Trying to plan cruise for whole family- is this crazy?

[Tracey1974]

This is my first post here after over a year of browsing the boards. I am in the early planning stages of the Dec 3rd, 2006 4 night cruise and have invited both sides of the family to come and join us. I sent out a packet with all pertinent information (dates, pricing, categories and resort info) and so far, we have 6 adults and 2 babies pretty much confirmed.

My question is- what is the best way for me to go ahead and book everything for everyone? What information do I need? Can I book specific rooms for them? I was going to book everything and let them know what they need for a deposit and get a payment schedule going so we can all get the trip paid off in advance.

This is so exciting to me, as I have never been anywhere near Disney during the holidays and hope to spend at least 2 days in the parks before to see the Xmas party and decorations.

Any help would be much appreciated- I'm sure I'll have a million more questions as it gets closer to the trip!

 

[Jsme]

Find a good TA and let them do it all for you. Less headache for you. This is what we did last year.

 

[kcashner]

Suggestion--tell each family member that the TA is "Mary Jones at the Smith agency, phone number XXXX" and let them take care of their own reservations. Unless you are booking 8 or more cabins, there is no need to use DCL's group bookings.

By allowing each person to do their own thru the TA, it takes YOU out of the loop. The TA will get on them about deposits, final payments, various choices, etc. If you all want a certain section of the ship, she can arrange that. If you all want to sit together at dinner, she needs only to "link" the reservations.

Make life easy on yourself. This is what the TA is paid for!

 

[poconoboatniks]

I agree with kcashner. We are traveling with dh's family next April. We all used Dreams Unlimited and they took care of linking the reservations. Linking the ressie will ensure that you get to sit together at dinner. Our rooms are in the same vicinity. We don't spend much time in our room, so it didn't matter where the rooms were located.

Poconoboatniks

 

[JSCTRico4]

I also want to plan a Disney cruise for "the whole family" before the kids all get too old. I was hoping for 2007 or so. The trouble is convincing them that the expense is worth it! We all have to fly from CA to FL. I know there is a possiblity of west coast itineraries, but, we live close to here, and have all done the Mexico thing. Plus, it seems as though cruising from FL is cheaper, even with the airfare..... MY QUESTION is, how to convince everyone that it is sooooo worth it? They seem to be interested, but, think we could do another cruise line cheaper. We are going on our 2nd DC next month, and know the difference...... the trouble is convincing them....

 

[JJsmama]

You are not crazy. We did it. We had 7 individual family parts of our one big family. 26 family members cruised. It was a great way to vacation together and no one gets stuck with the cooking, cleaning, hosting, etc.

My mom and I planned for everyone. We did use a travel agent. It probably would have been better to do as the others said and tell the travel agent it will be a group then have the others call her directly. She'll need full names and birth dates of all cruisers as well as a deposit.

 

[Tracey1974]

Good ideas- thank you! I have it in the information packet that I need to know by August 10th- then I can shop around for TA's and get us all together. Of course I am trying to handle everything myself, but it does seem to be less hassle to have someone else do it for me.
Can't wait to go!!

 

[JJsmama]

MY QUESTION is, how to convince everyone that it is sooooo worth it? They seem to be interested, but, think we could do another cruise line cheaper. We are going on our 2nd DC next month, and know the difference...... the trouble is convincing them....

This is a tough one. You can't tell someone else how to spend their money. For example, My sister keeps trying to tell me we all 'have' to spend $2000 to go to family camp. It sounds great to her but DH and I just are not interested.

One thing you can do is send them all the DVD and get them to read the different reviews in cruise books, etc.

 

[MickeyMania]

I was just looking at a cruise book at the bookstore this week... It outlined all cruise companies - and then determined: "Who would like this cruise", "What's good about this cruise line?" "Where do they fall short?", etc...

Anyway - with Disney - as you would guess - It's for families and people who like Disney. Goes on to say - it's great for large families with small kids, etc... Take a look. If it makes your argument - buy the book and show them!

Good Luck!

 

[crisi]

This is a tough one. You can't tell someone else how to spend their money. For example, My sister keeps trying to tell me we all 'have' to spend $2000 to go to family camp. It sounds great to her but DH and I just are not interested.

One thing you can do is send them all the DVD and get them to read the different reviews in cruise books, etc.

We had a huge family battle about that. We wanted to go somewhere as a family for my Dad's 60th birthday. Originally we were going to Denver where my sister lives. Somewhere along the line someone decided we weren't going to do that. Next thing I know, they are planning a cruise. But no one else has children, and they are unable to understand why my family of four is more nervous about the cost of airline tickets, rooms that sleep three, quality of kids clubs, saltwater pools, making sure we got early seating. A lot of cruiselines - particularly older ships - have very few cabins that will sleep four. I didn't want a ship where there was a lot of smoking/gambling/drinking. And when I protested that the ship we were looking at only had twenty cabins that slept four, my brother in law announced we could "just get connecting cabins." Yeah, we could, at twice the cost! The whole thing fell apart and a year later there are still bitter feelings. Oh, yeah then there was the whole "we are going to go over Christmas because everyone has Christmas off" - but my husband doesn't - he works for a retailer. And we said that about four times and eventually it was our fault we couldn't go over Christmas because we'd never mentioned that DH had to work! Then they wanted to go in March - and I was supposed to happily drag the kids from school for a week - lets not bother to ask about the school schedule!

