Cruise Vacation Planning - Port Excursions

If you want details of our actual trip, feel free to skip this post - this is more informational for other parents needing tips on cruising with their young children.

Excursions

I did a lot of reading on the Disney website about the various port excursions. Whilst I had read that there were cheaper options through private companies, we decided the convenience of booking through Disney was worth it for us, especially as this was our first-ever cruise, and we had no idea what to expect.

The main criteria for selecting excursions was for our 2 year old to be able to go - though we had the option, we did not want to leave her onboard whilst we went off - this was our family vacation after all. Luckily there were quite a few options, and bonus that a lot of them were free for under age 3!

We decided that since we were going all the way to Alaska, we'd have to do a trip to a glacier - the rest we'd just go with whatever worked out in terms of schedule and availability. More about the excursions we chose in the trip reports :)

Disney Website

The website is very useful and has a ton of information regarding excursions. The booking section is pretty slow though. It was pretty frustrating was having to go back and forth between cruise days to select an excursion, then check available times because each time there was a wait to load the screen. It was otherwise pretty easy to book - I wish they would have listed upfront the time slots available, that would have saved a lot of back-and-forth, or even better, shown excursions in a daily agenda or calendar format.

The most frustrating part was, being first-time Disney cruisers, we had 'last' access to book excursions, and the Disney themed ones (where Disney characters attend your excursion) were all already booked out :(

Some notes of what I learned when booking excursions:

• You cannot book excursions back-to-back - it seems the system requires at least an hour between end time of one excursion and start time of the next. (In retrospect, this is to allow you time to get back on the ship, as the meeting point is always onboard in one of the lounges).
• If the description says, "All Ages" but the booking system doesn't allow you to select your child, this simply means s/he does not require a ticket (i.e they are free)
• If the excursion involves sea or air travel, every passenger requires a ticket and has to pay (for safety reasons, and to allocate safety jackets etc)

Overall, I was impressed with the functionality of the Disney website - I was able to do a lot of additional things (besides book excursions) to save time later: enter passport/ I information, online check-in, sign up for Youth Activities, select boarding time, print signature sheet (authorizing our onboard account).

About six weeks before our cruise, we received a cruise information booklet in the mail (postal mail!!) with pre-printed luggage tags and information for our trip (though nothing new as it was all online).

Our vacation was feeling more and more real!!

Next up - our vacation begins: Getting to Vancouver.

Cruise Vacation Planning - Packing

If you want details of our actual trip, feel free to skip this post - this is more informational for other parents needing tips on cruising with their young children.

Packing

Okay, so full disclosure up front - I always over-pack. Always. I hate not being prepared or having to struggle to get what we need, especially with an upset child to deal with. Even worse, I hate having to (over)pay to buy something on vacation that I already have at home.

This was a difficult trip to pack for - we'd need summer clothes for Vancouver, as well as warm clothes for Alaska, including rain gear and hats and mittens especially for our glacier trip.

Baby Gear

We decided to take a car seat and a booster and forgo the stroller, but bring our Beco Gemini baby carrier instead. The theory was that safety in the vehicles was more important than convenience of a stroller, and with limited space in our stateroom, we wouldn't have enough space to store all this gear.

I looked at buying a travel cart for the stroller, but the options were just too pricey for an occasional use item - the GoGoBabyz Travelmate is basically $100, as is the one by Britax. Looking at the stock images for the Britax, I realized it looked pretty much like any normal cart that you can use for your luggage...

So we bought the Conair Travelsmart cart, as it was on sale at Target for $17. My basic requirement was checking that it could support the weight of my kids. This had an upper limit of 34kg (DD1 is 14kg, so this could theoretically take both our kids' weight!)

We already had a Cosco Scenera convertible car seat that we had purchased for a previous trip (from Walmart on Black Friday sale) and kept as a spare for visitors, and DD2 would sit in this seat. Using the LATCH belt, it was simple to attach the car seat to the bottom bar of the cart. I took the top tether and pulled it up and over the handle before securing that to the bottom bar as well. The cart came with a bungee cord, so I used that to further secure the seat to the back of the cart. [PS: Westjet actually lost the bungee cord (it just didn't come back with the cart when we arrived in Vancouver), so for our return trip I bought a luggage strap to use instead.]

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For DD1, we did not want to schlep another convertible car seat, so although she is not yet the requisite 18kg for a booster seat, we bought the Graco backless turbobooster on sale ($20 on tax-free day at Real Canadian Superstore) to use on our trip. I had planned to pack it into a suitcase and pad it with diapers, but then decided to just take it onboard as carry-on, since I figured an early morning airport commute was not conducive to hurriedly stuffing a booster seat in to a suitcase before check-in at the airport. For the plane, I bought a CARES harness for her to use.

