LindaBabe or other Cruisers

[hopemax]

Shore Excursions...

You can either pay for a Disney organized excursion, or do-it-yourself. On our 4 cruises, we have paid for a total of 2 excursions*. You can usually see the same things, or book with a local company for cheaper than what you would pay Disney. Although, going with Disney is probably easier...go to the meeting place, and then follow the Mickey sign all day.

The Alaskan ports are all within walking to distance to shopping, restaurants, etc. Ketchikan, is ridiculously close. Skagway has the longest walk, but it looks like they have a shuttle now. If you are used to walking around WDW, you will have no problem.

On our Alaskan cruise, we did take a shore excursion in Juneau so my Grandma could get off the ship and see something. We took a bus to a church in the woods type thing. Nothing super special, but it was a nice drive. However, we wished we would have taken the White Pass & Yukon Railroad in Skagway. Everyone raved about it, and seeing pictures online, and my Dad's a big train fan...if we go back, we'll be doing that. Hopefully, Rita will chime in about things to do, since she just was up their last year. It's 15 years since I was there, so I'm sure much has changed.

It doesn't look like Disney has announced the shore excursions yet, but they usually run from $50 pp to $250+ for the helicopter type tours. You have two opportunities to book them. A limited selection of spots will be released a few months before the cruising date for booking online. Return cruisers, have priority, so the spots may be booked before first timers get a chance. Otherwise, when you get on the ship, there will be a place to go to sign up for shore excursions.



*The 2nd excursion was a Sunday in the Canary Islands. Everything was closed, so if we wanted to do anything, it would have been a shore excursion. Only DH, went on his own to watch the local soccer team.

 

[Michellepooh]

Great info, Hope!

I agree that the Disney-sponsored shore excursions tend to be more expensive than doing it on your own, but sometimes it's easier to just have the peace of mind that it's all taken care of. Another bonus is that if you book a Disney excursion and it runs late for whatever reason, the ship won't leave without you! Not true for excursions done on your own.

 

[Tigger1221]

We mostly do Disney sponsored excursions. My stepdad was in a wheelchair and uses a cane most days now and thats hard enough, so we trust Disney to lead us around and tell us which ones are good for him. DH and I have taken a non-disney one and had a great time but normally book with Disney for peace of mind.

I missed the coloring pages!! Maybe I will my sister in to get me some this time.

 

[LindaBabe]

Buffy, I just typed you a long winded reply and lost it. Please call me at your convenience - I am pm -ing you my phone number.

 

[ddavis860]

I can chime in on a few things too. I've not done the Alaska cruise, but we have done a bunch in the carribbean...Met Squid and his wife on one Hi Squid!!

The ship is kid safe. We always have a veranda. It's so nice to be able to go outside and have coffee in the morning. We have also watched the fireworks from the veranda when one of the kids was too tired to stay up on deck.

My experience with excursions... When the kids were small, we went with the Disney sponsored ones. I felt more comfortable knowing that the ship wouldn't leave without us, and that they were used to having little kids on these. They are crowded, but we always had fun...


Breakfast we do the buffet. There is a character breakfast you will be scheduled for too. We did it the first cruise, and never again.

Lunch is at the pool, kids always had pizza. Unless we booked an excursion that had the meal included.

Dinner, you rotate through the restaurants. Every night is something different. Your servers rotate with you, and they really try to get to know your likes, and are great with the kids. You can go to Palo, just you and your DH, and the kids will be in the club, they will take them to dinner at the buffet, or you can take them early. Palo also has a brunch which was soooo good too.

We always try to do spa time. His, hers, couples...

We did early dinner when the kids were little, if they were tired after dinner, no show, we went to the cabin. Now we do later. It's better for the excursion time when using outside vendors, then not rushed to get to dinner. I never wanted to miss the restaurant, I love the shows they would put on in there...


I got the passporter, I do recommend it. Also, look for the thread for your cruise on the cruise board. And another good reference for excursions was CruiseCritic.com. Great for reviews of excursions and stuff...

 

[morgansmom2000]

Why no character breakfast again, Deb?

 

[ddavis860]

Why no character breakfast again, Deb?

I didn't write that correctly. It's not that it was bad or anything. It's just you can't do everything, and we all agreed that was something we could do without. We did it once, and we prefer the buffet, sitting outside either watching the water, or looking at the port...

 

[morgansmom2000]

I didn't write that correctly. It's not that it was bad or anything. It's just you can't do everything, and we all agreed that was something we could do without. We did it once, and we prefer the buffet, sitting outside either watching the water, or looking at the port...

