The Disney Cruise Line Spring 2019 Itineraries were released at the end of October 2017. While scanning through the list, we decided either the Magic or Wonder 5 night cruises would fit within our budget. The Magic would be on a 5 night Western Caribbean leaving Miami on April 14th, 2019 with stops at Cozumel and Castaway Cay. The Wonder would be on a 5 Night Baja cruise leaving San Diego on April 14, 2019 with stops at Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada.
I asked the family which cruise they would prefer, thinking they would want to go on the Magic again to visit Castaway Cay (we’ve done this cruise four times before). Select here or here to read about it. Much to my surprise, everyone wanted to go back on board the Wonder! We hadn’t been back on the Wonder since our 5-night Western Caribbean on March 20, 2016. The itinerary was a new one to us, sailing out of San Diego. We’ve been to San Diego before and really enjoyed it. We called up our travel agent, Michelle McKnight to get the cruise booked! We requested an Ocean View Cabin on Deck 2 forward.
Flights
Once we had the cruise booked, we had to wait to book our flights. Once the booking window opened, I checked through the various airline programs that we had points in to see what was available. We couldn’t have the girls miss too much school, so we had a narrow window to get our flights. The girls would get out of school on a Friday and the cruise left on Sunday.
We eventually decided to book our flights on United using the Mileage Plus miles we have accumulated through work travel and sign up bonuses from the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer card. We love holding this card because of the priority boarding we receive as well as the extra Saver Level (the lowest level costing award) availability. We also receive free bags for up to two people on each reservation, which saves us the cost of the annual fee of the credit card.
United had flights at the Saver level (round trip flights for 25,000 miles per person) available for Saturday, so we booked those. Initially, the flight would leave early early from Dulles at 8:15 am have a long six hour layover at Newark before heading on to San Diego.
In November, our flights got changed to leave Dulles at 8:20 am and fly to San Francisco. We would then stay there for two hours before heading to San Diego, arriving at 2:45 pm. We thought this change was a much better flight for us, because we would arrive in San Diego with a lots time to get some dinner and relax before getting on the ship the next day.
Our return flight wasn’t going to be fun. We would leave San Diego at 7:50 am and land in Houston at 1 pm. We would layover there for seven hours, taking off for Dulles at at 8 pm and landing at 12:07 am. We had to go to work and school the next morning as well, so it would be rough. Luckily, we got an update from United in November that would have us leaving Houston at 4:30 pm and landing at Dulles at a reasonable 8:30 pm.
Lodging
We knew we would need one night of lodging before the cruise and two nights after the cruise. Since we aren’t going to have a lot of time at the hotel before the cruise, we decided to use one of the free nights that come with our Chase Hyatt credit card to just get a room for the night. We selected the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay Spa and Marina. It is close to Mission Beach, where we planned to grab something to eat and watch the sunset before getting on our cruise the next day.
For our post cruise stay, we decided to use our free Hilton Weekend certificates from our Hilton Aspire American Express Card to book the Hotel Del Corando, which is one of the inspirations that Walt Disney used for the Grand Floridian Resort at Walt Disney World. The card also comes with a $250 resort credit that we planned to use for dinner and/or breakfast. We wanted to spend the weekend enjoying the resort and maybe taking some short trips around San Diego via Uber.
Excursions/Activities
As Platinum Castaway Club cruisers, we were able to book our excursions and activities 120 days before the cruise (because we were paid in full). Since we weren’t stopping at Castaway Cay, we didn’t really have to rush in at midnight to try to get a Cabana. Instead, we logged in the next day and looked to see what was available. We decided to try some more of the alcohol tastings. We have previously done Mixology and the Chocolate and Liquor tasting. This time, we added Whiskey Tasting and Rum Tasting.
After we added the alcohol tastings, we moved on to food. We added Palo Brunch on one of the sea days. One of the additional perks as a Platinum Castaway Club cruisers is a free Palo Dinner (which we have used for Brunch before without issue). We later went back and added a Palo Dinner on Pirate night. We thought the Pirate night menu would be ok to miss since we’ve enjoyed it multiple times before.
After booking our food, we moved on to excursions. This cruise stopped at the ports of Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada. We initially decided on a beach excursion at Cabo San Lucas, the Land’s End Coastal Cruise and Beach Break. We eventually canceled it though as the reviews we found weren’t that great. We decided to just walk around Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada and see what interested us.
Our cruise documentation arrived about 45 days before the cruise! It really got us thinking about our vacation, now we just had to wait for the day to arrive!
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