March 23, 2018 Spring Break Cruise, Part 2: Travel
Miami
March 23, 2018 Spring Break Cruise, Part 1: Planning
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
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
December 24, 2017 – Christmas Cruise, Part 2: Travel
The travel for this cruise was different than our normal cruises. We normally fly into the departure port for our cruises. In this case, since the cruise was a part of our Christmas Trip to Walt Disney World, we drove our rental car. We left the Magic Kingdom parking lot around 1 pm on December 23 and started driving south. I didn’t drive on the Florida Toll Road (which was a mistake) and instead made our way to Interstate 95 and headed south.
We stopped about halfway down for a late lunch. The drive was uneventful until we arrived in the Miami area. The traffic was pretty heavy and we narrowly avoided a traffic accident that happened about 100 yards in front of us. We eventually did arrive at the InterContinental Miami, our lodging for the night. We’ve stayed at the InterContinental several times in the past. As always, we used the free night that comes with our Chase IHG Rewards Credit Card. This one benefit of the card is worth the $49 annual fee alone.
We got a standard room, but it did come with this view that we were able to take in the next morning. The room had two queen beds.
We were going to walk to a pizza restaurant that is close to the hotel, but it turns out it was closed. We instead decided to walk to a nearby Whole Foods. We picked up some snacks and beer for the cruise, in addition to dinner, dessert, and some croissants for the morning. After a restful night, we grabbed some coffee from the Starbucks in the lobby and had breakfast. Around 10 am, we headed downstairs and got the car from the valet. We headed towards the Port of Miami.
We probably arrived at the port a bit early because the cruise ships there were still discharging passengers. It took us a while to actually get into the parking area.
To enter the parking area, you had to go through a gate that gave you a ticket. There were lots of terminals to pay once you were ready to exit. The cost was $20 a day (we paid $120 to exit after the cruise). Once we got the car settled and collected the bags, we headed towards this beauty:
In our next article, we will talk about our first day onboard the Disney Magic!
Full Trip Report: Planning | Travel | Boarding | Day At Sea | Cozumel | Day At Sea | Castaway Cay | Disembarkation
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
December 24, 2017 – Christmas Cruise, Part 1: Planning
I initially covered the planning for the cruise in our post about our 2017 Christmas trip, but I’ll summarize it again here. In May 2016, Disney Cruise Line had just announced the fall/winter sailings for 2017. After scanning through offerings, I noticed a 5-Night Western Caribbean sailing out of Miami on the Magic. It would leave on December 24, 2017. The prices were really high, but that’s to be expected with a holiday cruise. We had a placeholder available from our Spring Break 2016 sailing, but it appeared that this cruise was blocked out from receiving the 10% discount. This left us having to pay full price for the cruise if we wanted to take it. The itinerary was one we have done a few times before. Departing Miami, there would be a sea day, followed by a stop in Cozumel. The sailing would then have another sea day followed by a stop at Castaway Cay, then return to Miami.
Our initial price was $6,034.52, including trip insurance. It did not include ground or air transportation since we planned to visit Orlando first and drive to the cruise terminal. We reserved stateroom 2512, which is on the starboard (right) side of the ship, all the way forward. This would also be our first time on the Magic! I would normally have preferred a verandah but those staterooms were $1,500 more. We have sailed in an oceanview stateroom before and found them to be more than acceptable. We thought we might try to upgrade when arriving at the port, but we would still enjoy the room if upgrades were not available.
Our first change to this plan arrived with Hurricane Matthew. Hurricane Matthew impacted the Florida area in October 2016. Nancy and I had planned a 20th anniversary cruise on the Disney Dream for October 7, 2016. A couple of days prior to the cruise, we were notified by Disney Cruise Line that it would not take place because of Hurricane Matthew. We were refunded the entire cost of our cruise, plus an additional 20% off a future cruise if we took it before the end of 2017. When we found out about the future cruise discount, we reached out to our travel agent to have it applied to the December 2017 cruise. It was great that we were able to apply this discount, because holiday cruises are ineligible for onboard booking discounts due to blackout dates. We ended up saving a significant amount of money on this cruise because of it, with final costs close to what we had paid for the canceled October cruise.
