What part of holiday do you cruise?

[Muscateer]

Hi all

Just wondered what part of your holiday do you tend to cruise? Beginning, middle or end.

I would imagine cruising halfway through your holiday would mean checking out of your hotel and back in again after cruise. Seems a bit of a hassle so would probably tend to go for end.

When you end your cruise is there plenty time in the day to get your flight home at night or do you need to have a night's stay in a hotel?

Last question, do you book your cruise separate to your WDW holiday or can you do the whole package?

Sorry for the blonde questions but have never done a cruise and would love to coincide it with my next visit to WDW.

TIA

 

[Ware Bears]

We're doing our first Disney cruise this time and are going towards the start of our holiday. Our first choice would have been bang in the middle but the prices were doubled as it was then Christmas/New Year so we opted for an earlier one and are having 3 full days before we cruise then we will have 10 days in Orlando afterwards.

We will still have our hotel room in Orlando as it is an inexpensive off-site one booked as part of a package which is nice as it means we won't have to take everything on the boat. We have booked the cruise separately to the rest of our holiday.

Whilst researching on the DIS I picked up that many people said it can be very depressing to fly straight home from a cruise so if you can manage at least one night in Orlando before you fly home that might lessen the blow.

 

[wayneg]

Its difficult because we don't like all the changing from hotel to cruise and back to hotel but would rather do that than straight from port to airport, after the cruise we like at least 1 park day(MK) to end the holiday. This August we managed 2 days after, off ship Saturday flew home Monday.
Many go straight from ship to plane but its your choice, agree we would find that depressing.
We have always cruised later in holiday purely down to cost, later in hol has always been cheaper, this August cruise on the 17th Aug (Eastern) would have cost is $4k, leaving it until 22nd (Western) $3k. $1k cheaper. but as with Elaine above it can work other way.
I always book cruise seperate either direct with Disneycruiseline.com or with Dreamsunlimitedtravel.com to get extra onboard credit. For Royal Caribbean I have used thomascook.com/cruise/ & cruisedirect.com

 

[Pinky166]

We did our first dcl cruise in September. I like staying in different hotels although packing is a pain but we spent 13 nights in OKW then 4 nights on the cruise & then 4 nights at the Poly after.

If you stay at two Disney resorts then you can do what we did and packed one case with cruise stuff then the other luggage was stored & transferred from OKW to the Poly.

 

[Pooh's-Honey-Pot]

We did the cruise for the last week of our holiday, purposefully as we thought we would be so fat from the 24 hour eating on board that we wouldn't fit in our shorts and skimpy tops for the parks if we did them after (that's sad but true!!!)!!!!!

We bought three week disney park tickets from Virgin (as we had 2 weeks in Disney first, and the two week tickets we're only £10 cheaper); we made sure we were first off the boat that morning, and booked the latest flight home (7.30pm I think). We dropped our cases at DTD, and were in MK by 10.30am to say "bye" for a couple of hours, and then headed to Epcot for the afternoon! We were really pleased with the way it worked out!

 

[~Piglet~]

We're doing our first Disney cruise next May, after spending 17 days in Orlando. We are flying straight home that night on an evening flight, and the reasoning behind it is that I tend to suffer for a couple of days after being on a boat (I still feel like I am bobbing up and down on the water!) and to a lesser extent when I fly, so I would rather fly straight home on the same day and have both types of motion sickness together

I booked my cruise separately through Dreams Unlimited - but I also booked the rest of the holiday (flights, hotel) separately too

 

[Melcatfish]

Like Wayne we find that towards the end of the holiday is cheaper as we have been in August and US schools go back mid August ish.

We cruises exactly half way through last time as we were switching hotels anyway so we did 5 nights at OKW with free dining, 7 night cruise then 5 nights in a villa.

When we cruised before we only did three nights in the last week of a three week villa stay. We didn't pack up everything but obviously took all valuables - our villa hire included the time we were away as it was a short cruise.

Next year we are dispensing with WDW and just doing a Disney Cruise as it suits our family at the moment to do that so the cruise will BE our holiday!

Mel
x

 

[Muscateer]

Thank you all for your replies and you have given some ideas to think about.

It seems as though alot of you book WDW separate too rather than going through a package company. Do you book the hotels direct or is there a good website to use?

I have only ever booked through Virgin hols or Thomas Cook so if I can get a better deal going direct that would be brilliant. All the more spending money for me

 

[natalielongstaff]

We cruised at the end of our holiday and had our last night at Bay lake towers, it was a great end to the trip

 

[wayneg]

It seems as though alot of you book WDW separate too rather than going through a package company. Do you book the hotels direct or is there a good website to use?