You can't tell people how to spend their money. And in order to compromise, you need to make sure everyone's needs and expectations are addressed - maybe not met, but addressed. Perhaps the first thing to do is to decide the important thing is spending time together, then figuring out how much everyone is comfortable spending in order to do that and move from there.

 

[GhostlyHitchhiker]

I am kind of in the process of doing this right now as well. We have 16 people (8 adults, 8 kids; 5 separate "family cells" as we're calling them). My MIL and I are planning everything as no one else in the family has ever done a cruise before. I've only done one DCL cruise, but I'm "the family Dis person". My MIL is the experienced cruiser of the group.

Every "family cell" has different needs and part of our problem is that we are scattered across the country. Since most of our group has never done a cruise before, they don't even know what their "needs" are. Different people do vacations differently. Be prepared for that. If you're on the DIS boards, then you are probably a "planner type" like me. Some people don't want to overplan a vacation, some people don't know what they need to plan, some people just don't care about the details at all. The best way around that for us so far, is to have enough choices available to make decent compromises.

We decided that most of us weren't too concerned with taking our kids out of school for a week. All of our older kids do quite well in school so missing a week is no big deal. And the younger kids, again missing a week is nothing in the overall scheme of things to us. (If they have extra homework, there will be plane trips, cabin time, etc to do it) We looked at the prices throughout the year and gave everyone a timeline of when it would be most cost effective for us to go. Everyone looked at the 3 or 4 choices we had; no one had any specific objections to any of them, so my MIL and I just picked one. Then got prices for all the different stateroom cats and told everyone to tell us what they wanted. (Inside, Outside, Verandah, etc) Done, that one was easy. Then we booked.

My MIL booked with a TA she had used on a previous cruise, but everyone in our group has the TA number and name and can call themselves on their specific stateroom. Each room was given it's own Booking Number so anyone can make any changes they want.

My MIL and I get along amazingly well so this definately helps. Between the two of us, we have more info saved and stored than most people have for 6 vacations. We also aren't bombarding our family with info either. We decided to do "newsletters" with tidbits of info so everyone can get a general idea and feel for what's out there and how things work. If they all want more info on something, they know they can ask, but we don't want to send them all 600 weblinks and tell them to read it all.

Anyway, every family is different and you have to decide how well you can work and deal with your own family for planning. If it's going to be a constant fight, then just give them all the TA number, tell them when you're going and just plan your own fun. That way no one else can make you wish you hadn't decided to go. Hehe. I wish you the best of luck!

 

[cruzings]

This can be done. We did this last year with DHs parents, sister and her family. Not as big a group as some of you, but there were 11 of us. You can still book them together with different reservation numbers so that each of you can create your own choices as far as room category, excursions, etc. Just make sure though that DCL knows that you are a group so your reservations are linked. This makes it easy for them to give you the same dinner seating and rotation (you'll probably not be in one table but you'll be close to each other). If you're fortunate enough that everyone agrees to book similar category rooms, DCL might be able to give you rooms next or at least close to one another. Good luck and have fun. It's worth all the planning.

 

[Rence]

We did a family group of 12 (4 family groups). We had decided on DCL about two years ahead of time. After we made the DCL decision we then tried to pick the time. The big deciding factor was my youngest niece. She refuses to be left out of anything and would have a fit if the big kids were off doing something that didn't include her. Because of this we realized that we needed to go after she turned 3 and was potty-trained. (no one was going to keep her out of the Mickey Pool!). Once we agreed on that, picking the week wasn't too hard. We did this 18 months in advance so that everyone could plan their time off etc.

We used a TA, she was an old family friend. Each family booked directly with her. This way each family could pick the category etc. that they wanted. Some groups tried to get cabins close together, no problem - they worked with the TA to get this.

I love my family but too much family time can put a strain on things. I requested a cabin on a different deck and opposite side of the ship from the rest of the group. I know my sisters, they would think it hilarious to send my nieces to pound on my door at 6am, I knew that they wouldn't send them that far on their own. It worked great for me. Lots of family time onboard, but I could always escape to the stateroom.

Reservations were linked, so we all ate together. The rest of the time we kept open. We tended to do a lot of things in small groups. I may go to a show with one sister and two nieces. Grandpa took the two oldest grandkids to the movie etc. Trying to do everything as a large group would have been impossible so we made no attempt to all sit together at a show, all go on the same excursions etc. We did get some wonderful full family portraits taken.

 

[Tracey1974]

Ack! I wish I were going in 2005 instead of '06!!!

 

[mketting]

We are going next year with a group of 20. Dreams Unlimited is great and by far the best price.

 

[scrapperjill]

My advise....Take it slow and go with an open mind. Also don't expect everyone to have as much excitment with the trip and/or planning as you might have.

You can give everyone an idea of things to do and let them know what your family is doing...but leave the final choices up to them.

A cruise is a perfect vacation for larger groups/families...because you don't have to do EVERYTHING together.

Another piece of advice...try and keep everything seprate (currently I'm planning for a trip to WDW and DCL for a group of 12...and have made the mistake of trying to arrange for everyone as a group...flights, parking at the nearby airport, hotel stay...and it's starting to turn into a nighmare.) It would have been MUCH more simple on my part to plan for my family and just give them our plans to just go off on making their own plans.

I have found it frustrating to be so excited for the trip...to only find the rest of our group is not.