Planning

Our most important factor when making a decision on a vacation is whether there are any conflicts with our school calendar.  We have noticed that traditional school vacation times are not ideal for cruising from a cost perspective — when browsing the Disney Cruise Line website, you’ll notice that there are price bumps during the winter holidays and Spring Break — so we tend to focus on teacher workdays that line up with holidays.  Such was the case in the cold of Washington in January 2015.  Two teacher workdays and an early dismissal gave us the necessary amount of time to sneak in a 4 night cruise on the Disney Wonder out of Miami.

We originally booked the cruise in a category 9C Ocean View room (in our favorite room, 2612) .  The total cost for 2 adults and 2 children was $2,289.28.  A quick scan of our favorite airfare website, ITA Matrix, found tickets from Dulles to Miami for $248 each (for a total of $992) on American Airlines.  This ended up being a bit high overall for a four day vacation, but driving wasn’t an option since we were traveling during the school year with only a limited number of days to work with.

The process of paying for this cruise was an experiment.  I spent a good amount of time trying to perfect my method of getting airline miles while purchasing Disney Gift Cards.  I bought them at gas stations when the Chase Freedom would give me 5 miles per dollar spent at gas stations.  I bought them at grocery stores during the quarter when there was a reward of 5 miles per dollar spent at grocery stores.  Once I learned of the Target 5% discount, I shifted to buying Target Gift Cards, then using those to buy Disney gift cards and getting 5% off the price.  I had not quite yet figured out the Disney Vacation Account angle yet.

Sadly, Disney announced the closing of the Disney Vacation Account program on July 25, 2017.  They are no longer available for use. 

The cruise would leave from Miami on Day 1.  Day 2 would be at Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island in the Bahamas.  Day 3 would be at Nassau, Bahamas.  Day 4 would be at Key West, Florida.  We had visited Castaway Cay the previous Spring Break in 2014 and loved it, so we definitely wanted to go back.  We had never visited Nassau or Key West.  Nassau wasn’t a destination of choice for us; we had read that the city had a high crime rate.  Key West, on the other hand, was definitely a place we were interested in visiting.

As the time of the cruise approached, I received a significant discount back on a trip to Disneyland we had planned.  We ended up upgrading the room to a Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah (room 7610) for an additional $311.04, for a total of $2,600.32.  We asked for main seating, as well as a 4 person table.  Small talk is not our strong suit, especially with people we don’t know.

Getting to Miami

Our flight left Dulles at 5:20 pm, so we left for the airport after the kids got home from school.  We always take a taxi to the airport from the house since its cheaper than parking at the airport for anything over a day or two.  Since there aren’t many American Airline flights from Dulles, they are almost all located in the newest terminal.  We breezed through security with the use of TSA PreCheck and were soon at the gate.  We decided to grab some food before the flight took off, since we wouldn’t land in Miami until 8:30 pm or so.  We firmly believe in eating before a flight, especially since you could end up sitting on the tarmac for an extended period of time.  Nobody wants to be around our children when they are hungry.

We landed in Miami at 8:30 pm, gathered our luggage, and grabbed a blue short destination taxi for a trip to the Crowne Plaza right near the airport.  We used 25,000 IHG points to pay for the room.  We had also booked the same room for our Spring Break 2015 trip and wanted to make sure it was ok before we had other travelers stay there with us.  The hotel turned out to be fine for staying a quick night.  It wasn’t the InterContinental Miami, but few places are.

Make sure to check out the rest of the story!

 Planning | Boarding | Castaway Cay | Nassau | Key West | Going Home

 

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