I have only ever booked through Virgin hols or Thomas Cook so if I can get a better deal going direct that would be brilliant. All the more spending money for me

If its a Disney hotel see what offers Disney.co.uk are offering for your dates, for us in August we can stay at OKW with free DDP(3 adults) for £100/night, Disney.com its $295+tax/night, a lot more. Also check package prices but they are rarely cheaper. For us next August Virgin want £5,800 for a 21 night trip to OKW, DIY I am expecting to do it for about £3,800(or less) but willing to do indirect flights.

If you want offsite hotel try travelsupermarket.com to start.

 

[Muscateer]

Thanks Wayneg. Will definetely be staying in a Disney Hotel so will go and have a look at Disney.co.uk and Disney.com.

I did offsite a couple years ago after my last two trips to Disney hotels and I really felt so hard done by and vowed always to stay onsite again.

 

[amystevekai&bump]

we always do ours in the middle - and having seen all the sad faces getting off the cruise ship who were all headed to the aiport -It made us decide that we never want to feel like that - it's bad enough getting off the boat, but I feel it would be a lot harder with nothing but the flight home to look forward to!!

Next year we are staying onsite at WDW before the cruise (and using the Magical Express and DCL buses for the fist time) and then we have our onsite Universal hotel to look forward to after the cruise. We worked out last year that everyone who advised us to end our holiday at UO was correct - we definitely see the FOTL access and the relaxation of the HRH as a perfect end to our trip!!!

Hope that gives you some more ideas!!

 

[wilma-bride]

It's worth noting that if you are staying onsite, even if you are changing hotels (or not) you can ask them to store and/or transfer any luggage you don't want to take on the cruise with you.

Because we cruised towards the end of our holiday this time, we packed a couple of cases to take on the cruise with us and the other three we left with bell services, who stored them and transferred them to Bay Lake Tower for us. When we arrived at BLT, it was a simple case of calling bell services and asking for our cases to be delivered to the room (although, with the benefit of hindsight, we probably should have just left them as we didn't touch them between then and travelling home the next day).

 

[jns]

we have done it all ways
too much packing and unpacking for a cruise in the middle
I think last time was best
cruised at the end it was nice to relaxe after 10 days in the parks
had an 6pm flight home same day as we got off the ship spent the day at Kennedy space center

but as with every holiday it all depends on the cost of things we are lucky that we can be quite felixable with our holidays dates

 

[UKDEB]

I'm a bit late to this, but I've always said I can't imagine anything worse than disembarking and heading straight for the airport. The one time we cruised DCL we did it mid-trip. My ideal, assuming a two or three week trip, would be 3 days at WDW, 4 cruising, then back and settled in Orlando.

 

[wilma-bride]

I'm a bit late to this, but I've always said I can't imagine anything worse than disembarking and heading straight for the airport. The one time we cruised DCL we did it mid-trip. My ideal, assuming a two or three week trip, would be 3 days at WDW, 4 cruising, then back and settled in Orlando.

Oh, I would love to do 3 weeks Deb - a week in Orlando, 7 night cruise, then a further week in Orlando. Still, I can but dream - that's about as close as Gary would let me get

 

[ALBA]

We have done 2 x 7nt cruises before and tend to do them in the middle of the holiday. This is so we can get over jetlag the first few days and I don't like the thought of getting of the ship and going straight home from there.

This time we are in Florida for almost 3wks with 2 children (3 & 5mths) so we are only doing a 3nt cruise. We will stay at the BWV for 4nights then do the 3nt cruise then stay at SSR for 12nts. The reason we did it this way is the cruise is over the weekend so saves on the expensive DVC weekend points and DCL were running an offer of Kids Sail Free and this was the last cruise the offer applied to, so it all made sense.

We tend to book everything separately as we have the DVC points to use.

Alba

 

[disneyholic family]

about 5 days into the holiday , with another 2 weeks of holiday afterwards...

 

[TinkTatoo]

It's worth noting that if you are staying onsite, even if you are changing hotels (or not) you can ask them to store and/or transfer any luggage you don't want to take on the cruise with you.....

We tend to do a cruise towards the end of our holiday and leave most of our cases with bell services, they are then waiting for us at the resort when we get back. Plus, going near the end means that most of the stuff already packed can stay packed so it's less to sort out when you're flying home

I'm a bit late to this, but I've always said I can't imagine anything worse than disembarking and heading straight for the airport....

The closest we got to this was when we'd planned to be down in Vero for our last 4 days and fly home from there. It just made it seem like such a long traveling day when you had to include the drive up to the airport so I called when we were there and got our last night switched to BWV and we had a much more relaxing last day.

Apart from the fact that when you get off the ship you know that you've still got a few more days to enjoy I'd always be worried that there might be some delay in getting off the ship to risk flying home that day.