Which cruise to pair with WDW?

[ekatiel]

Budget gurus: Help me figure out which cruise to pair with Disney! Here's the deal: We were planning on a Disney-only trip over Thanksgiving-- we were going to check in Nov 21 and check out Dec 1, hoping to get free dining AND allow my hubby to attend a conference from 11/27-11/30. The kids would miss two days of school (they get all of Thanksgiving week off). We took this same trip in 2012. The great thing about it, was our last four days of hotel were paid for b/c of the conference, AND we had free dining, and by that late in the trip, the extra ticket days were costing us next to nothing. BUT, DH sort of burned out with that long of a trip, so I've been looking at alternatives to pair with the trip to shorten it some. Today, Royal Caribbean came out with an awesome kids sail free promo. Here are the two choices I'm looking at:

Allure of the Seas: 7 day
11/23-11/30
INTERIOR
$2175
(we wouldn't be able to do the conference at all, so would be paying for everything at Disney, but we could pull the kids out of school the week before and probably get free dining.)

Liberty of the Seas: 5 day
11/22-11/27
BALCONY
$1575
(we would still be able to do the conference, but we wouldn't get free dining b/c our check in would be 11/27-- on the flip side, we'd get to stay somewhere nice like GF on a conference rate-- so hotel would be paid by DH's work, but we'd have to pay tickets and food).

Any thoughts? Any possibilities I'm not thinking of? How much does dining REALLY cost for a family of four who likes one sit down meal per day? We've had free dining our last two trips, so I'm not really good at thinking about how much eating actually costs at WDW. ODS will be 10 this trip, so we're definitely NOT BUYING the dining plan-- it's just too much to pay for him as an adult on the plan.

 

[ekatiel]

DH had the great idea to pair the Allure cruise with a few days at Harry Potter World and do Disney sometime later. I'm SOLD!! We just booked the cruise .

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

DH had the great idea to pair the Allure cruise with a few days at Harry Potter World and do Disney sometime later. I'm SOLD!! We just booked the cruise .

So which one would did you book?

 

[pigletto]

Congrats!! It's a great price and sounds like a fabulous trip.

 

[mwins78]

Rccl is having a promotion 3rd and 4th pass anger sail FREE it's a first come first serve basis check it out

Sent from my iPad using DISBoards

 

[S. C.]

Here is a really great detailed/informative trip review with lots of pics on Allure. Lots of comments from others but you can skip past all of that if you want. Bottom of page he gives a link for just the review without all the comments.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1737751

 

[ekatiel]

Rccl is having a promotion 3rd and 4th pass anger sail FREE it's a first come first serve basis check it out

Sent from my iPad using DISBoards

That's what we booked. Kids Sail Free on Allure over Thanksgiving. Glad we booked it Saturday morning b/c by the evening they were sold out of KSF rooms for that sailing .

Here is a really great detailed/informative trip review with lots of pics on Allure. Lots of comments from others but you can skip past all of that if you want. Bottom of page he gives a link for just the review without all the comments.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1737751

Thanks for the review link. I love reading cruise critic reviews!!