I'm especially interested in your family's desire to go on a Disney Cruise rather than attend the parks. Could you share a bit more on what makes the cruises a better value in your family's opinion?
Same. I went and priced a Disney cruise for our family right after reading through this.
Ok, this is not meant to be a cruise pitch... but since a large reason for this trip was the fact we had been doing the cruises IN LEIU of the parks in recent years.. so I wanted to solicit their feedback to compare the experiences. After all, as the main bread winner... I'm the one who sets the pain threshold on how much I'm willing to spend to take a certain trip. While both WDW and the ships are Disney... they are approached and consumed very differently.
I think the TL: DR version is.... WDW is a lot of work, while cruising is about relaxing and enjoying
For WDW, we were up early every day.. we were on the move all the time, except for when at the pool. I mean literally.. you are walking ~5 miles a day. In the Florida sun, that becomes a bigger and bigger burden as you age. I developed a blister on day 1 and suffered with that the duration of the stay.
While a cruise is very structured... its actually more laid back. In the 'everything is an hour wait' and you can't get FPs era of the parks... I believe that encourages people to chase 'whats the low wait now' - leading to more criss-crossing the park and less leisurely discovery. Add into that park hopping.. and the 'what to do next' thinking actually becomes a burden to bear. With limited time in the parks.. and so much cost... you are steered towards trying to optimize everything.
Dining is too inflexible. One of the big features of WDW is the dining offerings. But they have gotten so absurd in cost, you have to turn your brain off to tolerate it. And you get locked into doing the dining, even if you decide that day, you'd rather do something else. Again, something that should be a PLUS, starts to become a burden. On the ships, yes dining hours are even MORE rigid, but everything is scheduled around them.. so it is not a conflict. Plus, if you don't want to eat in the main dining room, you have JUST AS GOOD options elsewhere that can be taken at your lesiure. So... no conflict over trading down, or paying cancelation fees, etc.
Activities - This is where I figured the kids would have been 'missing the rides' as everyone thinks will happen with their families if they go on a cruise. This trip was the perfect litmus test of that... the two kids with us both love coasters, thrill rides, etc. They are old enough to go around and do things on their own, make their own choices, etc. And while those rides dominated our visit... NEITHER pointed those out as why they should do WDW over a cruise. The oldest actually pointed out she liked the different destinations and activities we did on the cruise ... while the younger one actually said she started to get bored in the parks at times. (I attribute that to the idea we had to stay in a certain park because we had schedule commitments, or that it was hard to leave and come back within reasonable time).
Everyone loved being able to walk from Yacht Club to EPCOT. The problem was... EPCOT wasn't really always where they wanted to be. Contrast that with the ship (or even DLR IMO) where proximity is not as much an issue.
I think I can sum it up in that the WDW experienced forced our hand... be it chasing low waits, being locked into reservations, being locked OUT of FP for things, attraction splits between parks, distances, having to ignore prices to be sane, etc.
Contrast that with the cruise ship... instead you are basically given a menu each day of 'what would you like to do?' - yes there are constraints, but they don't seem to dominate the overall feel of picking stuff. There is much more downtime and relaxing in your schedule. You aren't having to make such choices like "we have 2 hours to fireworks.. so we really need to stay here, what should we do from the things we haven't done yet?". The things like shore excursions you lock in early... but the limited # of things you lock in helps it all not seem as constraining.
Yes the cruise ships are expensive... but dining is taken out of the mix entirely. I can eat what I want, when I want, with no need to turn off my sensibilities around money. We don't drink 4 cocktails a day... so splurging 1-2 a day on a speciality drink falls under the radar.
A theme they were pushing hard on our last cruise was "YOU ARE ON VACATION!" - and it shouldn't be work... let us pamper you. And that rings very true. And maybe that's what stood out the most on our return to WDW... too much 'work'