Miami (Pre-Cruise) Hotel
We needed to get a room in Miami for our pre-cruise stay. Fortunately, because of our IHG Rewards credit card, we had a free night that we used to book the Intercontinental Miami, one of our favorite places.
Walt Disney World (Post Cruise) Hotels
Once we got off the ship, we would also need some hotel stays in the Walt Disney World area for the days before New Year’s. We used our free nights from the Hyatt credit card to book two nights at the Hyatt Place Orlando/Lake Buena Vista, which is near Disney Springs.
Since we had planned out the trip in conjunction with our Christmas trip to Walt Disney World, we were very excited for the entire trip to kick off.
Full Trip Report: Planning | Travel | Boarding | Day At Sea | Cozumel | Day At Sea | Castaway Cay | Disembarkation
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
Christmas 2017 Trip – Part 1 Planning
Planning
The end of the school year is dangerous for us, mainly because it has us thinking about vacations. Such was the case in May of 2016. We were still a month or so away from our great Hawaiian vacation and Disney Cruise Line had just announced the fall/winter sailings for 2017. After scanning through offerings, I noticed a 5-Night Western Caribbean sailing out of Miami on the Magic. It would leave on December 24, 2017. The prices were really high, but that’s to be expected with a holiday cruise. We had a placeholder available from our Spring Break 2016 sailing, but it appeared that this cruise was blocked out from receiving the 10% discount. This left us having to pay full price for the cruise if we wanted to take it. The itinerary was one we have done a few times before. Departing Miami, there would be a sea day, followed by a stop in Cozumel. The sailing would then have another sea day followed by a stop at Castaway Cay, then return to Miami.
Further complicating the decision was our plans to eventually get Walt Disney World Annual Passes again. A quick scan of the school calendar showed that school would let out on December 15, 2017 and come back into session on January 2, 2018. That gave us about 17 days for potential travel. Surely there was enough time to get in a decent trip to Walt Disney World and a cruise! Since we had the time, we could even drive down to Florida and save on airfare. We could drive to Orlando, go to the parks, then drive to Miami, park the car in the port garage for the duration of the cruise, then retrieve the car to return to Orlando for a few days before driving home. We would save money on flights and rental cars, plus get in a land-sea vacation over Christmas.
The first step was the family discussion. I had not even completed the words “land and sea” before everyone was on board. They were not excited about driving down though. We would also be getting an oceanview room instead of a verandah because of costs, but that didn’t seem to bother them as much. We would also be staying offsite at Walt Disney World in order to save money. We had a number of Hilton Honors points that would get us some free nights as well as Hyatt points we could use.
Cruise
The first thing we did was to book the cruise. Our initial price was $6,034.52, including the trip insurance. It did not include ground or air transportation since we planned to visit Orlando first and drive to the cruise terminal. We reserved stateroom 2512, which is on the starboard (right) side of the ship, all the way forward. This would also be our first time on the Magic! I would normally have preferred a verandah but those staterooms were $1500 more. We have sailed in an oceanview stateroom before and found them to be more than acceptable. We thought we might try to upgrade when arriving at the port, but we would still enjoy the room if upgrades were not available.
Our first change to this plan arrived with Hurricane Matthew. Hurricane Matthew impacted the Florida area in October of 2016. Nancy and I had planned a 20th anniversary cruise on the Disney Dream for October 7, 2016. A couple of days prior to the cruise, we were notified by Disney Cruise Line that it would not take place because of Hurricane Matthew. We were refunded the entire cost of our cruise, plus an additional 20% off a future cruise if we took it before the end of 2017. When we found out about the future cruise discount, we reached out to our travel agent to have it applied to the December 2017 cruise. It was great that we were able to apply this discount, because holiday cruises are ineligible for onboard booking discounts due to blackout dates. We ended up saving a significant amount of money on this cruise because of it, with savings close to what we had paid for the canceled October cruise.
