Planning Our Disney Cruise
George chose to do a Disney cruise for his 21st birthday this year. Here is how we planned it all!
I invite you to take a trip back to the last few months of 2024. It was just before George’s 20th birthday and we were already thinking about what to do to celebrate George’s 21st birthday in 2025. We were planning a trip to Disneyland Paris – the plan was to drive over, using Eurotunnel, and stay for four or five days. With me being the only driver, we thought we’d break the journey up by staying overnight in Folkestone before using the Eurotunnel the next day.
Then we spotted a four-night Disney Cruise, on the Disney Fantasy, that went from Southampton to Bilbao. Embarkation day was on the same day as George’s 21st birthday. George said that he wanted to do the cruise, which was brilliant because it was the first time that George had actually chosen something that he wanted to do, so the cruise was booked using my DVC (Disney Vacation Club) points! It's not the best use of DVC points and there's a $95 charge to convert them to reservation points, that can be used to book the cruise. If you can it's better to rent them out and book using the cash from that. We also opted to prepay the gratuities.
We booked a normal stateroom - there are disabled ones available, but I thought that because George isn't a full-time wheelchair user, it would better to leave them for someone who had more need than us. I also booked an overnight stay in Southampton for the night before because I thought if there were any accidents etc on the motorways heading down, then there was a risk we might not make it on time. I also booked disabled parking at the port, using a discount code I found.
I downloaded the Disney Cruise Line app and used that to make special requests, such as telling them about John's visual impairment and requesting Braille menus. I also told them about George's autism and EDS. There is also the option to tell them if you're celebrating anything, so I told them we were celebrating George's 21st birthday.
They also give you the chance to preorder things for your stateroom. I ordered a celebration package for our stateroom, as a treat for George. I liked the look of a floating bluetooth speaker in the shape of the ship, so that got ordered too! In addition I ordered a cake to be delivered to our table at dinner on embarkation day for George's birthday. It won't be as good as the cake he had for his 18th birthday as that was made by John's older sister, but hopefully it will taste good!
The picture on the left shows George's 18th birthday cake. The picture on the right shows George with the partially eaten cake.
I found a Disney Cruise Line UK group on Facebook and from that group I found individual groups for different cruise dates, so John and I joined the one for our cruise. As the cruise date got closer, the admins of the group set up a WhatsApp group too. It gave us chance to get to know some of the people we would be cruising with and get some useful tips too, as first-time Disney cruisers. John’s friend Mickey did a cruise countdown every week in the WhatsApp group and also had a sub-group within the WhatsApp group called Mickey’s Stories.
As first-time Disney cruisers, we had to wait until 30 days before travelling before we could do online check-in. The opening time was at midnight Eastern Time, which meant it was 5am here! It was recommended to us to check-in as soon as we could to get a decent PAT (Port Arrival Time). As a result, I duly set my alarm for just before 5am on the check in day. I had photos of all our passports and everything else we needed on my phone. The plan was to do everything on my phone, and then just roll over and go back to sleep – nice plan! Of course, it didn’t work out that way! I got myself checked in, then moved on John’s check-in and the whole thing crashed. So, doing my very best Grumpy impression, I went downstairs to complete the check-ins on my laptop, finally being done just before 6am. We managed to get a PAT of 12.15pm, so it wasn’t too bad and meant we’d hopefully be able to get lunch on the ship.
A few days before we were due to travel, we received the luggage labels for our suitcases. This was an exciting moment as it made everything feel a bit more real. After hearing from experienced Disney cruisers within the WhatsApp group, we were quite lucky because normally the labels aren't received until after you return from the cruise! That doesn't matter though because I was told that there's plenty of labels at the port.
We're really looking forward to this adventure!
