Our 7 Night Eastern Caribbean Star Wars Day At Sea cruise on the Disney Fantasy didn’t start out as one of our normal cruises.  As we discussed in our post about planning an off season cruise, we had originally planned to book our standard spring break cruise for 2017, but finances got in the way.  We instead picked a different destination for spring break, and in October 2015 we booked what we thought would be a standard 7 night Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Fantasy.  In January 2016, Disney announced new Star Wars Day At Sea cruises for 7 night sailings on the Disney Fantasy — and in March 2016, we received notification that our cruise had been switched to the Star Wars theme.  Interestingly, the price of the cruise almost immediately went up by 50%.  We weren’t upset that it got changed, but I probably never would have booked it for that price, even with the Star Wars addition.

Once we got our cruise booked, we booked a night at the Hyatt Regency in the Orlando Airport by using one of the two free nights Nancy had received when she signed up for the Chase Hyatt Credit Card.  We secured a room with two queen beds for no cost.  This would allow us to fly in the day before our cruise, stay one night at the airport, and then go downstairs and take the Disney Cruise Line ground transportation to the ship.  We always make sure to fly the night before the cruise just in case there are problems or weather.  We can always drive down if we have to or get a flight early the next day.  The drive down would be pretty bad, about 14 hours and we would have to do it overnight, but it would be better than missing the boat. 

We had to wait until late Feburary 2015 to actually book flights since the flight schedule doesn’t open until 330 days before.  Since the girls were already going to miss three days of school for this cruise, we needed the flights to leave after the school day was over.  This really limited our selection, especially if we wanted to use airline miles to get free flights.  After looking over several airlines and their schedules, we bought one way tickets on American Airlines down to Orlando for $172 each.  We specifically picked flights that would allow us to get to the airport well after school was over.  The flight would leave Reagan National Airport at 8 PM and we would land in Orlando at 10 PM, thus giving us time to get our luggage and get some sleep before heading to the ship.

We weren’t nearly as concerned about the return flights, so we spent some time looking for flights that we could get for free using airline miles that we had accumulated.  Eventually, we settled on a flight from United Airlines that would leave Orlando at 4 PM the day we returned and land at Dulles around 6 PM.  We live almost exactly between the two airports, so leaving from one and returning to the other is something we have done to make the flights cheaper or get the times we want.  We arranged to have a friend drop us off at Reagan and we planned to get a cab home from Dulles.  The logistics around the return trip would require us to stay at the airport almost all day, but I thought we would be able to enjoy the American Airlines Admiral Clubs Lounge, since we have access with our Citibank AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t too smart about verifying that there is actually an Admiral Club at the Orlando Airport (oops).

As our departure date drew near, we reached out to our travel agent to make some requests.  We wanted to make sure that we requested a four person table.  We have always made this request because we like dining together as a family without the expectation of making small talk with people we don’t know.  I know lots of families enjoy meeting new people on cruises, but we use our dinner to talk about our day and plan the next day.  Disney has always honored our request.  We also made sure we were on the late dinner seating.  We had always done first seating until our Spring Break 2016 cruise when we switched to get our favorite server.  Everyone liked it much better as it gave us more time to see stuff and we didn’t have to hurry as much once we got back on the ship from port calls.

We logged in at midnight 105 days out from our sail date to book our excursions.  We were looking for a Cabana on Castaway Cay, but they were all gone by the time we could book one.  We instead decided to try some new activities, including Parasailing and the Stingray Adventure.  For Tortola, we knew we wanted to go to a beach, so we settled on an island tour with a lunch at Fusion Beach.  We decided on the St. John’s on your own tour for our stop in St. Thomas.  Between the Star Wars Day at Sea and the excursions we had booked, we thought it would be a great cruise.

Eventually, this little beauty showed up in the mail:

All we had to do now was to wait until mid January!

Planning | Travel | Boarding | Sea | Sea | Tortola | St. Thomas | Star Wars Day | Castaway Cay | Go Home

 

* Please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Email!