How do people cruise 25+ times on DCL?

[UsefulBurn]

I am about to take my family for our very first cruise on a DCL. When I scroll through these forums, I frequently see people have done DCL 25, 40, 50 times!! How in the world is that possible? Are all your vacations concentrated on DCL? Naive curiosity!

 

[dcassetta]

You mentioned that your first Disney cruise is this year. Our first Disney cruise was in 1998.

 

[princesscinderella]

DCL has been sailing for 25 years so if they started back then once a year they would be at 25 cruises. Others have done back to backs on the Dream so they go for a full week but equals 2 cruise credits for castaway level so they get there faster and could have only been sailing the last 12 years. My kids are now platinum so if they continue sailing as adults with their kids down the road they could make Pearl one day. Some people just love to cruise and go multiple times a year. Last year we did two Disney cruises and we have two planned for next year. At this rate it will take us 7-10 more years to become Pearl. If we went on cruises as much as we go to WDW (every 6 weeks) we would become pearl super quick.

 

[CampbellzSoup]

Retired people have lots of free time!

 

[tvguy]

Retired people have lots of free time!

That would be HAL, not Disney. LOL.
Someone once responded to people doing soooo many Disney cruises that those could all be 3 day cruises. That they may live very close to the Port.
I think the two things that baffled me were how people have sooo much vacation time, and sooo much money to spend on vacations.
Supposedly the average American worker gets about 15 days of vacation and some here seem to take a lot more time off than that. Money, well, they could still be paying off the credit card bill for those trips.

 

[DCLMP]

Well we started about 12 years ago. Cruises were a lot cheaper, hotels were a lot cheaper, food was lot cheaper, rental cars were a lot cheaper, everything was cheaper. I make more money than I did 12 years ago, but it certainly hasn't kept up with inflation. I think it will be very hard for anyone starting today to do what we did. Don't sweat it times have changed...it's not you. If we were taking our first Disney cruise this year there's no way I could repeat the last 12 years.

I'm assuming you are referring to the cost, but maybe you are not. Our vacations have been very DCL centric and we've done about every itinerary they offer. There are no doubt less expensive ways to see the world.

 

[Kwami]

Supposedly the average American worker gets about 15 days of vacation and some here seem to take a lot more time off than that. Money, well, they could still be paying off the credit card bill for those trips.

Well, the "average" American probably isn't going on too many DCL cruises and isn't likely to be Pearl any time soon. But there are plenty of folks making 6-7 figures who get 5-6 weeks of vacation every year.

Besides, 15 days of vacation is already three weeks. Add to that 10-11 holidays with a bunch of 3-day weekends and you'd have plenty of opportunities to cruise. That's especially true if you favor the shorter, 3-night cruises from Port Canaveral and San Diego.

 

[tvguy]

Well, the "average" American probably isn't going on too many DCL cruises and isn't likely to be Pearl any time soon. But there are plenty of folks making 6-7 figures who get 5-6 weeks of vacation every year.

Besides, 15 days of vacation is already three weeks. Add to that 10-11 holidays with a bunch of 3-day weekends and you'd have plenty of opportunities to cruise. That's especially true if you favor the shorter, 3-night cruises from Port Canaveral and San Diego.

Well, cruising has changed in the 42 years since my first cruise. in the 1980's my friends thought I was in cruise overload because we cruised (before kids) every other year.

 

[Ralph&Pam]

Retired people have lots of free time!

Yes. Retired mid-2014. We’ve done 23 cruises on DCL since, roughly 3 per year excepting the Covid years. Although we have done a couple of 4-night cruises as part of a 4/5 b2b pair of cruises, most have been 7 nights or longer. We’ve done four Transatlantics, two Panama Canals, and one Hawaii. We did four cruises this year, total of 36 nights, and we have 4 booked for 2023, total of 28 nights. Looking forward to learning what the Pearl benefits will be as we reach that milestone in January.

 

[Lizgistix]

That would be HAL, not Disney. LOL.

Dang, he went there.

 

[wendlle]

they save their money??

IDK but I go on vacation once or twice a year, far from retirement. I just like to enjoy my life, I save hard and vacation when I want. I pull my kids from school because life experience and travel to new places is better education than being in front of a blackboard all day. I'm also in Australia where we get 4 weeks paid vacation a year.

 

[tvguy]

Dang, he went there.

Been on two HAL cruises. Alaska in June for both. More kids and their parents on board those cruises than any other cruise (Paquet* NCL, RCCL and NCL America) we have been on other than Disney.

*Paquet was a Gourmet French cruise line. There were exactly two children on board that cruise!

