When do you start planning? About This Page:

[sarah_belle]

Once you are pretty sure that you are going on a cruise, how far in advance do you begin planning? I won't let myself look around too much, since we probably we be cruising until Feb 2006.
Thanks!

[my2girls]

We are going on our first DCL cruise in Feb 05 - I made ressies back in April of this year.

Kristine

[DCLFANATiC]

We made our reservations with the travel agent almost a year ahead of our cruise !

[sarah_belle]

Okay...so that means I have about 6 months until I can start planning! Hopefully the DVD will get here by then....I've already hinted to my BF that I want the Cruise Passporter for Christmas.

[dmpyron]

The 2006 schedule and rates will probably be out in October.

[JoanW]

I made our reservations in March, 2004 for our cruise in June, 2005. I got the dates I wanted, the cabins I wanted, and a new Passporter. I went for the Deeeluxe model this year and took out the pages that did not apply to my cruise. Planning began right away with budgeting, picking out excursions, planning on the night before, research, research and more research. You need to know what your dates are for making some reservations and know what your arrival and departure needs are.

I now know that:
1. We will be coming in the night before and on June 1, 2004, I made reservations at the Radisson for 7 of us for June 8, 2005.

2. As soon as I know our dining rotation, I'm making Palo reservations on the night we were scheduled for Animator's Palatte.

3. Once I make flight reservations, I'm making my Tiffany Towncar reservations. I can't make the Southwest Airline reservations until January or February, but will the day those dates are released.



This is the kind of planning I've done since March. Sometimes you take a break from planning and just read the boards, other times I read the boards and make notes in my Passporter or look stuff up on the Internet. But then again, I love the planning of the whole thing!

[D&G Miller]

A few comments:

For item 1; We'd completely agree with this plan. We are planning our next cruise in June of next year and plan at staying at the Raddison again. After talking to others on our cruise, the thought of flying in and ariving at the ship on the same day causes too much stress and seems to cut into the enjoyment on the first day. Even when we discussed our plans for our 7 night cruise in 2006, we included a night at the Raddison.

For item 2; I would note that the show in AP is only on the first night of your dining rotation. IMHOP I'd recommend booking Palo for the night you have Parrot Cay. We found this one to be somewhat 'less special' (but only compared to the other dining rooms). We found the transformation to be very cool and it was something that did not really occur during our second rotation in AP.

For item 3; Everyone we know would completely recommend the towncar experience. We usually have our own vehicle during our trips so this is not an issue for us, but we have heard very positive feedback on Tiffany as well as Quicksilver.