Miscellaneous

Some of the other things I packed, based on tips from MouseSavers, cruise forums and reviews:

• Ear muffs for our helicopter excursion - I was not sure the helicopter company would have small enough headphones for our tiny kids. We already had the Baby Banz and Peltor ones, as we'd use them when we went to  the CNE and Air Show.
• Binoculars - we had to buy these, as I wanted something small and lightweight.
• Laundry detergent, mesh laundry carry bag and pegs (clothespins) - in an effort to pack just a little less clothing, I figured I might do some laundry on the cruise (yes, I'm one of those people who actually don't mind doing laundry). Pegs were for the retractable drying line that runs over the bathtub [We used it to dry swimsuits].
• Small/ dollar-store Disney toys for gifts - an attempt to avoid paying the high prices in the ship's gift store [No, it didn't work... we still bought a bunch of things!]
• Formal outfits for dinner - suit for DH, cocktail dress for me, 'flouncy' dresses for the girls.
• Multi-port USB wall charger - to charge our plethora of devices all at once, as I had read that there likely would not be enough electrical points. [In reality, we didn't really need it, our devices managed to last quite long and charging wasn't an issue.]

I had also packed some pirate dress-up clothes and accessories (pirate hat, foam sword, eye patch). Then I found out that the Alaskan cruises do not have a pirate party, but a Pixar Pals party instead, so that got nixed. I was *not* going to source a Pixar character costume - the pirate costumes were simpler and we already had most of it.

PS Next time I will pack my own hairdryer. The one onboard was not very good, and got very hot to hold at one point. This is one of the few things on the Disney Wonder that showed it's 'age' - it's one of those old-style dryers mounted to the wall, with an accordian-type pipe and nozzle that looks like a vacuum cleaner! It's mounted on the inside wall of the toilet section of the bathrooms, so we didn't take a picture of it, though someone else did:

Next - researching, choosing and booking shore excursions.

Summer 2014 Vacation

This year marked our ten year anniversary, and since our last vacation was our month-long sojourn back to SA in 2012, we decided to go all out and take a 'big' vacation this year.

Since both our girls are very much enjoying Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (grateful they both watch the same shows, and dreading the time when there are arguments about what to watch), we considered Disney World. Friends of ours had gone during March break, and DD1 was so excited when we went to see Disney on Ice. However, we decided that a trip to Disney at this point would not be the best as DD2 would not remember this trip and DD1 isn't really into rides anyway. Plus it would likely be too stressful and crazy with all of the walking and waiting in line, since DD2 still needs to nap. We had only heard good things about Disney cruises (from yet other friends who had gone on a Disney cruise), so... a Disney cruise was the final decision.

This summer was also DD1's last month in daycare, as she would be going to full-time Senior Kindergarten  (SK) aka Grade 0 for my SA readers. In fact, July and August has been the most we've ever paid for childcare, with both kids in full-time daycare. So we decided to plan for our vacation at the end of August, so we could just take DD1 out of daycare altogether (instead of paying for her spot whilst on vacation), and when coming back in September, DD1 would be in school and DD2 would be moving to the preschool class.

Additionally, we already had plans for our annual downtown Toronto staycation to attend FanExpo, which was the last (long) weekend in August.

I began to research the various cruises, and was able to find a couple of very useful sites with information on saving on Disney vacations. The pricing was not as bad as I had expected (not that I had any expectations, really!) but still pretty pricey. We figured the convenience of visiting various places without changing our sleeping place, 24/7 food, and meeting Disney characters were worth it.

The cruises available during the time period we were looking at were Caribbean, Bahamian or Alaska (we were looking at North American departures only). The 7-night cruise to Alaska was roughly the same price as a 4-night Caribbean cruise, so it seemed like a no-brainer. DH was all for a vacation to Alaska, I was just happy to be going on a cruise :)

I booked through a travel agent, who was very helpful in selecting a stateroom. We chose a room midship on deck 1 since theoretically we would be less likely to feel the ship's movement - we had never been on a cruise before, we were not certain whether or not we'd get sea sick. Carrie was also very helpful in booking flights and arranging our transfers from the airport. Naively, I had hoped to leave later in the morning (I'm not a morning person!!) and get to the ship just before departing. At that point, I had no idea that embarkation began early in the afternoon, and that you could board early to explore the ship and have lunch onboard.

Ultimately, we did end up paying much more than we anticipated for two reasons (a) we missed out on the restricted guarantee rooms, then decided to go with an Oceanview room and (b) flights to Vancouver cost way more than flights to Florida, so that evened out the Caribbean vs Alaskan cruise costs. However, Alaska is a unique destination, so definitely something to look forward to!

So that was it... cruise booked for the August 18 departure from Vancouver. Oh the anticipation!

Next - planning  and packing!