West Coast Cruise Helpful Hints

[WatchYourHeadNStep]

1. Do not bring hard case luggage. There is very little places to store the items. Bring soft case luggage such as duffel bags. Pack your clothes and soft items in these bags. All the soft sided bags can be shoved into the closet (with a little rearranging of the blankets, pillows, and life presevers).

2. Definitely bring a surge protector or extension cord. BE SURE the surge protector does not have an alarm when it cannot sense a proper ground! The Disney Magic does not have a grounding system and I had to literally RIP out the darn-tootin' speaker in my surge protector to make it be quiet!

3. Pack light on the boarding day. We were lugging around a little too much stuff for three hours while waiting for our cabin. Try lugging a camera bag, an overnight bag, and a laptop bag while trying to eat lunch!

4. Thank You cards! This is a nice personal touch to those individuals that you want to tip or just to say Thank You! We had a bunch of Disney movie cards lying around and we gave each individual a card that did an outstanding job!

5. Laptop with wireless access! Once the wireless system goes LIVE, you will no longer be tethered to a desktop in the Internet Cafe or waiting in lines! I sat out on the Promenade Deck checking my email this past cruise!

6. Plug-in air freshner / nightlight for the restroom! Fits right into the hair dryer outlet! Ladies, if you are going on a cruise with your man.......nuff said!

 

[atakaratemom]

Those are great hints, especially the plug in air freshener/nightlight. We brought one and it kept the bathroom smelling fresh and gave us enough light at night.

Some other hints:

Wear your swimsuits or carry them on when you board. My kids got in the pool right after lunch and there were only a few others in the pool at that time. Later on in the cruise it can get pretty crowded.

Next pool tip: Go in the morning. My daughter had the pool virtually to herself on a couple of mornings when we got there early. By noon on sea days it is packed!

Order room service everyday. It is great! We had a late dinner seating and we would order room service in the late afternoon while we changed for the show and dinner. It really helped tide my kids over until the late meal. They loved the cookies and milk before bed tool.

Pack some light plastic rain ponchos that can be stowed in a beach bag for your excursions in Mexico in case it rains. It rained on us in both PV and Mazatlan, and although it was very warm it still would have been nice to cover up a bit.

If you are going on a beach excursion with kids, bring sand toys. I packed some and it really made our day at the beach much more enjoyable. My DD loved making sand castles.

Have a great trip!

Mary