Christmas Cruise?

[aggiedog]

I'm looking at the 4 day cruise out of Galveston that leaves Dec 24. Anyone have experience with cruising over Christmas? Is there anything special DCL does for the holiday?

 

[scm]

Everything is special! From the beautiful ship decor, to hot chocolate and cookies on deck, to building gingerbread houses,etc....my grandchildren had a magical holiday. This is digging up memories from several years back so many will have more current experiences to share but you may want to specify if children are your focus.

 

[aggiedog]

Our kids will be 10-16. We just got back from the Baltic cruise and they are begging for another cruise. We live in Texas and Galveston is a short drive away. We're constrained by school schedules, especially since we took them out of finals in May to go to Europe. I'm not sure I can get away with that too many times! Four days is short, but I think just right for our school break. We've done Christmas at WDW twice before, so being on the ship won't be too weird for us.

How was the weather? The Baltic was cold.

 

[oam]

We departed 12/27/13 on the Magic and the ship was decorated beautifully for Christmas. Castaway Cay was decorated for Christmas as well. We were swimming at CC on 12/29 but being from upstate NY where it is normally below 0 F at that time of year we thought it was quite warm.

 

[MarleneP]

My family did the Christmas cruise this passed year (2014). We loved it! There was a huge gingerbread house, santa, special room gifts, caroling, snow in the main atrium, Christmas themed crafts and gingerbread house decorating. We did it from Port Canaveral and the weather was great! We loved it so much we are going over Christmas this year (2015).

 

[mareed]

Agree with everything written and can add a few things that we saw last year on Wonder, when we had Back-to-Back cruises where the first was over XMAS, and the 2nd obviously wasn't. Most things mentioned are part of every Christmas-time cruise starting sometime in Nov and going through New Years, I think, but specifically on the XMAS cruise, we had gingerbread cookies that were set out along with drinks several times, and on XMAS day there was a beautiful display of cakes, cookies, and other sweet treats in the atrium. I don't think they cut and served the fancy decorated larger cakes, but there were cookies and bite-sized desserts that you could get, including the shrink-wrapped iced cookies like I think they have in the parks. We were at Castaway Cay on XMAS day and they had carolers greeting us on the island as we left the ship, and they performed later on the island as well. As PP mentioned, special gifts in each cabin and Santa in the atrium were specific to the actual XMAS cruise. None of these things I mentioned were on our 2nd cruise that was after XMAS. I also don't think the gingerbread house decorating took place on that cruise after XMAS, though I think it did on the cruises before.

 

[MrsDuck]

In 2012, we sailed on the 12/23 Christmas cruise. It was absolutely wonderful! The PPs have done a great job of describing the Christmas time activities but I encourage you to Gooogle for pics as well. Just seeing the ship decked out in Christmas decorations is fantastic and there's nothing like hanging out with Mickey Mouse on Christmas morning!

 

[aggiedog]

Dh is saying no way. The price of a verandah room went up $1000 between sunday and Monday. :0 I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that they'll get GT pricing. Is that even a reasonable hope?

 

[MUN]

Dh is saying no way. The price of a verandah room went up $1000 between sunday and Monday. :0 I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that they'll get GT pricing. Is that even a reasonable hope?

Christmas cruises appear to be crazy expensive. I don't blame your DH for the veto.

 

[jdb in AZ]

I wouldn't count on getting GT pricing. The holiday cruises are so expen$ive because so many families want to cruise then, so they usually sell out quickly. The price jump of $1000 is an indication that it's selling well.

Several years ago we were on the Magic's Christmas cruise and it "snowed" in the atrium as the Fab 4 came down the grand staircase. They were dressed in Victorian costumes. That's one of my all-time favorite cruise memories.

 

[Club Disney Chandler]

Dh is saying no way. The price of a verandah room went up $1000 between sunday and Monday. :0 I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that they'll get GT pricing. Is that even a reasonable hope?

Can you do 2 insides instead of 1 verandah? We always do that and it's always been less expensive. It's a shorter cruise so might not bother you too much. Just my $.02

 

[JenPinks]

My family did the Christmas cruise this passed year (2014). We loved it! There was a huge gingerbread house, santa, special room gifts, caroling, snow in the main atrium, Christmas themed crafts and gingerbread house decorating. We did it from Port Canaveral and the weather was great! We loved it so much we are going over Christmas this year (2015).

Do they offer this only on "Christmas Day" sailings or do they do these things on the Christmas cruises like Dec 18th?

 

[aggiedog]

It must be selling very well. There are no inside staterooms available! A girl can dream...

 

[MarleneP]

Do they offer this only on "Christmas Day" sailings or do they do these things on the Christmas cruises like Dec 18th?

Sorry, I do not know. we cruised dec 21-dec 28.

 

[mareed]

Dh is saying no way. The price of a verandah room went up $1000 between sunday and Monday. :0 I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that they'll get GT pricing. Is that even a reasonable hope?

I agree that prices are insanely high, but double-check your prices. According to http://www.cruisefish.net/finder.md?id_cruise=48555, prices haven't increased on any verandah room since Jan or Feb 2015 so prices shouldn't have increased, but you might have been checking something different between the 2 days.

 

[aggiedog]

I've been checking it daily. What's weird is initially there were 9D rooms available, then there weren't, today there are. As for the verandah price, maybe I misread something, because the price is down again today. But when it was "up" there were fewer options given for rooms for a family of 4, two older teens (my standard search choice.)

I'll keep my fingers crossed. I see dh's point, though. My business is lean this time of year and doesn't get cash flush until the end of the year. And I convinced him to agree to a ABD next summer. So I really need to just be happy with what we have planned, but as many of you know, cruise just once and you get bitten by the bug!

 

[aggiedog]

Just checked again, and the 5B category disappeared since this morning. I suspect when I saw the $1000 increase it was actually that all the category 5's were gone, and the top of the list was cat 4's. Would they really only have that few rooms left for those categories that they'd be bouncing in and out of availability?

 

[mareed]

Just checked again, and the 5B category disappeared since this morning. I suspect when I saw the $1000 increase it was actually that all the category 5's were gone, and the top of the list was cat 4's. Would they really only have that few rooms left for those categories that they'd be bouncing in and out of availability?

You can do a mock booking and take it to through the next few steps and get to where you select a cabin where it will show up to 8 cabins. Right now, for 2 adults and 2 teens, there are two 5b cabins available, and it's possible that you've seen them come and go from inventory recently as people are switching around.

 

[aggiedog]

What's odd is that there are 2 5b cabins available, but I can only book one. I need a second one and I can only get 4's, for the same mix of people. And the 9c's are unavailable once I go to select a cabin.

Strange how it all works, and sad, because I really don't think it's going to happen for us. Ah, we'll just have to spend Christmas at home, with the peasants! (just kidding, but I did have my hopes up.)

 

[TxT365]

Be sure to clear your cookies before searching. Don't know why, but it seems to help.