Thanks for the input! Has anyone traveled in the day off with kids? Mine are 7 and 3. My husband wants to fly in the day of, but i'm worried the kids will be exhausted by lunch time.
Welcome to the boards! You're already ahead of the game just by coming here to benefit from everyone else's experience.
To answer your question, we've flown in the day of, as do many
DCL passengers. I do have to agree with the consensus opinion here though that you do take on some extra risk by doing so. If something happens and you can't get to port by about 4:30pm, you will probably miss the boat. That being said, DCL does track its passengers travel situation to some degree IF you arranged transportation through DCL...ie flights, airport transfer, etc. That's not to say that they will
definitely hold the boat for you if your DCL arranged flights are delayed, but they will at least know about the situation and
might delay port departure for a little while if they think you have a chance of making it to port in a reasonable amount of time. You will not have any control over how those decisions are made, or what constitutes a lttle while or a reasonable amount of time. For many people, however, all this 'maybe this then they might that' is not very comforting.
So you can mitigate some of the risk you take:
1. arranging flights and airport transfers through DCL - flights more expensive this way and you have no control over booking, flight times, etc. Plus as noted this may or may not actually help.
2. purchase travel insurance - if you miss the boat b/o a covered transportation delay you should be able to be refunded the cost of the cruise. Obviously doesn't get you on the ship.
3. Fly in at least the night before - make your own flight arrangements, keep control of the cost and timing, stay overnight where you choose, get yourself to port or pay DCL for transfer from MCO or WDW resort.
Time of year, where you're flying out of and your tolerance for risk will all affect how you weigh each of these. For my family, we have decided that we want to be on the ship no matter what, so we fly in the night before now and stay at Hyatt MCO, and take private town car transportation to port. Added benefit of that is a quick shopping stop on the way to port.
Oh, and our kids (7,9) were too excited to be tired, even flying the day of, so I don't think you really need to be worried about that.
Good luck with your decision and have a great cruise!