When the Disney Cruise Line Spring 2020 itineraries were released, we didn’t plan to book anything. We had already booked a Spring Break cruise on the new Royal Caribbean Symphony of the Seas and thought that would be our big cruise for the spring. As the winter went on, we got tired of sitting in the cold and looked at what was available. Luckily, I look every month to see the cheapest Disney cruises. There were two cruises that matched up well with a long school break in January and were relatively cheap (compared to other Disney cruises).
There was a 5-Night Bahamian Cruise from Miami with a Marvel Day at Sea on the Disney Magic that left on January 20th, 2020, and two 7-Night Southern Caribbean cruises that left from San Juan, Puerto Rico on the Disney Wonder. One sailed on January 19th and the other sailed on January 26. We considered the Magic itinerary because we have never done a Marvel Day at Sea, but it was a shorter cruise. Everyone agreed that a longer cruise on the Wonder would be better, plus we loved visiting San Juan after spending Spring Break there a few years ago. The main sticking point was when we would go. If we went on the January 19th cruise, the girls would miss 3 1/2 days of school but our older daughter would still be able to go to Vibe (for the last time). If we went on the January 26th cruise, the girls would only miss 2 1/2 days of school, but our older daughter would have just aged out of Vibe and would have to check out the 1820 society to meet new friends on the cruise.
Ultimately, we decided missing less school days during her senior year would be better than her getting one more chance to go to Vibe. We settled on the January 26th, 2020 sailing. We called up our travel agent Michelle McKnight to get the cruise booked! We requested an Ocean View Cabin on Deck 2 forward.
Flights
We had to wait a few months in order to book our flights. Once the booking window opened, I checked through the various airline programs 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 had hoped to make it down on Friday night as that would give us a full day on Saturday to visit San Juan.
Unfortunately, there were no reasonably priced flights in terms of airline miles to book for the times we wanted to go. We ended up selecting really cheap tickets on American Airlines to get there late on Saturday night. The flight would leave from Dulles at 3:40 pm and land in Charlotte, NC at 5:00 pm. We would have a 75 minute layover and would then fly to San Juan, landing at 10:30 pm (San Juan is an hour ahead of the East Coast). We selected return flights that were more expensive, but would allow us to fly out relatively late (around 4:00 pm), thus giving us some time to tour Old Town San Juan or eat at our favorite restaurant before getting to the airport. We would leave San Juan at 4:00 pm and land in Charlotte at 7:00 pm. We had a short layover and would land at Dulles around 9:30 pm. Unfortunately, American Airlines changed our return flight to Dulles and the scheduled return time changed to 11:30 pm. That wouldn’t make it easy to go to work and school the next day, but there weren’t a lot of other options if we wanted to get in a day of touring before we flew home.
Since our flight would be so late the day of debarkation, we wanted to book a private tour of Old Town. After looking on Trip Advisor, we contacted Puerto Rico Green Transportation to set up a private vehicle and tour. They would pick us up from a port in a luxury mini-van with plenty of room for our luggage, give us a private tour of Old Town, take us to Casita Miramar (our favorite San Juan restaurant) while our luggage was safely in the van, then drop us off at the airport. The cost was only going to be $65 an hour, which we thought would be great!
Lodging
I didn’t think that lodging would be too difficult given the huge number of hotels in San Juan. During a previous trip to San Juan, we stayed at the Hyatt Place San Juan/City Center. We really wanted to stay there again, especially considering its close proximity to the port terminal. Unfortunately, they seemed to have a two night stay minimum. As an alternative, I ended up booking a free night at the Caribe Hilton using our Hilton HHonors points I had built up from credit card bonuses. The Caribe Hilton had undergone a huge renovation after Hurricane Irma struck the island, so we thought it would be really nice.
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, our first booking would need to be Palo Brunch on the only sea day. Our older daughter was turning 18 on this trip, so she would be going with us as well. As soon as I logged in, I went to the sea day activities and tried to book Palo Brunch for 3. The website was saying that brunch was full, which I found strange. Even if all the concierge guests had booked brunch, it shouldn’t have filled the restaurant. Perhaps there was availability for a smaller party? I decided to select two guests and found some availability, which I reserved at noon. I tried again for a single person and found availability at 12:30 , which I reserved. Sorting it out while on board shouldn’t be too difficult.
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 Martini Tasting and Cognac Tasting.
One thing that came up during our planning was Disney Cruise Line notifying us of an itinerary change. There would be too many ships in St. Maarten during our stop there, so they were going to swap the port days with Antigua. They also let us know that we would need passports to disembark in Martinique (not an issue for us since we always cruise with passports).
For excursions during the port days, we primarily wanted to spend our time relaxing. The first port would be St. Maarten. We have visited St. Maarten twice before, so we decided to just repeat our previous experience at the Holland House on the beach. It was a relatively cheap thing to do and it would be relaxing.
The next port was Antigua. Nancy is a huge Duran Duran fan and couldn’t wait to get to Antigua. She looked at the various excursions and decided she wanted to go see English Bay. I love history, so it would be perfect. We signed up for the Amazing Antigua bus tour.
Day 4 would take us to Martinique. We looked through the various offerings from Disney Cruise Line, but couldn’t settle on anything in particular. We did book a kayaking excursions, but ended up canceling it after a few weeks. Just getting off the ship and walking around would be fun since we hadn’t been to this island before.
Our next stop would be at Barbados. We’ve heard so many good things about the island, so we were really excited to go here. We added a beach excursion (Barbados Beach Break) to enjoy the sun and water. The excursion was relatively inexpensive as well.
The last port stop of the trip would be on St. Lucia. We have wanted to go to St. Lucia for a number of years. A friend of ours was from St. Lucia and she always told us how beautiful the island was. Our youngest daughter also requested that she would love to ride a Segway, so we found an excursion that would let us do both! We booked the Lucian Style Segway excursions. It was a little expensive but it was really the only expensive activity we were doing on this cruise.
Cruise Documentation
After booking our flights, lodging, and excursions, we settled in to wait for our cruise documentation. We waited, and waited, and waited. I ended up contacting our travel agent to see what was going on. After she called Disney Cruise Line multiple times, we finally got our luggage tags about five days before we were scheduled to leave! I had already planned to have the luggage porters just write our stateroom on the bags and hope everything worked out.
Once we had our documentation, we were finally ready to go! Next up, we will travel to San Juan!
Planning | Travel | Boarding | Ship Exploration | St Maarten | Antigua | Martinique | Barbados | St. Lucia | Sea Day | Travel Back
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