Transportation
We had originally planned to drive down on this trip to save some money. The drive from the Washington DC area to the Orlando area takes us about 14 hours with stops for breaks and lunch. About nine months out, I started thinking about how the drive back up would work out. We wanted to stay at Disney through New Year’s Eve, so we would only have New Year’s Day for the return drive. This meant we would be on the road with everyone else that was attempting to get home on that day. Plus, if we stayed up till midnight, that would mean we would either get a late start on New Year’s Day or we would be tired while driving.
We decided to look for some cheap/free flights to get us down and back to Florida. We had a 45,000 United miles and a larger number of American miles. The relatively small number of United miles we’d saved limited us to a free one way flight to or from Jacksonville, which only costs 10,000 miles per person. We’ve flown into Jacksonville several times in the past and consider it a hidden gem when it comes to Orlando travel. Luck was on our side as we found some early morning flights leaving Dulles on the morning of December 16 at 8:20 am — the day we’d planned to start our trip. We would arrive in Jacksonville at 10:21 am, where we could pick up our rental car and head on to Orlando.
I couldn’t find a free flight back, but we did find a flight back from Jacksonville on New Year’s Day for $120 per person, which isn’t too horrible. The flight left Jacksonville at 2:00 pm and landed in DC at 4:00 pm, which was pretty good. We wouldn’t have to rush to get to Jacksonville, and would get home relatively early in the day.
We used Costco Travel to get a rental car from the Jacksonville airport. We kept checking in after we got the reservation and rebooked it several times to get a lower price.
Walt Disney World Hotel
We would be visiting the parks from December 16 through December 23. We would have to leave the afternoon of the 23rd to get down to Miami in order to get on the ship on December 24. Staying onsite was definitely a consideration for the first week we would be there since we we would qualify for a few different specials they were offering. The problem was that as we got closer to Christmas, the room rates really started climbing. We had a number of Hilton points saved up, so we decided to use them to stay at the Hampton Inn & Suites Orlando-South Lake Buena Vista, which is right outside the south end of the Disney Resort area. We have stayed there before and really enjoyed it.
I know a lot of people enjoy being in the Disney bubble, but it doesn’t bother us too much to stay off property. We already had a rental car because we were coming from Jacksonville and had to drive to Miami for the cruise. We wouldn’t have to pay for parking at the parks because of our Annual Passes that we activated in the summer. The rental car also gave us the opportunity to head offsite to pick up snacks and drinks as well as eat some meals outside the parks.
Miami (Pre Cruise) Hotel
We needed to get a room in Miami for our pre-cruise stay. Fortunately, because of our IHG Rewards Club Select Credit Card, we had a free night that we used to book the Intercontinental Miami, one of our favorite places.
Walt Disney World (Post Cruise) Hotels
Once we got off the ship, we would also need some hotel stays in the Walt Disney World area for the days before New Year’s. We used our free nights from the Hyatt Credit Card to book two nights at the Hyatt Place Orlando/Lake Buena Vista, which is near Disney Springs.
New Year’s Eve Hotel
Our final hotel stay of the trip would be for New Year’s Eve. We knew we could see the New Year’s Eve fireworks at Magic Kingdom on December 30, so we wanted to take advantage of that as well as seeing another park’s NYE fireworks. We decided to spend New Year’s Eve at Epcot, as we did at the end of 2015. The only part of the evening that we didn’t enjoy that time was attempting to exit the parking lot at the end of the night. We didn’t leave the parking lot until 2:30 am. All the parks pretty much let out at the same time, which really clogs the roads up. In order to avoid all this, we booked a room at the Dolphin for the evening, paying full price with cash to do so. The cost was fairly significant (in my eyes) at about $430. Still, that was a good deal cheaper than the prices for other Disney rooms in the surrounding area (that were in walking distance).
That completed all the planning for the trip, except for a few minor changes to the flight time or rebooking the rental car to save some money.
