What a great thread, I'm following everybody's posts. This is a big discussion in our house hold this month (due to winter and being bored with nothing to do except think about vacation).
We
love,
love,
love DCL. But the 2 factors that are causing us to look away are 1) cost, 2) travel to Port Canaveral from Phila, PA. (We usually drive to cut down costs, 15 hours).
We keep looking at You Tube videos of reviews of other cruise lines, asking friends, and asking travel agents. Though they give thumbs up on other cruise lines, when we watch the videos there are things that the reviewers say are great that would not be acceptable on Disney (smoking in the casino, they say large showers (not), theater that can do
either movies or plays, cabins that look extremely small and beat up (one review you could see the paint flecking off of the railing), etc). And when it comes to the price, yes Disney is more expensive up front, but listening to friends and reviewers about all of the add-ons, it makes me wonder if the price different isn't that great. One YT reviewer took 5 minutes to explain all of the the add-ons on the one cruise line's new exclusive island. Our friends took a cruise (don't remember which line) and they said every time they took a breath they were given, "Sorry that's extra" speech for drinks, meals, snacks, etc. so the difference in price may go away with all of the add-ons?
So when I tell friends about DCL they go, "Isn't that expensive" I totally agree, but I haven't found anywhere where I can get that value and a significant cost savings. I feel if I go cheaper that I would lose the warm fuzzy feeling I get when I am on the DCL. I also feel that if I did take another line that I would be severely disappointed during the whole cruise.
Now to put it in perspective, we usually do Caribbean, Dream class, and we have done enough islands where the only island we definitely want to do is CC. One day when I hit the lottery we will do Europe.
So thanks for your inputs and thank OP for this thread.
Please keep the comments coming so I feel better about not putting money into the kids college funds and spending it on these cruises. ;-)
Joe