First ever DCL cruise booked this weekend!

[PoohBears#1fan]

Originally Posted by Bozza

I never believed cruising would appeal to me, but we tried a DCL 3-nighter as a taster just to see, and we were hooked there and then and have done a few more since.

Funnily enough only an hour ago I was checking their site for cruises currently scheduled for late-July - early-August. Optimistic, I know, but I might book one anyway and just cross my fingers even tighter!

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With their cancellation / amendment policy, what is there to lose! Go for it

[IndianaMac]

Originally Posted by Bozza

I never believed cruising would appeal to me, but we tried a DCL 3-nighter as a taster just to see, and we were hooked there and then and have done a few more since.

Funnily enough only an hour ago I was checking their site for cruises currently scheduled for late-July - early-August. Optimistic, I know, but I might book one anyway and just cross my fingers even tighter!

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We're booked on to a 3 night Bahamian Cruise on the Dream, sailing August 13th... was a rebooking of our '20 holiday. Fingers crossed it goes ahead (we were confident when we re-jigged the hols last summer... now? )

We shall see...

[Bozza]

Originally Posted by PoohBears#1fan

With their cancellation / amendment policy, what is there to lose! Go for it

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What are the terms - I didn't get that far!

Originally Posted by IndianaMac

We're booked on to a 3 night Bahamian Cruise on the Dream, sailing August 13th... was a rebooking of our '20 holiday. Fingers crossed it goes ahead (we were confident when we re-jigged the hols last summer... now? )

We shall see...

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I'd be looking at the 4-nighter 9th - 13th.

If I do book it, it does go ahead and we do make it out there I promise to leave the ship nice for you!

[Grace2007]

Hi, can I ask who you book your Disney cruise with? Direct or do you use a travel agent? Thanks 😊

[Bozza]

Originally Posted by Grace2007

Hi, can I ask who you book your Disney cruise with? Direct or do you use a travel agent? Thanks 😊

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I've always used Dreams Unlimited Travel in the past, mainly by way of "thanks" for years of entertainment with their podcasts and blogs, but they also give quite a generous on-board credit, although I know other agents to this too.

[gismo1554]

Originally Posted by Grace2007

Hi, can I ask who you book your Disney cruise with? Direct or do you use a travel agent? Thanks 😊

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I've always booked with InTouch vacations for a very similar reason to Bozza as they offer a good credit but also have a great agent.

Don't use a British travel agent unless they understand DCL properly. I used Virgin Holidays in 2019 and they were definitely not great when it came to understanding what I was requesting. For example I asked them to book me DCL transfers and they tried to say I had to book a private limo to the port. I had to try three times before I got an agent who knew what I was on about and managed to book for me.

[PoohBears#1fan]

Originally Posted by Bozza

What are the terms - I didn't get that far!

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If they cancel then it's full refund, if you cancel before balance date (ours is July, by which time I'm hoping we'll know if we'll be able to get out there), then full refund or transfer the money to another cruise.

We've only had to pay a low deposit until July ($220 ish) but we could hold our stateroom for 3 days before even paying that.

[Merryweather17]

[QUOTE=PoohBears#1fan;14852473]Well first ever cruise booked!

Cruising has never appealed to either DH or myself, so I don't know if it's from getting older, or watching too many Disney Fairy tale weddings on my days off in lockdown, but we've been getting curious so have booked a 3 day DCL cruise for during our (fingers crossed) October trip.

This made me laugh as I often watch this programme just for the look at the parks and resorts when I am feeling down. I have done two disney cruises now and had never cruised before my first, I was not sure it was something I would like but we booked as a family for my mum. By the end of the first day I was hooked! The ships are so gorgeous, food amazing, staff lovely - you will never be so spoilt! One of my greatest post-lockdown ambitions is to get back on the Dream - we are booked for December with all fingers and toes crossed it will happen. I just wait to get back to rainforest room at the spa and the deck 13 adult area is my happy place.

[Ciano]

I always use Deb from Travel on a Dream. She is excellent. If u have kids join a fish extenders group. We all really enjoyed it. Basically the kids buy gift for each other from wherever they are from in the world. You leave a fish extender hanging from your cabin door. During the cruise the kids leave gifts for each other. We have since moved on to RC but never seen anything similar

[Bozza]

Originally Posted by Ciano

I always use Deb from Travel on a Dream. She is excellent. If u have kids join a fish extenders group. We all really enjoyed it. Basically the kids buy gift for each other from wherever they are from in the world. You leave a fish extender hanging from your cabin door. During the cruise the kids leave gifts for each other. We have since moved on to RC but never seen anything similar

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We joined a fish extender group on our last cruise for the first time and whilst it was a really fun addition to our cruise, I will say it involved quite a bit of effort.

Firstly, we booked this cruise quite late on - at the end of June for an early August cruise - so didn't have very long to prepare.

Secondly, Mrs B decided to make our fish extender, and whilst it looked great, it was quite a project.

Thirdly - you have to get quite a lot of stuff! We were in a group of seven families (so us plus six others) and two of those families had six people in each of them. Overall there were 25 people across those four families.

For each of those 25 people we had details of their name, age, gender, allergies and favourite Disney characters.

Some people buy a gift for each individual person, and some buy for the kids with a combined adult gift and some buy a single gift (or group of gifts) for the entire family. Regardless, you will almost feel anxious that you don't give rubbish gifts relative to what you get back - no one wants to be that family!

We were the only British family in our group, so we focused on gifts from here that the other families, all American, were unlikely to have come across before.

To make our job even more difficult, we'd not told our children we were going on a cruise, so we had to prepare and pack all this stuff without them seeing or asking what it was!

It was great fun and it was lovely to come back to the room and find gifts waiting for us - something that carried on throughout the entire cruise - but there was a little bit of stress in the preparation!