...Next!