Here are the other parts of the trip:
Planning | Travel | Hollywood Studios | Magic Kingdom | Epcot | Animal Kingdom | WDW Part 2
Marvel Day At Sea Cruise Documentation
Some friends of ours booked a cruise on the Disney Magic for February of 2018. It was a Marvel Day At Sea Cruise. With their permission, we are sharing their Cruise Documentation.
When opening the inside flap, you will find the names of the passengers as well their cruise luggage tags. There is information inside the booklet that indicates when you should put the tags on your luggage.
The first page just sort of confirms what you already know, that you are going on a Disney cruise. It does lists the name of the ship, the number of days, and the departure port.
Turning the page will review the Table of Contents as well as the cover page for the “Vacation Checklist”.
The Vacation Checklist does have some good information on it, but most of it can actually be found on the Disney Cruise Line website. There are some useful tips, such as information about how you can be reached on the ship and the suggestion to pack a day bag (because your luggage doesn’t get delivered until later). There is also information about downloading the Disney Cruise Line Navigator App.
The next pages of the Vacation Checklist describe the dress code on Disney Cruises. It also lists the prohibited items and the alcohol policy.
The next page is a list of Embarkation Information for the ship, including the time the ship leaves as well as what constitutes proper documentation for boarding the ship (and for getting off the ship once you return to port). I’ll briefly summarize by saying that passports are always accepted and we don’t leave home without them. On certain cruises, you may be able to get away with a birth certificate if you return via the cruise ship, but we would never take a chance on something happening in a foreign port and trying to return without having our passports.
The next page continues the list of acceptable documentation for boarding.
Now we are getting to the good stuff. The Vacation Summary lists the sailing details, the guests, travel dates, how you are getting to the ship (flights and/or Disney transportation), and whether you have purchased travel insurance and/or prepaid the gratuities for the hard working crew. On this particular cruise, our friends did elect to use Disney transportation.
The next page lists any pre-selected Port Adventures, adult dining, meet and greets, salon treatments, and any other activities that you’ve selected via the Disney Cruise website.
You also get a listing of the Sailing Itinerary which includes the dates and ports for each day of the trip.
The flight information is listed if you selected airport transfers.
The rest of the flight information and ground transportation is also listed.
The onboard airline check-in program is detailed next.
You are charged $12 per person for each day of your cruise for gratuities. That money is automatically charged to your room and dispersed to your Server, Assistant Server, Head Server, and your Stateroom Host. The Server and Assistant Server wait on you each night in one of the three main dining rooms. You might also see your servers working at breakfast, lunch, or on deck, since they often have shifts at other dining locations during the day. Each Head Server manages a large number of server teams in the dining rooms and can be called upon for assistance in case something goes wrong. We’ve had a number of them go out of their way to get to know us and to take care of any little issues or dietary requests. The Stateroom Host (or Hostess) is the person that keeps your stateroom super clean. They are always working cleaning the rooms and hallways.
The next few pages are cards that you can leave with anyone that might need to contact you while you are on board.
There is an order form for gifts and amenities. We have never used this form though.
Here is a bunch of boiler plate legal stuff about how Disney Cruise Line deals with your information.
The legal information continues, along with a form for the onboard airline check-in program that you can fill out to drop off with Guest Services (you will get enrolled in the program).
Disney is also nice enough to give directions to the embarkation port so you can find the ship on your own.
That’s pretty much it, except for the back cover.
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
Updated Disney Cruise Line Pricing (Inside Rooms) – 03-02-2018
Note: This post is out of date. To see the latest prices (that we update once a month) go to our homepage and find the latest pricing posts from there. Or subscribe to our email list and get updated delivered to your inbox at the beginning of each month!
