We are planning for our first ever cruise in 2027. (DH cruised over 20th ago) DS has chosen a cruise for his Senior Trip. I have two questions.
1 - We don’t fly, DH just can’t do it. So, luggage size has never been an issue. We pack in what we want - we go. We will be driving to Port Canaveral. I have looked up the luggage sizes and allowable amounts. What are the best recommendations for luggage for checking? And best for carry-on? Family of 4, blended family, 2 teens, 7-day.
2 - What, if any, digital planner or printable planner would be recommended for planning this cruise? (If outside suggestions are allowed) I have looked on Etsy and there are so many choice, I get overwhelmed. I just need to be able to have a tangible reading of my options and scheduling.
As long as the luggage fits in your room, I don’t believe there is any restriction to luggage on a Disney cruise. We are in swim suits during the day. I bring a few pairs of NIke athletic shorts and t-shirts to wear to breakfast and re-wear them. Don’t over pack.
I don’t know that you need any kind of planner for a cruise. Any excursions or tastings or booked activities you do on a Disney cruise will appear in the cruise app. The Cruise Navigator with the activities all day will be on the DCL app.
I put my Pay in Full date, activities booking date, and check in date on the calendar on my iPhone and have alerts set t remind me. My TA also sends me reminders.
For a first cruise I’d definitely use a TA.
4 people in one room or 4 people in two rooms? You can certainly bring as much luggage as you can store under the bed. But if you want to put your clothes away for the week, I found there to be a lack of drawer and shelf space on Treasure. There were only three usable drawers for clothes (plus one for hair dryer and one for menus in the desk). Hubby and I hung our shirts just because it was easiest that way.
As for planning, I used a basic Excel spreadsheet but I didn’t actually know the times of most things until I got to port and could check the app for daily activities. It was not at all like planning a WDW or DLR trip. The personal navigators are great as a guide but I wouldn’t expect everything to be exact.
DCL does have an official limit of suitcases per person just because they cannot allow an endless amount of luggage. But it’s generous. We’ve brought more than we do for a road trip onboard the ship and they’ve not batted an eye (8 suitcases that we checked, most of them carry-on rollers, between 6 of us plus backpacks and a tote bag we were carrying on ourselves).
So you should have no problem bringing what you want like you do on the road. But just a few things you want to consider:
You do want to be able to stow any luggage under the bed (or be good with using the closet floor space for it, i.e. underneath shirts or jackets which works if you aren’t bringing many dresses). The space under the bed is generous though and we have a couple of gigantic suitcases that fit just fine (one does have to be open to fit under and then we stack smaller suitcases on each open side to slide in, but it still works out).
Anything that you absolutely want to carry on yourself has to fit in the luggage x-ray scanner which about the same size as a carry-on. It can be any kind of bag that fits the dimensions for the scanner (which are listed somewhere on DCL’s site). You just have to keep whatever bag you carry on with you from the time you board until your room is ready (usually around 1:30-2pm).
Anything bigger (or whatever you just don’t need right away that you don’t want to be carrying around with you that first hour or so on the ship), will be checked with the porters with luggage tags attached before you go through security & you’ll see it back in your room sometime later in the afternoon/early evening. They are not gentle with those bags, so you’ll want them in a sturdy/durable case. And will want to make sure you keep medication, valuable electronic devices, your identification documents and anything else you might need for the first little bit on the ship, with you and not in those cases.
As for digital planner: what I have found for a cruise is that less planning is actually easier.
I do still always make my own spreadsheets, because planning is part of the fun, but I have learned not to get caught up on any of the details because really & truly, until you’re onboard, you won’t know the schedule. You do know what time you’ll be at dinner and of course will know any bookings you made in advance. And of course, you will know what time you’re expected in port and back on the ship before it departs again. But it is very fluid especially as the ship needs to make any adjustments on the fly, so I only keep track of the very big basics (the time to be on the ship, what time it’s expected to get in each port, any reservations or highlights we want to accomplish for that day, and what time dinner is).
The one fun thing I do like to speculate on is the order of the shows you see. You’ll have at least 2 (usually 3) Broadway style shows and then variety acts or movie screenings to fill in whatever other nights you have. For those, I like to consult past Navigators for similar sailings to figure it out. And you’ll attend the show opposite your dinner time, with the earlier dinner time seeing the later show and later dinner time sees the earlier show. Usually, the early dinner is 5:45pm with an 8 or 8:30pm show and the later dinner is 8:15pm with a 6 or 6:30pm show. But they do adjust those as needed for the sailing. So again, a very good reason to keep things fluid.
