3, 4 or 7 days for a first time cruiser?

superdiz

Unofficial Disney Foodie - MOO
Joined
May 21, 2003
Messages
595
We are considering a land/sea in August. We have never been on a cruise.

For those of you who have done several versions, which is the best amount of time, in your opinion, for a first cruise?

Kids are 9 and 6. We are going tothe Bahamas with family in June so I think we’d just stay on board at the Nassau stop if we did the Bahamas cruise which gives us more ship time. You can stay on right??

Any suggestions for first timers off the topic also welcomed!

TIA!
 
We are considering a land/sea in August. We have never been on a cruise.

For those of you who have done several versions, which is the best amount of time, in your opinion, for a first cruise?

Kids are 9 and 6. We are going tothe Bahamas with family in June so I think we’d just stay on board at the Nassau stop if we did the Bahamas cruise which gives us more ship time. You can stay on right??

Any suggestions for first timers off the topic also welcomed!

TIA!

Yes, you can stay on.

If you've never cruised before, maybe go with the 3- or 4-day itinerary. Odds are very high that you will disembark and say the cruise wasn't nearly long enough. However, since you've never cruised before, it would really suck if you got on the ship, soon discovered that you all don't like cruising, and then were stuck on the ship for a whole week.
 
I also recommend 3 or 4 day Dream cruise. You are combing land and sea so that amount of time would be perfect. If you love your cruise, you will only want to do longer cruises from then on out. The Beauty and the Beast musical show is only on the Dream. Great idea to stay on the ship at Nassau. Less people aboard and you can really maximize your ship time. I'm sure your kids will love it at that age and so will you.
 

I did 3 days for my first cruise, which was fine for my but my husband found it was too short. We just recently completed a 7-day, which we both felt was too long with too much repetition of activities, dining etc., and found ourselves missing the theme parks. Now, goldilocks style, we are hoping the 4-day cruise and park stay combo we have booked will be "just right."

My coworker did her first Disney cruise as a 7 night and hated it and said she'd never go back. And that is a LOT of money to burn on something you don't like. You're not going to find many people who feel that way on this board (for obvious reasons, most of us post here because we are fans), but there are some people who don't love it. No vacation is one-size-fits-all.
 
After doing a B2B Med./WBTA that totaled 18 days, no kids/gkids, we did not find it boring or repetitive...far from it. Disney changed things up every day and we loved it. We recently finished a 10-day to Mexico with Princess. I counted 17 kids total...yikes. Almost everyone was our age (old) and we never felt the magic of DCL cruises or much of a sign of life. It was like a floating nursing home...yikes! Never again!! Other cruise lines might be cheaper, but they do not have the creativity, excitement or fun that DCL provides. I think you will love your first cruise. Be sure to get a placeholder reservation for another one while on board.
 
For those of you who have done several versions, which is the best amount of time, in your opinion, for a first cruise?
Your going to get a variety of opinions on this.

Our first DCL cruise (indeed, our first cruise ever) was a 15 night one. Most people we know who cruise were worried that we booked that for our first cruise.

The general consensus is "start with a short one, to make sure there are no issues" before moving to the longer ones.

It really depends on your attitude to travel. We're pretty adaptable to unexpected problems so, if it had been a truly bad decision to start with a long one, we would have still been fine. Other people really need a trip/vacation to go off as exactly planned or they deem the whole thing a disaster.

We found that a 7 night cruise is a "short" one - for us. We prefer 10-14 nights, and have done longer.
 
Last edited:
I’m on the “better to leave with wanting more” camp. Do the 4-day, and if you love it, book a 7-day on board and get the 10% discount.
I’ve done 4 Disney cruises, all 5 days or less, and I’ve loved them. Would I like to do a longer cruise? Absolutely. But it just hasn’t worked out that way. I don’t want you to think that you can’t have a good time on a shorter cruise.
 
We did a 3 night first to try it out and see if we liked it. We spent 4 days before in Florida hitting Sea World and bumming on the beach. Normally when we get home from a vacation my husband gives me a hard time because I'm already trying to figure out our next vacation. This time the day after we got home he asked when we were going on our next cruise. We were going to do a 7 night western caribbean on fall break this year but the Dream dry dock ruined that plan. After much debate we're booked on the 4 night on Christmas! The 7 night western over Christmas was more than we could stomach, but now my husband is talking about a few days at Legoland (and their hotel) before the cruise so we may end up spending almost as much. We usually balance more expensive parts of vacation with an Airbnb near the beach, which is less expensive.

We stayed on the ship at Nassau. Our thought was we paid all this money for a cruise and wanted to get the most we could on the ship. I'm thinking about getting off at Nassau for a short time on our next one just to see it, then back on the ship to enjoy. I think what we loved the most was the lack of schedule. There's tons to do but very little requires commitment ahead of time so we could just see what we felt like doing and enjoy. There definitely wasn't enough time to do everything, accept that now.
 

GET UP TO A $1000 SHIPBOARD CREDIT AND AN EXCLUSIVE GIFT!

If you make your Disney Cruise Line reservation with Dreams Unlimited Travel you’ll receive these incredible shipboard credits to spend on your cruise!















New Posts





DIS Facebook DIS youtube DIS Instagram DIS Pinterest DIS Tiktok DIS Twitter DIS Bluesky

Back
Top Bottom