Here are the ten cheapest (per night) cruises you can take with two adults and two children in an inside stateroom as of March 2, 2018. Lots of sailings out of Galveston/San Juan, with two long cruises as well. All of these are on the older ships. There are actually three Very Merrytime Cruises in the list!
| Cruise Name | Number of Days | Date | Ship | Departure Port | Inside Price | Inside Price Per Night |
| 13-Night Eastbound Transatlantic Cruise from Miami to Barcelona. | 13 | May 13 2018 | Disney Magic | Miami Florida | $5,867.76 | $451.37 |
| 5-Night Western Caribbean Cruise from Galveston to San Juan. | 5 | January 9 2019 | Disney Wonder | Galveston Texas | $2,670.40 | $534.08 |
| 4-Night Eastern Caribbean Cruise from San Juan to Port Canaveral. | 4 | February 3 2019 | Disney Wonder | San Juan Puerto Rico | $2,396.48 | $599.12 |
| 11-Night Westbound Transatlantic Cruise from Dover to New York. | 11 | September 9 2018 | Disney Magic | Dover England | $6,722.48 | $611.13 |
| 6-Night Southern Caribbean Cruise from San Juan. | 6 | January 14 2019 | Disney Wonder | San Juan Puerto Rico | $3,742.56 | $623.76 |
| 5-Night Very Merrytime Eastern Caribbean Cruise from San Juan to Miami. | 5 | November 30 2018 | Disney Magic | San Juan Puerto Rico | $3,147.80 | $629.56 |
| 6-Night Very Merrytime Eastern Caribbean Cruise from New York to San Juan. | 6 | November 24 2018 | Disney Magic | New York New York | $3,798.12 | $633.02 |
| 7-Night Southern Caribbean Cruise from San Juan. | 7 | January 27 2019 | Disney Wonder | San Juan Puerto Rico | $4,533.36 | $647.62 |
| 7-Night Southern Caribbean Cruise from San Juan. | 7 | January 20 2019 | Disney Wonder | San Juan Puerto Rico | $4,628.52 | $661.22 |
| 6-Night Very Merrytime Western Caribbean Cruise from Galveston. | 6 | November 2 2018 | Disney Wonder | Galveston Texas | $4,184.04 | $697.34 |
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
Cruise Documentation for Very Merrytime Cruise
I’m sorry our posting hasn’t been very frequent lately, but we just got back from a whirlwind trip to Walt Disney World and a Very Merrytime Christmas Cruise on the beautiful Disney Magic. Here is a copy of our cruise documentation that we received a while ago!
There is nothing better than coming home to this in the mail box! This means your cruise is less than 45 days away! (And it sure beats getting bills).
All of the documentation is enclosed inside a booklet. Here is the cover for ours.
On the inside flap, you will find the name of the passengers as well as the luggage tags. There is information inside the booklet that indicates when you should put the tags on your luggage.
There are two luggage tags for each person on your reservation. We’ve never used them all, but I’ve seen plenty of passengers that do.
The first page just sort of confirms what you already know, that you are going on a Disney cruise. It does confirm the ship, the number of days, and the departure port.
Turning the page will review the Table of Contents as well as the cover page for the “Vacation Checklist”.
The vacation checklist does have some good information on it, but most of it can actually be found on the Disney Cruise Line website. The information about how to reach you on the ship as well as packing a day bag (because your luggage doesn’t get delivered until later) is useful. There is also information about downloading the Disney Cruise Line Navigator App.
The next pages of the Vacation checklist describe the dress code on Disney Cruises. It also lists the prohibited items and the alcohol policy.
The next page is a list of Embarkation Information for the ship, including the time the ship leaves as well as what constitutes proper documentation for boarding the ship (and for getting off the ship once you return to port). I’ll briefly summarize by saying that passports are always accepted and we don’t leave home without them. On certain cruises, you may be able to get away with a birth certificate if you return via the cruise ship, but we would never take a chance on something happening in a foreign port and trying to return without having our passports.
The next page continues the list of acceptable documentation for boarding.
Now we are getting to the good stuff. The vacation summary lists the sailing details, the guests, travel dates, how you are getting to the ship (flights and/or Disney transportation), and whether you have purchased travel insurance and/or prepaid the gratuities for the hard working crew. On this particular cruise, we drove a rental car from Walt Disney World to Miami and parked at the port, so Disney didn’t have or need our flight information and we didn’t purchase ground transportation from Disney. We did purchase travel insurance, but didn’t prepay the gratuities.
