The Disney Cruise Line Spring 2018 itineraries were released near the end of October 2016.  We started scanning them as soon as they came out because we knew our Spring break trip for that year would be a DCL cruise.  We eventually decided to go back on the Magic as a follow up from our Christmas Cruise planned for December 2017.  The cruise we selected was a 5 night Bahamian cruise that left from Miami with stops at Key West, Nassau, and Castaway Cay.  We had previously sailed to Key West on the Wonder and loved the port.  We were also excited because there would be a sea day after Castaway Cay.  All of our other cruises spent the last full day at Castaway Cay, which kind of made the stop bitter sweet. 

The cruise would leave on a Friday, thus forcing the girls to miss a half a day of school.  We don’t normally like to have them miss school, but this departure date would let us apply an onboard placeholder to save 10% off the cruise. 

Since we knew we would have annual passes by the time of the Spring Break Cruise, we needed to add on some additional time at the parks as well.

I sent our request to our travel agent, Michelle McKnight.  Michelle said she would book it as soon as the Gold Castaway Club window opened.  She booked the cruise and sent us the information.  We eventually re-booked the cruise to add an onboard booking that we made during our Star Wars Day At Sea Cruise in January 2017, thus dropping the price of the cruise by 10%. 

Flights

We waited until April of 2017 to start booking the rest of our arrangements.  We knew we would have annual passes, so we wanted to add in a visit to Walt Disney World.  Once the flight booking window opened, I scanned the various airlines sites that we have miles for.  The best deal appeared to be to fly American Airlines from Reagan National Airport into Orlando the night before the cruise. The return flight would be on the Monday after Easter, with the girls having to go back to school on Tuesday.  That would allow us to maximize our time in the parks as well.  The flights were really cheap, so we used the Chase Ultimate Rewards points to purchase them through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal.  I believe we used about 60,000 points to get the round trip flights for all four of us.

The trouble with flying into Orlando is that we needed to get to Miami for the cruise.  We would have to get a rental car to get us down to Miami.  We would then drive to the Port, park the car and board the cruise.  Once the cruise was over, we could grab the car and drive to the parks.  We could use the car to get to the parks and eventually to return to the airport. 

Hotels

I had initially thought about getting a hotel in Miami for the night before the cruise.  Our flights were going to land in Orlando around 8 pm.  Once we got our bags and our rental car, we probably wouldn’t start driving until 8:30 pm.  That would put us in Miami around 12:30 am or so.  After a full day of work, I really wasn’t looking forward to driving 4 hours late at night.  I moved the hotel booking from Miami to a Holiday Inn Express in Stuart, Florida.  It was about 2 hours or so from Orlando, which meant we could leave around 8 am in the morning and still get to the boat around 10 am for boarding.   The hotel was free because we used our free night that comes with our Chase IHG Rewards Select Credit Card.  We’ve used this free night on several hotel rooms over the years, thus saving a lot of money.

We would also need a room at Walt Disney World for 5 nights.  Spring Break is an expensive time to visit Walt Disney World because it is so busy.  We wanted to stay on property, but didn’t want to pay on property rates.  Luckily, we had a large pile of Starwood Preferred Guest(SPG) points.  SPG is the hotel group that the Swan and Dolphin belonged to.  I say “belonged” because SPG was recently bought out by Marriot.  We booked the Dolphin for five nights on points and would only end up paying for parking and “resort fees.”  We chose the Dolphin over the Swan because I had exactly enough points for five nights at the Dolphin, which is cheaper than the Swan. 

Remaining Planning

We got our annual passes a bit early in August 2017.  We decided to skip out on excursions through Disney Cruise Line on this cruise to save a bit of money and just planned to do our own thing at each port.  After we returned from our Christmas Cruise, we just waited until our cruise documentation arrived in the mail.

Next up, we’ll talk about the trip down to Miami!

Planning | Travel | Boarding | Key West | Nassau | Castaway Cay | Sea Day | Disembarkation

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