So fun to see so many of my DVC friends travel the same way we do. DH and I are older parents of young kids - we were married for 17 years before having our first. So we've done a lot of traveling for work/incorporated with conferences and also pure vacation. My parents retired first to Northern CA and then to Vegas (my mom now has dementia and can't travel, but we used to travel with them a ton when we all were younger - they got me started on Disney, and also owned RCI timeshares when I was a teen). My ILs lived in Chicago and then retired to the Pacific Northwest and then Fredericksburg VA. I grew up in the Boston area and have lived in NYC for 20 years now; DH and I still work FT and our motto is "work hard, play hard." We are new DVC owners but not new to WDW.
Hawaii, Grand Cayman, Vegas once a year, the beach in NW Florida, NYC, Colorado, California coast, Savannah, and on and on. We spend a lot of our disposable income on traveling.
Ha! Same here. We have been to Hawaii several times since having kids, most recently about a year ago. DH usually has a conference there every other year, but now that ODD is school-age, it is harder to pull her out for vacations, which is partly why we bought DVC. Both of our regular work conferences take place during the school year.
You may want to check into Las Vegas. It can make for a very nice family trip.
We just got back from a parental visit/spring break in Vegas! It was our first time with 2 kids who still mostly wanted the pool but also were into other things, and who could mostly sit still at restaurants. We stayed at the Delano and went to the pool almost every day. DH and I did catch ourselves comparing various things to WDW, though, like:
"At SAB they don't charge $20 for inner tubes." (the lazy river at the Mandalay Bay) And my 6yo thought the Polar Journey "ride" was lame because she was expecting something more like Star Tours. Also she wore her Elena dress to the Tournament of Kings at Excalibur (big hit with the 2-6yo set) and someone called her "Jasmine." (eyeroll) (at least they were trying, lol)
Also - we were sort of taken aback (not used to) the billboards and also the "no weapons" signs ...
@Cyberc1978, your older kids may ask some questions; just be prepared!
The only issue with Vegas is that most hotel rooms, especially those on the Strip, have a max occupancy of 4. Even our 1br suite at the Delano only slept 4 in 2 queens, no pullout couch in the LR, and only a wet bar with half of a shelf in a minibar that charged you every time you moved anything (another point of comparison with DVC, LOL).
I love balancing Disney and non-Disney trips! In the last year I visited Ecuador, Trinidad, China, Taiwan, San Diego, and Maine. I also spend almost all my winter weekends in Vermont snowboarding and try to do some national parks, although I didn’t do many this year. I don’t have kids yet l, so it’s easier for me now to bounce around
But besides the places I go snowboarding and hiking in the north east, there’s not really a vacation place I return to over and over like Disney.
This is us, but with skiing.
A lot of our non-Disney traveling was done pre-kids and before buying DVC. For now we love Disney trips with a 2 year old but will add on other destinations along with DVC stays in the future. There are lots of places we've loved visiting in the US, and internationally some of our favorites have been London, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Greece, Bora Bora, and the Canadian Rockies. Haven't done a
Disney cruise yet so hope to do so at some point (perhaps a member cruise!).
We will do a member cruise someday too - but paying cash. We also loved Bora Bora and French Polynesia in general.
Thanks everyone I appreciate your feedback. I’m glad to hear that you also go elsewhere even though wdw is a lovely place.
I see that a lot have been cruising, I’ve never done that but would love to in the future. Would you recommend doing a dvc cruise as our first cruise or something else?
I may PM you - we did our first Disney cruise last August for DHs 50th. It was also our first big ship cruise. Prior cruises (all before having kids) were a Lindblad Alaska cruise (about 80 pax), a private 20-pax charter on a small luxury boat to the Galapagos, and a 40-pax ultraluxe Aegean sea cruise on the Sea Cloud, a 4-masted sailing ship. So taking a big boat cruise was a real adjustment. Because of that, and our young kids, we actually took a Caribbean cruise on the Fantasy so we wouldn't feel like we were missing sightseeing in a new place (we had been to most of the ports on the Caribbean itineraries). What I really liked about the
DCL cruise was that the older kids (really, once they're out of the nursery) could have their own cruise experience on board, make their own friends in a pretty safe environment, and could still spend plenty of time with their parents. It was really ideal for us with small kids, and we will likely take another cruise in 2019 or 2020. There are closed/secret FB groups of cruisers and we joined one for our cruise and so we got to know many of the cruisers before we went. Best of all, there were some very experienced cruisers who answered ALL of our questions before we even knew to ask them, and we've become friends since then. The teens on that cruise I think set up their own FB group so they could get to know each other beforehand, too.
Thanks guys, I appreciate it.
As we love to travel while the weather is warm/hot I think our first cruise would be during the summer time in july. I think we would do 5-7 days in the Caribbean and maybe combine it with either a WDW trip or a NYC trip.
When doing a Caribbean cruise is the best port to depart from in Miami/fort lauderdale or maybe somewhere else?
I dont think we have any preference for either a Disney cruise or something else as long as we will get an en joyful trip. We are going 2 adults and 3 kids 6,12,13 I would hate being cramped in a too small room. If we opted for a Disney cruise we would not use any of our points(most don't qualify anyway
)
Is there a place where I can learn the basics of a cruise what to look for and what to avoid?
regards
I agree with a PP that booking 2 connecting interior cabins might be the best in your situation. We combined our weeklong August cruise out of Port Canaveral with 3 days before and after at WDW. It was unusual for us to take that much time off, but we thought it was a perfect combination. The drive from WDW to Port Canaveral is about an hour, and we booked private transportation because Disney charges per head each way to go from resorts to the port. There are other cruise lines that depart from PC as well. For our first big ship cruise, a DCL cruise was the best for us, and we thought it was well worth the extra $ as compared to other cruise lines. The private island (
Castaway Cay) was really a lot of fun.
