Trip Report - 10th Anniversary Disney Cruise on the Dream - Travel and Planning

Enjoying a sunset on the Disney Dream

On August 3, 2012 Doug and I celebrated our 10th Wedding anniversary.  We knew we wanted to do something special and I had been wanting to try a Disney Cruise for quite some time.  A 10th anniversary made perfect sense to me, however I had to convince Doug this was a good idea.  Doug has a little bit of a motion sickness problem (by a little bit - I mean he can't even ride the carousel without throwing up).  He had tried all the over the counter products with no help on airplanes or roller coasters so I told him to look for other solutions (more on that later) while I looked at all the cruise options.  

I dove into planning our first cruise, as neither of us had ever cruised before.  There were sooooooo many options.  First we picked a time of year to shoot for, then we started to narrow it down to which cruise line and port.  This was tough because there are so many great options.  We could go to Florida, California, New Orleans, Galveston, and the list goes on.  It seemed like we both liked the idea of Port Canaveral because it is familiar to us with our Disney travels and still relatively inexpensive to reach the port from the airport.  There were some ports where it was less expensive to reach the port from the airport but those cities the flights were significantly more expensive from Omaha.  

Now it was time to narrow down which cruise line we wanted to sail with.  Looking back it is almost funny how much we looked around and how much research we did to make an informed decision.  In the end,  it came down to Royal Caribbean and Disney Cruise Line.  Yes Royal Caribbean was less expensive, but it seemed like more was included with Disney.  We also both liked the fact that there was no casino on the Disney ships.  Disney also has more square footage on its ships dedicated to "adult only" areas per passenger then the other ships that matched our time of year and port.  Add that to the reviews we read of the food and shows and we were sold on the Disney Cruise Line.

It was time to book and even with all the research we did I still felt more comfortable using a travel agent to book our cruise.  I really wanted to book through someone that had been there and done that.  We used a Disney Travel Specialist (which is exactly what my job title is now!!)  to book and she was able to answer all our other questions.

We chose a 3 night cruise with Disney Cruise Line on the Disney Dream!

With lots of other planning and packing we were off on our dream vacation... 

We flew in the day before to allow a little wiggle room just in case there was a problem with the airlines.  

When we arrived in Orlando we picked up our rental car and headed to the hotel.

The biggest mistake I made when planning this trip was letting Doug pick the hotel for the night before the cruise.   Doug wanted to find a hotel that was near the port but not past it.  This limited his options and he was looking for CHEAP options.  He met all his criteria by finding a hotel about 5 miles from the port and just off the highway.  It required no back tracking and we got the bulk of the driving done late at night with little to no traffic, so that made Doug happy.  However it might have been the worst hotel we have ever stayed in.  It was just gross.  I will stop there with the details.  (We stayed at America's Best Value Inn - this is the new name of it, as it has changed hands since we stayed there.)

The next morning we loaded up the luggage in the car and headed to return the rental car bright and early.  

Michelle likes to point out Merritt island because Merritt was her maiden name!

The first view of the Disney Dream as we drove towards Port Canaveral.

 There was a free shuttle from the car rental place to the port, but they can not take passengers until 11:00 and we wanted to get there earlier. (In other words, we wanted to be at 'rope drop' at the port.)  So we got a cab from the car rental to the port for $25.  We felt it was money well spent, because we beat the masses of people to the port.   

Stay tuned for more on our cruise soon!