Cruise Curious

Disney Cruise Line
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Hello Touring Plans Fam! I had thought I was stepping away from planning family Disney trips as we have entered the “paying for college” years and I didn’t see a near future trip in sight. Enter my in-laws and their desire to do a Disney cruise for their 50th wedding anniversary! I have never done a cruise, let alone a Disney cruise, and they are asking me for recommendations about which ship to book and ports to visit. Again, I know nothing! Any of your advice/opinions on the best Disney cruise is welcome. Equally welcome are any of your best resources for educating myself about this!

Thank you in advance!

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Alaska seems to be a popular option for that age group. :wink: My brother actually did a Vancouver > Alaska itinerary this summer with his young family, and they had a blast, so really anyone would enjoy it.

If they prefer Caribbean, I would advise a 7-night sailing for that kind of celebration. I’m assuming they are either retired or could take an extended vacation. There are plenty of itineraries in the Caribbean or Mexico that would fit the bill.

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Have they ever done a cruise before? Do they know they will like cruising? My recommendation is get the longest cruise you can afford. Three to four days isn’t really enough to relax and settle in. It can take two to three days to learn how to get around and where everything is. My other piece of advice is to get a DCL- specific travel agent. You don’t know what you don’t know and DCL does things differently from other cruise lines.

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We are doing a 50th anniversary cruise to Alaska with my parents next summer. We are all so excited.

I would be hesitant to do Alaska as a first cruising experience though. Are they close to any ports? I agree on a 7 night cruise to start. Could I toss out that you should potentially just explore other cruise lines? Just glance at the options. My parents have cruised DCL with us and RCL with us and will be going on Princess to Alaska. I do not think that they would choose DCL without the grandchildren.

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I think you will find a wide range of answers for this. We did a 7 night and it was too long for us, decided 5 nights is the ideal. But others love a nice, long cruise. We prefer the older, smaller ships, but many like the amenities of the newer ships. I have a friend who likes the Bermuda cruise the best because it goes there and stays there for several days (not a Disney cruise). We like the warmer climates and prefer stops at both Disney islands. My dad would be happy if all he ever did was Alaska, over and over, it’s all about personal preferences. You need to figure out what you like and go from there!

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We did this on the Disney Dream out of NYC but I don’t think they sail that route anymore.

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I haven’t seen it in a while. My friends take it from Boston on Norwegian I think. They also like not having to fly anywhere!

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This is why we love cruising out of NY/NJ! I would love to squeeze in a trip on the new Aqua!!

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Our first cruise was a 4 night. I can attest that it took about 3 days to find our footing with the cruise…but I’m not sure I would have wanted longer than 4 nights for that first cruise. We needed time after we got off the cruise to process the experience (the good and the bad) before we decided we wanted to do another cruise.

I think the big thing was lack of cruise ports. While we did enjoy many of the the on-ship activities/shows…we actually really liked the ONE port day we had (not including the Coco Cay private island, which was meh), and felt that we would prefer a cruise with more ports. So, we booked our next major cruise as a 9-night on RCCL with 6 ports along the East Coast up into Canada. Looking forward to that. (We also have a 3-night DCL Christmas cruise coming up, which is really just about experiencing a Disney Cruise, so I don’t think we’d want anything longer in that case.)

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I do not think that this is the opinion of all who visit the island, just an FYI for the OP. We LOVE Coco Cay.

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Oh, that’s a good point. I didn’t mean to imply the island was meh IN GENERAL, only that it wasn’t really our vibe. (I did do a kayak excursion…which was REALLY hard, but worth doing.) But sitting on a beach isn’t really our vibe.

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We are the same. I want more ports than shop days.

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How funny you say this! We cruised to Bermuda over the summer, and I often now look at the port web cam–it makes me happy to remember the cruise.

Anyway, to my point–the Aqua is sitting there today! I was just looking at the port cam not 10 minutes ago. There’s this crazy slide that goes down the side of the boat!!

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I would really like to go back to Bermuda. Too many cruises, too little time!

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When we first decided to plunge into cruising I found a variety of helpful resources to dig & study.

The first was the Unofficial Guide to the Disney Cruise Line (the edition I got was 2019, but I also purchased the 2020, 2023, and 2024 versions). It is much smaller than the WDW UG so it was easy enough to bring along on my cruise and have a reference for things when I couldn’t easily figure it out on my DCL app or the stateroom TV.

Then through the UG I found https://disneycruiselineblog.com/ and Disney Cruise Tips - MouseSavers.com which are both pages I keep bookmarked and open daily for checking through all things cruising.

Then for stateroom info I did find DIS DCL Staterooms breakdown to be easy to follow and more visual than the other two. Plus it was the one place I could see the most reviews.