Okay, thanks for clarifying. I know *I'm* looking forward to the character breakfast, don't know about the rest of my family, but really, it's all about me

 

[Arizona Rita]

Hey Guys, I'm here! This all started while I was at the movies.
Bamb, how exciting for you and family! Dont worry, we'll get you through all of this!
Post 22, main reason why we prefer to use DCL excursions and know from first hand that the ship was good to her word, happened while in Palermo.
Yes, you may end up paying a bit more but its worth it for the security and peace of mind.
Verandah~ Im on the tallish side. When we took our first and didnt know anything and didnt even know about the boards, we got a porthole cabin. Our next one they upgraded us to a v and we wont look back. But it is difficult to climb them and its not really even comfortable to put your feet on them because my feet keep sliding. But we didnt want one at first because Banana was 6 and we were afraid for the same reasons. Do you need one, no, would it be nice yes.
Food~ OMG! if its not free, your not looking! I agree with Hope on that one!
Show vs dinner~ We are early diners and enjoy letting our food settle during the show. You have little ones and you know they will get dinner but if they get cranky you can always ship the show.
Did anyone mention that the younger the kids are the more the servers play with them and pay attention to them to the point that if you would like them to cut their meat, they will? And as they get older, as in the case of DS, they kind of hang and adapt what they talk about and for DS whenever he would see our server they would hang for a couple of minutes and that made it nice for DS.
Shore Excurions/Alaska~ Bamb, just ask. Whatever you want to know I will try to help you there. The reason we did not wait for DCL is that they dropped their Glacier Bay contract and that was something we wanted to see and expierence.
I loved the Skagway train ride. Again, agree with Hope. But you do take a bus back down but you end up in a place called Liarsville (Scrap w/swaps Jan)
and its fun. But when you get up to Fraser make sure you get your passport stamped with the Canandian stamp.
We are paid in full for the Baltics but even now thinking of changing over to Dreams Unlimited. But from what I understand they only deal in email and have a 48 hour window to get back to you and Im one of those want to know now people.
I agree that it is very overwhelming at first but you will get through it
I never heard of this adults getting to take over the lab! And I do have some of the coloring pages.
And if your kids are character kids, they come with you. We dont even spend time at the parks anymore looking for them, we just wait for the next cruise.
And dont forget Tea with Wendy for your DD!

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Buffy, I just typed you a long winded reply and lost it. Please call me at your convenience - I am pm -ing you my phone number.

will call you tomorrow if I can get time. Darn kidlets are sick again!

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Hey Guys, I'm here! This all started while I was at the movies.......

Holy cow Rita!! Loads of info to digest.

So how does one go about doing excursions? Is there a place where I can look at the list of tours.
We will probably stick with Disney this time out since I have no idea what we are doing. LOL

Gonna copy and paste and send all this to DH. I will probably be back with more questions soon.

 

[Michellepooh]

Go to disneycruise.com, look under "Cruises and Destinations" and for each port there will be a listing of "port adventures". They haven't posted the Alaska excursions yet.

 

[scrapgirl3]

We had connecting rooms for our cruise last February (Disney Cruise) and LOVED them. It was so much nicer (in my opinion) then the larger room that was a higher category because it was less expensive AND we had 2 bathrooms and 2 showers which was really helpful!
We went through a travel agent and just told her we wanted a connecting room and she made it happen. I think if you click on the Disney Cruise line forum here on this board there will be an area at the top about staterooms and that will have a map of the ships. Then you can use the key to see which ones are connecting rooms. I believe all the connecting rooms are inside category 10 (but I could be wrong about that).
Have fun planning, it will be a fun trip!

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Go to disneycruise.com, look under "Cruises and Destinations" and for each port there will be a listing of "port adventures". They haven't posted the Alaska excursions yet.

Got it! DS13 wants to do the European capitals cruise. He's like can't we do that for my single trip? I'm like uh no, Ma is not going to watch the little ones for 12 days! LOL

We had connecting rooms for our cruise last February (Disney Cruise) and LOVED them. It was so much nicer (in my opinion) then the larger room that was a higher category because it was less expensive AND we had 2 bathrooms and 2 showers which was really helpful!
We went through a travel agent and just told her we wanted a connecting room and she made it happen. I think if you click on the Disney Cruise line forum here on this board there will be an area at the top about staterooms and that will have a map of the ships. Then you can use the key to see which ones are connecting rooms. I believe all the connecting rooms are inside category 10 (but I could be wrong about that).
Have fun planning, it will be a fun trip!

Thanks. I've been trying to lurk on the cruise boards, but I have no idea where to even start. I will spend some more time over there this weekend.

 

[ddavis860]

Thanks. I've been trying to lurk on the cruise boards, but I have no idea where to even start. I will spend some more time over there this weekend.

Buffy, while on the cruise board, look for a thread for your cruise date.

I also make door magnets for the different days, and what we were doing. So for formal night I had a magnet that featured Beast and Belle, for Semi Formal night it was Cinderella. I had different ones for the port and excursion we were on. I took a dry erase board for the inside of the door for the kids to post where they were, but it kept falling down, and wasn't used...

Last cruise I took a picture mat, and sharpies. The characters all signed. That was cool! Some people take a pillow case and have that signed. Take it to guest relations and they take care of it for you. We try to take the formal pics, and the kids get some with the characters. Will you have a pirate's night on the Alaskan cruise? We dressed up for that one last time.

I also recommend an over the door shoe organizer for the bathroom, great for the counter stuff that there isn't room for on the non counters.

 

[LindaBabe]

Please don't book it until we talk!