 

[CampbellzSoup]

they save their money??

IDK but I go on vacation once or twice a year, far from retirement. I just like to enjoy my life, I save hard and vacation when I want. I pull my kids from school because life experience and travel to new places is better education than being in front of a blackboard all day. I'm also in Australia where we get 4 weeks paid vacation a year.

Why do you seem offended? You don’t have to justify yourself.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

A lot (but certainly not all) of the super-frequent cruisers are Florida residents and/or Cast Members. And many people like 3/4 back-to-backs, which get you two sailings over a single week-long vacation.

 

[anricat]

We started cruising in 2014 and we've done 10 so far with DCL and one with RCCL since then. We just realized how much we like cruising and have made it our preferred vacation. We don't make a ridiculous amount of money or anything, but we prioritize vacation spending over other spending. We are frugal in the rest of our lives. Most clothes are either bought on sale at cheaper places or secondhand (especially for my kiddo), cars are paid for, we've lived in the same house for nearly 20 years and we refinanced when rates were good so our payment is relatively low. I have three fairly flexible part time jobs that let me take vacation when I want (though it's unpaid for me), my husband has a job with generous vacation time (next year he is required to take a lengthy sabbatical so we will do Europe next year). I don't go in for fancy jewelry or anything like that. Target is more my jam! But if we had been sailing with DCL since they started, we would easily have had 25 by now.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I am about to take my family for our very first cruise on a DCL. When I scroll through these forums, I frequently see people have done DCL 25, 40, 50 times!! How in the world is that possible? Are all your vacations concentrated on DCL? Naive curiosity!

Some people only vacation primarily with cruises and then primarily with a particular cruise line in this case DCL. Living especially in FL also allows for quicker cruises that people use for more like a weekend trip (3 or 4 day ones) that for others that don't live that close to a port realistically do. Some tack on cruises to their WDW trips especially and the B2B common as well (our CM friend did that for the Wish recently).

Since looking at Seabourn the company we're going with next summer I think I was more initially surprised at how many cruise days people do. For what you're talking about the number of cruises is not indicative necessarily of just how many days cruised since you can do short trips over the years. With Seabourn many of the repeat guests are taking long cruises. On the FB pages multiple posters have a few days left on a 65 day cruise (west coast of US to Hawaii, to South Pacifica to Australia), in a month a 79-day one will begin. A lot being shorter (relatively speaking) itineraries that can be booked separately or combined with other itineraries making for 1 long one. Our 7 day Med cruise next summer is considered rather short to many. World cruises are more norm than I would have thought before looking at the cruise line. Retirees do make up a lot but not everyone.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

they save their money??

IDK but I go on vacation once or twice a year, far from retirement. I just like to enjoy my life, I save hard and vacation when I want. I pull my kids from school because life experience and travel to new places is better education than being in front of a blackboard all day. I'm also in Australia where we get 4 weeks paid vacation a year.

Your experience is likely vastly different than many in the U.S.

Saving money only gets one so far especially with DCL pricing. Schools here often are not that generous in terms of frequent removal due to vacation which is why some end up homeschooling, and 4 weeks per year is hardly what many get here. It would have taken me about 10 years with the insurance company to get that lol. My husband had to negotiate when he switched jobs to get 4 weeks and they only did it because he had 15 years with a prior company (where he had gotten 6 weeks at that point), the starting was 3 weeks with the new company. In 5 years he'll get that 5 week (which is the highest for this particular company).

Also location of where someone is at for where a cruise port is at. For the U.S. our population is much more spread out than Australia therefore more people are away from easy and inexpensive cruise ports.

 

[jimmymc]

If you've been cruising since 98 than that's one 3 or 4 night cruise a year.

 

[nancipants]

I did my first Disney cruise in 2013 and so far have been on 8 cruises. (Would have been more but I couldn't cruise in 2019 due to fertility treatments/being pregnant, and then our 2020 cruise was pushed to 2022.) Our next cruise is scheduled next October. I love Disney cruises and we make them our primary vacations for now. When our son is older, we will explore other places, but right now it's the best fit for our family.

 

[CamColt]

I have #25 coming up in February. Our first one was October 2000. While we have not sailed every year since, especially early on when the kids were younger, we have done 2 in a year some times. For example we did B2Bs 3 times so those are each 2 separate cruises, and we have also done a winter cruise (Jan or Feb) and a summer cruise in the same calendar year a few times.

Early on in those years we went more to WDW still, and then the kids started preferring DCL. DH and I have gone a few times alone too. We do travel other places, in fact we are heading the Vegas next week, but for quite a while DCL was our main go to vacation.