We just went on our 2nd Disney Cruise and it was even more fabulous than the 1st one (even though that didn’t seem like it could even be possible)! We cruised on The Fantasy for 7 nights to Cozumel Mexico, Georgetown Grand Cayman Island, Falmouth Jamaica, and our favorite stop, Disney’s private island, Castaway Cay!
As soon as we booked this cruise with our kids the fun started! We made sure we had the Disney App on our phones and entered the cruise date so we could watch the countdown to our sail date! Even on this countdown, Disney hasn’t left out the details that make Disney special! On our way to soccer practice, or school, or around the dinner table, it wasn’t unusual to hear one of the kids (or parents) announce the number of days left until our sailing, and mention the Disney character that was showing on the app!
Finally, our time came and we were headed to Florida!!! We landed in McCarran International Airport the night before embarking on the ship so we needed a hotel room for the night. Now, McCarran Airport is just under an hour away from Port Canaveral where the Disney Cruise ship was waiting for us and there are many different ways to get there! I am always shopping for the best deal and have to choose what we are going to splurge on and what we are going to be more thrifty on. Before we left, I checked out Uber, Lyft, taxis, private driving services, shuttles, and rental cars. For our family of six, we decided to rent a car at the McCarran International Airport and then drive ourselves to Port Canaveral. This gave us the chance to stop at the store and grab a drink and a snack, drive to the hotel and then in the morning when we were ready to go, we drove around the Port Canaveral area to see some of the area and then off to the rental car location in Port Canaveral where we returned the car and took the free 5 minute shuttle ride to the ship. We are used to driving in unfamiliar places and don’t have a problem using Google Maps on our phone to get around, so for us this was the best option to have freedom to go when and where we wanted. It was also the cheapest way to go for all 6 of us so it was a good “budget money move”!! I have to throw out there that I book rental cars quite often and I always book through Costco online!! When comparing prices, Costco has always won, but I do go to Costco.com and check prices every couple of weeks because sometimes the prices go down and you can get a new reservation with the cheaper price since you don’t have to pay until you pick up the car! Just remember not to cancel the existing reservation until you have the new one for the cheaper price, and then once the new one is booked, I always cancel the old one.
Our flight arrived late in the evening on Friday night so we needed a place to stay. Always looking for the best deal and the easiest travel, we decided to drive to Port Canaveral that night when we wouldn’t have as much traffic to deal with then if we stayed in Orlando and drove the next morning! Even if hotels may have been a little cheaper closer to Orlando, being stuck in traffic is not our idea of fun so we do try to avoid it whenever we can!! So, we found a nice hotel in Cocoa Beach, just a few miles away from the ship and it had suites that would fit all six of us in one room and it included a hot breakfast! I’m not too picky about hotel rooms when we’re only staying one night to sleep and then will be packing up the next morning, so note that we did have to schedule the wake up and shower times for six of us to share one bathroom, but it was worth it because it was a “budget money move” and it was a decent room with a decent breakfast and we all slept great!
When we got to the port the next morning the passengers from the previous cruise were still debarking. Okay, so Disney assigns you a port arrival time and ours was one of the first, but we still may have been a little early getting there, but we were SO anxious and excited!!! We dropped our luggage at the curb, with one of the always helpful Disney employees, and then waited in line to get through security and check in.
Both went very smoothly and then we waited until the ship was ready for new passengers. Even waiting to embark was fun!
We had pictures with Mickey and Minnie Mouse and started to become familiar with the Disney app on our phones, you know the one I mentioned earlier that had the countdown! Well, now that we were there and our countdown was zero, and we could now login to the ships Wi-Fi, we could get it all setup!
One of our favorite parts of being on a Disney cruise is that we can keep in contact with others in our group using the messaging service on the app. Especially teenagers and kids that don’t want to be at their parents side the whole time, not to mention, the parents that don’t want to be at their kids side the whole time!!!! So, once we were all on the ships Wi-Fi, we setup our contacts to be able to message each other, and then started looking at the activities on the ship, the movies playing, where we would be dining that night, and what show we would be watching! Before we knew it, it was our turn to embark!!!