Are Disney Cruises Worth It???

In this week's episode, Jared reviews the differences between the cruises he's been on and answers the question, are Disney Cruises worth the extra money???

Transcript

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On this week's episode, Jared discusses whether or not Disney Cruises are worth the money. Intro Music Welcome to this week's episode of a Dryer dose of Disney. I'm your host, Jared dryer. And today we are going to be following up on last week's episode, where we talked about our review of our Disney cruise. And today we're going to be talking about are Disney cruises worth it. There's no question. Disney is a more expensive cruise line and that's the number one question we've been asked since we've gotten back from our cruise.. But before we get started, I do want to ask wherever you're listening to us, or if you're watching us on YouTube, find that subscribe button, click, pause, and click that real quick. So that way you're going to get this content delivered into your inbox each and every single week. And then if you ever want our biggest Disney tip or trick, that's going to be found over at Patreon. And we've got a link in the podcast description below. And you're going to get access to that at our top level, because it is the best tip or trick we've ever given out on this podcast ever. So you're definitely gonna want to check that out. If you're a big Disney person. In addition to that. We have a lot of other cool links down below. So check those out for a mouse dining that we absolutely love where they can get you dining reservations at the coveted places in the parks to our Etsy shop, where we've got our, I can do this all day tip of the day gear. And then our condo. So we rent our condo out when we're not out there and you can stay just a few miles from Disney world and get a really cool three bedroom place to stay out there. That's inexpensive. So go check that out as well. But now that we've been back from our cruise, all of our friends and family have been asking us, okay. You love Disney. You guys do everything Disney you, or you buy clothes from Disney. You go to the parks all the time. Is a Disney cruise totally worth it. We're going to answer that for you at the end of this episode, but let me start by saying, there's no question that this is the best cruise we've ever been on. If you listen to our episode last week, we talked about the highlights of the ship. We talked about the great shows that we saw all the awesome entertainment. The food was amazing. It was out of this world. And just the cool things that Disney does in general on their cruise ships. So we went on the carnival fantasy on an Eastern Caribbean cruise for a week. We had some friends go with us. It was totally amazing. It was a great time. I encourage you. If you didn't listen to last week's episode, go check that out where we talk about it. And then go back even further in time. And listen to the episode where we talk about cruising with Anthony and Lisa, who were our friends on that ship. They give us great tips and tricks and pointers throughout the entire episode there. So go listen to that. But let's talk about the other cruises that we have been on personally. So this was our fourth cruise. That we did our it's our first Disney cruise, the other three that we've been on, we did an Alaskan cruise with Holland America. We did a Western Caribbean with carnival, and we did a Eastern Caribbean also with carnival. So we've taken our daughter on the two carnival cruises. We did not take her on Holland America cause she wasn't born yet. So we've had a chance though, to go on two different cruise lines on three other cruises. So what I have is I have a lineup here. Of all the comparisons between the ship, the cruise line, all the excursions, all the events. And we're going to talk through each one. So we're going to start off with the ship. So the ship is almost identical. So whether you're going on a Disney cruise Holland, America, carnival, and I would imagine the other ones Norwegian Royal, Caribbean. Celebrity princess, the ones that do get a little bit different, I'm sure are Viking when you're out in Europe. But when you're going on a cruise on one of these mega ships that are out there, The layout of the ships are very similar meeting on the third and fourth levels where you can come in. You're going to have your main atrium. You're going to have your shops. You're going to have some restaurants. You go up to the Lido deck, which is usually deck 10 to 12. You're going to have your pool. You're going to have your buffets. You're going to have those kinds of things. The ship for Disney, the Disney fantasy was no different than what we've seen on the carnival ships that we've been on in Holland America. So the one big call-out is all those cruise lines. So carnival and Holland America do have casinos on their ship where the Disney cruise line does not. in its place, Disney has a very large movie theater right in the middle of the ship. But the other ones have the casinos. So that's a trade off depending on if you like to gamble or not. I do enjoy gambling once in a while, and I'm a big poker player, so I don't mind having a casino on my ship. As a matter of fact, when I do go on a ship with a casino, I'm looking for poker tournaments and I think that's a lot of fun. But it's not much different when you're looking at ship to ship. Now I will say one of the big differences is those other ships, because they have casinos do allow smoking in one of the casino area. So most of them have separated areas where you could do a casino without smoking or casino with smoking. So do know that when you walk through there, you're going to get some smoke. They do have a lot of filtration in there and they're trying to get that smoke off the ship. Where Disney does not. So that is one difference there, but for the most part, the ship layouts are very similar now. Disney does have better decorations, no question. They have better artwork. They have Disney music playing throughout the ship all across on every single level. That's amazing. I absolutely love that as well. So Disney does things like that. They add the little touches that are a little bit better, but the ship itself is very similar up on the pool deck. All the ships we've been on, have a pool. They all have some kind of Waterslide. Now obviously Disney has the Aqua duct on the Disney fantasy that we went on, which is the water rollercoaster. That takes you around the perimeter of the ship. So that's fun, but on the carnival ships that are also going to have the ropes courses. Now they have the rollercoaster. That's up on the side where they've got the sky ride, where you can pedal. So those are a little bit different