My husband and I have been on Carnival cruises and Royal Caribean cruises, but our two daughters have not been on a cruise. Our daughters are 12 and 4. So, to find something that would entertain both of them at the same time is near impossible on vacation. But we heard great thing about the Disney cruise line, so we thought we would give it a try. We are not really "amusement park people" so my husband said on our way down, and I quote "we will do this and this will get the Disney out of our system for the rest of our lives" AKA we aren't doing this again. We drove 16 hrs to Port Canaveral.

HOTEL: We stayed at Country Inn and Suites, I got it on Priceline for $70, and then I paid $44 for parking. They offered shuttle services to the ship. I have read where people say the extra $20 is worth it to pay at the port, so your car is right there, but the transit was wonderful at Country Inn, they got us to the port dropped us off, got our bags out for us, we didn't have to worry About a thing except to get ourselves on the ship. Likewise when we debarked, we had a number to call and it wasn't 2 minutes before they were there to pick us up and put our bags in the van for us. I couldn't have been more pleased!

EMBARKING: Embarking on the ship blew me away, on both Carnival and Royal Caribean ships I had been on before we had to wait at least 45 minutes to get up to give our documents. We literally walked up to the area, and handed our documents and were done with that process within 15 minutes. We then had to wait in that area for about 45 minutes until the ship opened, and it was pretty crowded, but the process of getting on the ship was pretty organized. Hint: If you want to get on the ship earlier and don't want that picture they take when you first walk in you can pass on the side and go straight in the ship instead of waiting in line! :) Read more