Welcome to planDisney, Sarah,
Oh boy! This sounds surprisingly familiar. You see, my family of six embarked on our first Disney Cruise Line voyage when our four children were almost exactly the same ages as yours. We hadn’t anticipated going on any more cruises after that sailing. But as we witnessed the magic and wonder of the experience of cruising with Captain Mickey from the perspective of our little sailors, we decided very quickly that cruising on the Disney Cruise Line would be a regular thing for our family. We have been on nearly a dozen cruises so far, and our only regret is that we didn’t start cruising earlier and more often!
When booking a sailing on the Disney Cruise Line, all passengers must be accounted for, even the
littlest of Mouseketeers. For the safety and comfort of all passengers, staterooms can only accommodate up to their respective maximum number of passengers, regardless of the age or size of any of the passengers.
Having been there before, I think I know what you are thinking, Sarah. At first, it appeared that the only staterooms that could accommodate our family were the 2-bedroom suites. Because those staterooms were outside our price range, I felt discouraged and didn’t think we would ever have the opportunity to attend a
deck party with our favorite Disney characters.
But, somehow, I didn’t give up. On our land adventures, we were used to traveling more economically by squeezing our whole crew into modestly larger hotel rooms. But after some more research, I changed the way I thought about traveling with our larger-than-average family when it came to cruising. We discovered that the secret to happily sailing as a family wasn’t to upgrade our stateroom. Rather it was to downgrade our stateroom selection and also book a second stateroom so that we had enough beds for everyone.
Instead of a large, two-bedroom suite on the upper decks that we couldn’t afford, we opted for two Deluxe Oceanview Staterooms on deck two. The special secret outcome of this approach wasn’t just that we found a way to afford our dream vacation. As a parent yourself, I suspect you’ll appreciate this: the best benefit of our two-stateroom solution was that we had double the number of bathrooms available to us! With Disney Cruise Line’s
innovative split bathroom design available in the “Deluxe” stateroom categories, it was effectively as if our family of six seemingly had four bathrooms to use. Even better than a two-bedroom suite, we felt like we were in the lap of luxury!
Tony’s Tip: On some of our cruises, we have booked connecting staterooms. On other cruises, we have booked one Oceanview stateroom and one Inside stateroom to save on costs but still have the benefits of our outside view to share. On our first cruise, we booked two Oceanview staterooms, but on opposite sides of the ship. That way, we could go back and forth between the two rooms, depending on what views were interesting on either side.
We work hard and sacrifice some to enjoy special blessings like cruising with Disney Cruise Lines. The amazing experiences and memories have made it worth it all for us and then some. I hope you have a good experience too, Sarah.
~Tony