For those of you who stay at CL and have also been on disney cruises, would you choose a longer CL stay even if you couldn't get into the parks the last few days, or would do cut your CL stay a few days short and do a short cruise instead?
Long version of my question: DH and I have ressies at AKL CL for Oct 20-27. We booked using a bounceback offer (when we stayed at AKL CL in april), and bouncback rates of 35% off were only available starting Oct 20. After we got home, we realized our APs expire Oct 22, which means no parks the last few days unless we want to buy another ticket. There's a 3-day dream cruise Oct 24-27 that we could do instead of staying CL for those last few nights.
The cost of hotel and food from Oct 24-27 is almost exactly the same as a balcony cabin on the cruise those dates, including port parking and DH's diving excursion that he'd like to take. If we get park tickets - either 4/5-day tix or APs again - that would put the price of staying at the parks well over doing the cruise.
On one hand, I think this might be a great opportunity to really enjoy CL, plus the extras like sunset safari and night vision safari (which we've already done, but would do again). Then again, that's just more $$$ for the extra tours. i also think i might go nuts knowing the parks, and especially the food and wine festival, are so close and we can't get in, but part of me rebels against the idea of paying for more tickets when we just had annual passes that we took 4 trips on.
On the other hand, this would be a great way to try the cruise - we went on the magic in 1998 when she'd only been sailing 2 months and it was a debacle, but since it's been 15 years i think it's time to try again.
we're frequent cruisers on
royal caribbean so cruising isn't new to us, but i'd like to try a
disney cruise now that they've got a little more experience.
I'm a little worried that a 3-day cruise will be so short we'll be rushing around like crazy, though, and won't have time to relax and enjoy.
We went through other ideas, like doing a 4-day cruise the week before or after, or giving up the bounceback discount and visiting DW a week earlier, but those options are a lot more expensive and/or would involve taking way too much time off work, so i think we're stuck with the week of the 20-27th (though we'll probably head down the 18th and stay at a mod the first two nights before switching to AKL CL on the 20th). Also, oct 23 is our anniversary so we like the idea of being in DW that day.
Anyway, thoughts would be appreciated from anyone who's stayed CL and done the cruises. I know that either way we'll have a great time, and this is truly a "first world problem", but we figure we need to book the cruise sometime soon if we're going to do it...
Thanks!
That is great!