Cruise Critic is going to be another forum that has a TON of info on cruising including DCL, but I’ve never gotten their website to load nicely (or quickly) on my browser so it’s more frustrating for me to find things there than the other sources.

As for how to pick your first one. I followed the UG’s advice to pick a Caribbean sailing for first one and go for shorter than 7 days, and at that time they specifically recommended the Dream to get the length of sailing with the awesome adult areas as well as the more up to date kids club areas and more activities to do (mini golf, an interactive game ship-wide using the artwork called Midship Detective Agency, and the water coaster Aquaduck).

By the time we got to sailing, it was 4 years after I’d started researching it (thanks Covid) so the Dream was no longer in Port Canaveral or doing just the 3 and 4 night sailings which were all reasons why the UG had recommended them for first time cruisers, but we did still decide to stick with the Dream and ended up doing 5 nights to Cozumel & Castaway Cay (out of Miami).

I loved the itinerary and both ports were great but I loved the ship the most and by the end I was wishing we had booked even longer. But we were also traveling with extended family who were hit hard with motion sickness the first and last days and while they were prepared to maybe get hit by motion sickness, they didn’t think it would be so bad for them and 3 of their family of 4 were ready to be off at days because they were pretty miserable.

I would highly recommend looking for a 4 or 5 night sailing if you’re wanting to get any time off of the ship in a port. But a 3 night sailing is doable if you’re planning to make the focus of the trip the ship and maybe do a partial beach day when the ship goes to either Castaway Cay of Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Pt (Disney’s private islands).

But it really is a personal preference! Also, there’s a very a very big variety in opinion of the better ships in DCL so you really need to figure out what suits your vacation preferences best. I love the Dream the best, but a lot of that is because of how much I love the atrium & the Royal Palace restaurant just off it and the fact that it was my first cruise. I love the Wish second best because I felt the theme of the atrium and the chandelier with it’s light-up show each night at 10pm, 11pm & midnight was stunning! But we also had 10 days on the Wish all in a row (by booking shorter cruises together) & I think that played a huge part in why I loved the ship so much, it was home by the time we had to get off.

But there isn’t a bad ship in any of them and I’d sail all of them at any day. My qualms with any of them are all minor inconveniences and I love just about everything else my quips & qualms aside.

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I’ve been reading the answers as they’ve been popping up.

I’ve done 10 cruises at this point. Three DCL, three Carnival, two Princess, one Norwegian, and one Royal Caribbean. There are things I like better on some, and things I like better on others. I’ve never had a wholly bad cruise, though my Royal one was my least favorite and I need to do Royal again to see if it was just situational…

ANYWAY- I have done 3-n, 4-n, 5-n, 6-n, and 7-n. For me, I have identified that the sweet spot for me is 5-nights. Three is two short. As others have mentioned, for many travelers the first few days on your first cruise can feel a little disjointed, or overwhelming, or confusing. There is a rhythm to cruising that you kind of have to adjust to.

Every cruise is the same & at the same time no two cruises are the same. It’s like taking different trips to Disney.

Unless someone is a die-hard adventurer that just really rolls with the punches, I’d probably not start with 7-nights on Alaskan voyage. But - what do I know - I’ve never done an Alaskan voyage. :wink: Too many of the specifics of an Alaskan cruise might not overlap specifics of other cruises. Like, learning the ins and outs of cruising while doing something next-level in specialty may be a steep learning curve.

I would agree with others that said a 4-n or 5-n Caribbean would be my first choice. My second choice would be a 4-n or 5-n Bahamian. Since they specifically want DCL, my next question is are they flexible with their time? If you are a Mousesavers subscriber, they keep a running list of discounted voyages and it is the cheapest way to go without booking on like opening day 18 months in advance. I most recently booked with Undercover Tourist and they had an additional discount and “Free Gift” and were very pleasant to work with. (I get nothing from mentioning that.)

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This would be the first cruise for everyone! There are 21 of us with ages ranging from early 70s down to 5yos. They are more warm weather people, so at least there is an easy cut there. No Alaska for this group!

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Thank you so much for the various resources you referenced here! I must confess that I’m a bit nervous about the motion sickness myself. It is hard to know how heavily it will impact me until I’m in the middle of it. Makes me so nervous!!!

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18 months in advance!?! YIKES! They are eyeing next July…I hope there is still some availability!

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I was nervous, too. I was glad I did a shorter cruise as a test before committing to a longer one. But at the end of the day I was fine. I took Dramamine before bed each night just in case and had some soda one evening when we were hoppin’. But nothing that was too uncomfortable.

Hoping that is the same for you!

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