12 Tips for a Land/Sea Vacation - Part 2

We ran into Princess Aurora in the hallway

Lesson 7: Future Booking Desk/Shutters These two areas are virtually ghost towns during the beginning and middle of a cruise. The Future Booking Desk is responsible for making a reservation for, you guessed it, a future cruise. Shutters is the name of the area where you can purchase pictures that the staff photographers snapped. Every now and again you may see a family browsing thru pictures or chatting up the Future Booking Specialist, these people are probably veteran cruisers.

Lesson Learned: Pick Out Your Pictures Early And Re-Book On The Ship Early! Stop by Shutters early and often if you plan to purchase pictures. This allows you to leisurely browse and put items in your cart and only add the last minute photos the final night. If you are planning on EVER taking another Disney Cruise book on the ship. By booking on the ship you automatically save 10%
on the price and only owe 10% down. If you are not sure when you can sail its o.k. You are allowed to move the date as many times as you need to up until the Paid In Full mark. Many times you also get an On Board Credit when you book. The amount will vary depending on the length of the cruise you choose to sail. In addition, you can transfer your booking to your travel agent when you get home.

Lesson 8: Photography Magic is always happening at Disney.

12 Tips For a Land/Sea Disney Vacation

Ringing in 2011

Part 1 (lessons 1-6)

Lesson 1: What is a Land/Sea Vacation? Disney used to do “Land/Sea packages”. These packages would create a vacation that started at Disney World and ended with a sailing on the Disney Cruise Line or vice versa. From what I understand, they no longer offer this service. Which is fine because when I checked if I booked them separately I came out cheaper! So that's what I did. I just made sure that all of our times lined up. I was not automatically told this option was cheaper until I started chatting with the reservation specialist.

Lesson Learned: Always price out your options and look/ask for discounts/savings. Discounts/savings can come in the form of a Value hotel room instead of a Moderate, or on the Cruise Line a different cabin category such as a 4b instead of a 4a, or choosing deck 7 as opposed to deck 9 The only difference here is the location on the deck that you have chosen. For example 4a will be closer to midship and the elevators than 4b will. Just be honest with yourself and know if you are ok with possibly sacrificing.

Lesson 2: Know your Schedule Our Mega Vacation didn't start out that way...

Surprising Your Kids With A Disney Cruise

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   There is some debate about the method in which you should surprise your loved ones with a cruise or if you should surprise them at all. I read one account from a teen that was surprised with a cruise and she complained that it ruined her plans with her friends and she preferred that she not be surprised! I do not feel that way at all, I could be surprised at any day, hour, or minute. All I need is my passport and my camera : )

     As soon as I hung up the phone after booking our cruise we sat down and started talking about how we would pull off this “Christmas Miracle”...

Booking Our First Disney Cruise

Christmas Morning 2010

It's 2010 and several things have changed. Our kids are of course older we now have a Freshman in High School, a 6^th grader, and a 1^st grader. As we always do around September/October my husband and I began thinking about Christmas. We get a loose budget together and talk about gift ideas or different items that the kids have been asking for.

Since 2/3 of our kids were getting a bit older we had been talking about making a vacation around Christmas...

Our Disney Cruise, a Pipe Dream?

Disney Magic 2010

My family and I were sitting down to watch some t.v., and as we flipped thru the channels we landed on a show about the Disney Cruise Line. This was probably around the year 2005. Having been to Disney World several times and already having a severe love of Disney I thought this was the perfect show for us to watch.

At that time the family consisted of me, my husband, our 8 year old son, and two daughters age 6 and 2.

We sat down together and watched in awe...