Our travel agent said the family deluxe would be good for us. But I have considered a second joining room just bc - teens. They are tall, would the single beds work for them? Would we be annoyed with each other from the start?
Thank for all the info! I didn’t realize there were scanners. I should have. I had a mental note of items for backpacks, change of clothes, charges, electronics, meds, and so on.
My DS16 is almost 6 feet tall. He sleeps on the bottom bunk and is fine with it. DS27 went with us once and he is 5 ft 11. He didn’t complain about the bed either.
It will depend on your tolerance for having to navigate one single walkway from the front of the room to the back of the room.
Everything else can be managed fairly easily as it sounds like your agent has recommended the family deluxe room (there is more space in that room and some, but not all, have a wall-pull down bed separate from the bunks that is reportedly better/more comfortable than the couch single sofa bed or the pull-man bunk over it). My husband has slept on the single sofa and it was fine for him for 3 nights (he is 5’10").
Then there is plenty of closet/storage/shelf space (not so much drawer space on some ships, but there’s so much of all the rest that it works out fine, plus under the bed is large and we have used a suitcase under the bed opened up like a drawer if we really needed to).
And the bathrooms should be a split bath (there are some layouts where it isn’t, but most are). And with a split bath you’ll have 2 separate sinks with mirrors plus a vanity outside the bathroom where the single beds are so plenty of spaces to use where mirrors are required. And 1 sink is with a toilet and the other sink is with a tub & shower.
So really the space in the room comes down to navigating that it from front to back the times you’ll all be in the room. Most rooms open up right into a narrow “hallway” with the split bathroom doors on one side of it and facing the closet doors on the other, then the room opens up a tiny bit to where the queen bed is BUT goes right back down to a narrow passage along the foot of the bed and the wall. That area is the tightest to manage and can create a bit of a traffic jam if you’re all trying to move around. And then at the back of the room on the other side of the queen bed, the room opens up again with the bunks on one side (the same side as the head of the queen bed) with the vanity/drawers/shelves/mini-fridge across from it.
The family deluxe would give you space at the back of that for a longer footprint but the width (or rather lack of it) is more the source of moving around the room that might make it difficult for 4 grown people to be moving around.
We are 6 of us so we are always forced to have 2 rooms and one of the loveliest things about that is we get connecting rooms, open up both those doors and then that space where the doors are becomes a little bit of space to cheat into right at that pinch point at the foot of the queen beds).
If you won’t expect to be in the room much more than getting ready for dinner and/or can stagger that even, so it’s just bedtime you’re in the same space, then you can totally make 1 room work for the 4 of you. But if you want to be able to spend time in there without having to play traffic control to get around, then 2 rooms is nice to avoid that.
This is what I found. I am a hyperplanner, but on the cruise I have to let that go. And in fact, I try to schedule as little as possible – maybe a massage, Royal Gathering, non-rotational meals, and any port excursions-- so we can be spontaneous. When I have too much planned, it makes it hard to be flexible depending on the events on the Navigator.
Bingo! Our first cruise we weren’t even sure if we were going to go so we didn’t PIF by the activities booking date & waited until the absolute last minute (and it was in that time when they were adjusting back from Covid so our PIF date was actually 60 days instead of the usual 90 days) so we “missed out” on any bookings. We’ve more than made up for it and I wholeheartedly agree that on a cruise less is more (time to let the Navigator take you wandering through its very awesome line-up of activities!)
And dare I say, I’m a little excited that our upcoming cruise has only Royal Gathering and nothing else!
Bed size discussion is very helpful. I’m glad I’m getting so much info for suitcases. Truly. I was fretting a ridiculous amount about the size of the suitcases.
My adult children, including a 6’ son and 5’11" daughter sleep fine on cruise bunks. (They haven’t been on DCL since 2014, but have recently done RCCL and CCL.)
This last year they were 19 and 22 on the trip.
My spouse is 6-4 and a bit too tall for any cruise bed we’ve ever had but not uncomfortably so. He felt the beds and shower were pretty comfortable compared to other cruise rooms we’ve been in. (The only one better was a Haven suite room on NCL.)
However his clothes are big and took up the bulk of one of the closets. (Maybe he just overpacks.)