Room Choises

[Gigashadow]

It seems to me from the "small" amount of posts I have read here, a good majority of people reserve the smaller of rooms avaliable. We have reserved a Cat-4 room for our first DCL cruise in July 2003 on the 4 day Wonder. Attached to that is an 8 day stay at our DVC Home Resort. Our children are preteen ages and basically we do everything together - "Our" free time is when the kids are sleeping, hehe. Because of the ages of our kids, we decided to start with a "short" cruise with a comfortable size room to relax during the "in-between hours" of what feels like a very fun and busy agenda during the cruise.

I guess I am just looking for other people's input/experiences with young kids during thier first trip. We would rather go the extra $$$ in debt rather than say "I wish we reserved the Cat-4 instead of the Cat-7 for our first trip", we could save the money on the next trip with a 8 day cruise when the kids are older (and ready to join in the age appropriate cruise entertainment, and also spending less time in the room).

What are your thoughts? I would like to hear your stories.

 

[Gigashadow]

42 views and no replies? Somebody must have an experience they would love to share......

 

[4cruisin]

My experience is different from you because we did not have children with us on our first cruise. We were on the 3 day Wonder last Dec. after spending 5 days at WDW with extended family. My dh and I had a cat 6 adjoining my Dsis and Dbil cat 6 room.

The problem is, after having a room like that on our very first cruise, I could never go to another room that did not have a verandah. I sound like a spoiled brat, but we really enjoyed the limited time we spent there and can't wait for our 7 day in Jan. 03 again in a cat 6.

I guess what I am saying is this, if the cat 4 room is within your budget and does not make you cut back on other spending opportunites, go for it, but, you will not be able to "go back" to a smaller cabin or one with out a verandah after having a cat 4 especially if you are going on a longer cruise next time.

Have a great trip.

 

[outahere]

When we went on the Wonder we decided to do a one time splurge on a cat 3 room, and are glad we did. There were only 3 of us, but it was nice to have the room to spread out. We went into a couple of cat 4 rooms right before we disembarked the last morning, and they appeared to be roomy and comfortable. We have a cat 4 booked on the Magic in April, 2004 and may go back sooner on a 3 or 4 day. If we go on another short cruise, I wouldn't hesitate to book a cat 4, 5 or 6. But...... I agree with a lot of others, that once you have a verandah, you'll never want to go without one.

 

[badgerboy]

For our family it was a matter of space. There are 5 of us in tha family, with three children ages 13, 10 and 4. When comparing rates for the 9/28 mystery cruise, we looked at both a family suite, and two cat 10 cabins. What we ended up with were the two cat 10's on deck 1 with an adjoining door. It was fantastic! True, we did not have an ocean view, but we did not spend that much time in the rooms, we were on decks 9 and 10 most of the time.

What was nice was that my wife and I could have our own room and the kids could have theirs, yet we were all together. With the way DCL designed their stateroom bathrooms we could not have asked for anything better. We had tons of space to store things as well, which we would not have had in a family suite.

Deck 1 does not have many cabins, so it was very quiet and being on this deck it is easy to get off and on at the ports of call.

When we go again, we would do this again in a heartbeat.

Oh..there are not alot of cabins with adjoing doors....ours were 1067 and 1069 if your are interested in this for your family.

 

[JODIELYN]

When we cruised in December of 2000 we had adjoining rooms in Cat 9. On Dec 2 i believe. Very nice... they both had huge portholes and plenty of room. We have 4 kids!

this time we are cruising with two other families and decided to upgrade to Cat 6 on Dec 6. 6066 & 6064 and the other families have adjoining rooms right in succesion to ours.

These rooms have verandas... i'm excited about that.

Don't know if it'll be worth the $ or not... but we'll seee....

Jodie

 

[Towncrier]

Our first cruise on the Disney Magic (August 2000) was a Cat4 cabin with 3 adults and 2 children. We enjoyed the verandah, but we felt a bit like sardines. And there was only one bathroom and one shower. The Cat4 was the only cabin that we could get using Disney Vacation Club points that would hold the five of us.

When we cruised this past January, we opted for connection Cat10 cabins. My wife and I were in one, and her mom and our two kids were in the other. Besides the obvious benefits, it was truly nice to have TWO bathrooms and two showers. And two closets. And two televisions. You get the picture. No verandah this trip, but we plenty of sea views from up on deck. I have to say that we really didn't miss the verandah at all.