DVC, Criuses, and Questions....

[tchrrx]

I think we're going to try to take a DCL cruise this summer. We are planning to pay for the trip OOP. The question is...should we do the 7 day land/sea package or just take a 3 or 4 day cruise and then use DVC points to stay at SSR? If we just do the 3-4 day cruise, will Disney transport us to/from WDW? Thanks!

 

[crisi]

Up to you. I like to cruise when we cruise - I don't like to spend the day switching vacation gears. Plus the extra packing - my cruise warddrobe being different from my park warddrobe.

Disney will let you buy transfers to/from the resorts - I doubt they do an SSR pickup though - you'd probably need to bring your luggage to a resort the DCL buses leave from.

 

[LIFERBABE]

I think we're going to try to take a DCL cruise this summer. We are planning to pay for the trip OOP. The question is...should we do the 7 day land/sea package or just take a 3 or 4 day cruise and then use DVC points to stay at SSR? If we just do the 3-4 day cruise, will Disney transport us to/from WDW? Thanks!

Summer 2008, DCL will be sailing out of Port Angeles Ca for 12 weeks so that may put a damper on your plans. The ship leaves Florida May 10 2008 and will not return until Sep 1 2008. The Sep 1 sailing out of Port Canaveral is a special 5 day sailing with 2 stops to Castaway Cay.

But you can sail the Wonder for 3-4 day options.

Disney does offer transfers to the Port but it is priced per person, I believe around $20 each. I would compare the costs and decide. It really depends on what sailing you plan on going on and if they are offering any special packages.
We rent a car from Budget and drop it off at the Port before sailing. Budget provides free transportation to the Port.

We have always found it cheaper to pay cash for our cruises and use points at the DVC resorts before and after.

The cruise board is a wealth of knowledge and I've learned so much over there about cruising DCL.

 

[bobbiwoz]

We have found that renting a 1 way Budget rental car was a better deal than Disney transfers. I would do the 3 day DCL cruise because it goes from Thursday to Sunday and then you wouldn't have to use your points for the high weekend stay. For us, the short DCL cruises are all about Castaway Cay, so we enjoy the cruise with CC and our favorites at WDW, including our DVC home!

Bobbi

 

[sue]

Up to you. I like to cruise when we cruise - I don't like to spend the day switching vacation gears. Plus the extra packing - my cruise warddrobe being different from my park warddrobe.

Disney will let you buy transfers to/from the resorts - I doubt they do an SSR pickup though - you'd probably need to bring your luggage to a resort the DCL buses leave from.

We just go back from SSR resort on Aug 11th of this year. We saw a couple of Disney Cruise line buses at the resort.

 

[crisi]

We just go back from SSR resort on Aug 11th of this year. We saw a couple of Disney Cruise line buses at the resort.

Doesn't mean they were picking up for the cruiseline.

I was at TechEd last year (Microsoft's big conference) and it was in Orlando. I was at the Orlando convention center and I kept seeing the DCL buses in the wrong part of town - Mears was using them for TechEd to get people around for their convention. No Disney involved at all.

Very strange to see DCL buses pick up and drop off at Universal Studios.

Last I checked, DCL picked up from resorts covered by Land/Sea packages. SSR isn't a Land/Sea resort. Course, with moving people from AKL to SSR due to construction - AKL is a Land Sea resort so they could have been doing pickup there.

 

[mathgeek]

This past summer we did the 4-night Wonder cruise followed by 6 nights at SSR (which was really about 2 days too long - we'd do it differently in the future). We did use Disney transfers from the airport to the port and then from port to resort. These were treated as one-way transfers since it wasn't round trip to/from the airport (which is $69 per person). The one-way transfers are $35 per person, so $70 per person for what we did. To us it was worth the extra expense to not have the hassle of the rental car and figuring out where to go. But we don't usually rent a car when we go to WDW either.

Agree with bobbiwoz - we'd probably do the 3-night cruise in the future due to the length of the cruise as well as point usage for our stay at WDW after the cruise, unless we were going next summer since the 4-night cruises will have a double dip at Castaway Cay. Give me a hammock at Serenity Bay for 2 days intead off one? I'll be there in a heartbeat!

As a side note, our ME pick-up back to the airport from SSR was on a DCL bus. Neither of the DCL boats were in port that day, so apparently there was no need for the busses to be used for transport to/from Cape Canaveral and they were used for ME.