The next page lists all the pre-selected port adventures, adult dining, meet and greets, salon treatments, and anything else you’ve selected via the Disney Cruise website.
You also get a listing of the Sailing Itinerary which includes the dates and ports for each day of the trip.
The onboard airline check-in program is detailed, along with how the Gratuity program works. We’ve covered airline check-in, but not Gratuities. You are basically charged $12 per person for each day of your cruise. That money is automatically charged to your room and dispersed to your Server, Assistant Server, Head Server, and your Stateroom Host. The Server and Assistant Server wait on you each night in the main dining room. They also help out during the day at various dining places on the ship for breakfast and lunch (even if you skip the main dining rooms for dinner). The Head Server manages a large number of Server Teams in the dining rooms and can be called upon for assistance in case something goes wrong. We’ve had a number of them go out of their way to get to know us and to take care of any little issues or dietary requests. The Stateroom Host (or Hostess) is the person that keeps your stateroom super clean. They are always working cleaning the rooms and hallways.
The next few pages are cards that you can leave with anyone that might need to contact you while you are on board.
There is an order form for gifts and amenities. We never used this form though.
Here is a bunch of boiler plate legal stuff about how Disney Cruise Line deals with your information.
The legal information continues, along with a form for the onboard airline check-in program that you can fill out to drop off with Guest Services (you will get enrolled in the program).
A form is also available if you would like to add ground transportation to your cruise (if you were flying into the nearby airport and didn’t want to arrange transportation to the ship on your own).
Disney is also nice enough to give directions to the embarkation port so you can find the ship on your own.
That’s pretty much it, except for the back cover.
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
Disney Cruise Line Instagram Featured Our Photo!
Disney Cruise Line’s Official Instagram featured one of our photos today! Be sure to follow us on Instagram if you would like to see the rest of our pictures!
Spring Break 2016 Cruise – Part 2 – Travel
Spring Break 2016 Cruise – Part 2 – Travel
Fortunately, our travel down to Florida for the cruise was fairly uneventful. We had discussed a number of options to get to Reagan National airport. It isn’t very far from our house, and most of the time, it is accessible by the DC Metro system. In the end, we decided to just drive to the airport and park there in daily parking. This cost $20 a day, but we knew we were going to be returning late at night, and this plan would allow us to just get into the car and come home once we returned. It also saved us any trouble getting there as well.
We arrived at the airport early and, thanks to TSA Precheck, zipped right through the security line. We headed to the Admirals Club to hang out while waiting for the boarding time for our flight. We have access to the American Airline Admirals Club lounges because of the Citi AAdvantage Executive Card. We definitely use these lounges as much as possible since we pay a hefty fee for the card each year. The clubs give us a place to grab a snack or drink as well as keep our devices charged up while waiting for our flights.
The flight to Miami is relatively short and we landed without issue. We took a short taxi ride to the InterContinental at Doral and checked in. The InterContinental at Doral is a nice hotel. It is not as nice as the InterContinental Miami, but it was great for the price we paid (free with our IHG credit card). We didn’t receive an upgrade, but since there isn’t a water view, we didn’t really mind. After a peaceful night of sleep, we were up early the next morning. We weren’t quite sure what was available for breakfast within walking distance, so we ordered room service. We got a taxi to take us to the port around 9:00 am so we could arrive early.
The taxi dropped us off in front of the Disney Cruise Line terminal at the Port of Miami. There are luggage porters out front that will take your luggage and make sure it gets on the ship. You do have to make sure you have the Disney Cruise Line luggage tags on your bags. Your name and room number are on these tags. Once you hand the bags to the luggage porter, the next time you will see them will be on the ship. We handed our bags over, along with a tip of $2 per bag, and headed to the Terminal.
Overall, traveling down to Miami was uneventful, just as we like it. We’ve now done this flight four times, mixing up the hotels a few different times. Getting from any of the hotels to the Port of Miami is very easy via taxi. Next post will be about getting on board!
Planning | Travel | Boarding | Sea Day | Cozumel | Sea Day | Castaway Cay | Disembarkation