Welcome aboard, Charlotte!
It sounds like your family and friends are getting ready to book a magical
Disney Cruise Line adventure at sea! I can tell you from lots of experience that an extended family vacation with Captain Mickey is the best way to travel! You're in for so much fun!
The easiest way to begin planning your cruise is to play around with the itineraries on the
Find A Cruise page of Disney Cruise Line's website. There you can use the drop down menus at the top to select the month and year you'd like to sail, as well as the home port from which you'll depart. It will give you various options after that for cruises of different lengths and the ships that are departing from that port at the time. Then, check out the different
stateroom set ups and choose the ones that will be best for your party. With 12 guests, you'll need a few staterooms, as most staterooms sleep between three and five guests, so you will need to price things out one stateroom at a time online to see the options, but when it comes to selecting staterooms, that's easy to pick the exact stateroom numbers and then just choose three or four in a row. There are adjoining staterooms so you can have two next to each other with a door in between. If you get
staterooms with verandahs all in a row next to each other, most of the time, your stateroom host can even fold back the verandah partitions and create one larger verandah connecting your staterooms too. We have done this with three staterooms in a row when we sailed with extended family.
So, have fun playing around with the options and finding the prices based on those options you choose! There are so many itineraries,
four ships, tons of home ports from which to sail, and
all sorts of magic included in the cost of your cruise, Charlotte!
Marcy