now on Holland America, they didn't have all those things. Mostly because they cater to. An older crowd and they go up to Alaska and Europe quite a bit. But the ships themselves are very similar. Now the rooms the rooms there's very little difference between the rooms that we've been, and we've always done a balcony room. Disney does have the split bathroom. That is a huge advantage for Disney. Because you don't get the split bathrooms on the other cruise lines, meaning that if somebody needs to use the restroom. They're going to be in there, locked in there, and that means someone can't be showering at the same time. We're at Disney, they are split and you do have that ability. Our last cruise that we went on with carnival, they called me right before and upgraded us to a suite. The room was slightly larger, not a lot larger, just a little bit larger. With a little bit of a larger bathroom. It wasn't that much different. So I can say at the end of the day, the suites aren't generally worth it unless you're getting like a really big family suite that's sleeps more than four. So I'd say there's very little difference in the rooms. The beds were all comfortable on every cruise we've been on. Disney did have the most comfortable bed. Just by a little bit, but for the most part, we've not had any problems with any of the beds. They've all been really good. Food is one area that was a little bit different. So all the cruises we've been on have had great food. No question about that. They all have the buffet. They all have the restaurants you can eat at. They all have extra restaurants you can pay to eat at. They all have the stands that you can eat different things. At meeting they may have a sandwich bar or a burger bar or something like that. But the food is all really good. I will say the Disney quality of food was a little bit better in the restaurants for dinner meaning. They had lobster tail one night. That was a phenomenal. They had really great desserts really great soups. They had really just great food across the board now. On the carnival and Holland America cruises, the food has always been really good. As a matter of fact, Holland America had really good food as well. Carnival was just a little bit of a step down in food. And some of the nights in the restaurants you'd get the same food that they had up at the buffet. They just prepared it a little differently or served it to you. You could go get your meatloaf. You could go get mashed potatoes or other vegetables. It would all come on one plate together with gravy on it. So the food on carnival between the buffet and the restaurants is very comparable. It's not a huge difference. Like at Disney where you're going to get lobster on one of the nights. So the food on Disney was just a little bit better than what we saw on the others. But they're all pretty comparable. Now I will say call out that I really did appreciate about carnival is now that carnival has partnered with guy Fieri. They've got his burger bar, they've got a barbecue place on the last ship that we were on. But having the burger place and the barbecue place. Our awesome additions and the food there is incredible. So you can change up cuisine. On your own choosing on carnival. Where a Disney you're subjected to their buffet and to their restaurant. What's on the menu. Same with Holland America. So a little bit more of a selection on a carnival than the others. Entertainment now, again, I said this on the last episode, Disney does the best entertainment out there. That's what they're known for. So their shows are amazing. They're Broadway quality, great singers, great stuff happening on those. However, their lineup that we saw on our cruise wasn't super unique. Meaning we saw Aladdin, we saw frozen. We have seen those shows before, even on Broadway. We've seen them at the Disney parks. So they were a lot of fun. They're very familiar to us. I. I like going and seeing something totally unique, something I'd never seen before and on Holland American on carnival. I got that every single night. Usually on those cruises, they have a group that does the show every single night. And they change it up every night. Now. What you see more often than not as some kind of musical review. Meaning they'll do all eighties music or they may do all Elton John songs. Are all Billy Joel. And they use that as a central theme to the show. And they'll do, like I said, a musical review where they sing through the show and highlight different singers in their groups. So those are always a lot of fun there. A lot of energy. But they're not familiar. They're not what you've seen. Like on the Disney cruises, except for you maybe know the songs on carnival, they also do a family game night, one night, which is a lot of fun. They've got the different comedy acts in the different. Locations throughout the ships. So they may have a bar where they do. A comedy act in the afternoon, and then they may do it on the main stage at night. So those are a lot of fun. So I think it's a trade off. Disney definitely has better quality of entertainment. It's definitely more kid-friendly now don't get me wrong. The other cruise lines aren't using foul language. They're not using any indecent acts or anything like that. But the songs are very secular. The songs may be about relationships are about love where Disney is going to be very kid-friendly. So there is a difference there. And then obviously Disney's a lot more familiar. So that's your trade off? Ports and excursions. So we did three ports with Disney. We went to the British Virgin islands, the us Virgin islands and Castaway key, their private island. We have done everything from a Roatan to Cozumel, to Belize to grand Turk. Jamaica. Grand Caiman. I'm trying to think of all the places we've been to. There's so many places that we've done. And then obviously our Alaskan cruise, which was amazing. What we found was the carnival and Holland America cruises had better excursions and better port experiences. Meaning when we got off the ship on the Disney cruise the shops, there were only a handful of shops where they got off and not a great quality of shopping either. So they were a little bit dirty. They didn't have a lot of great stuff. So we only spent about 10 or 15 minutes shopping at each of the ports. And then we would go do our excursion, which the excursions were fine. We always try to find. Snorkeling or some kind of bucket list item. But the snorkeling was very basic. The zip-lining was very basic on our other cruises with carnival, we've done cave tubing. We have done a swimming with whale sharks, which is completely unique. You can find actually I have a Jared dryer. A YouTube page that I've not talked about on this podcast yet until today. You can go find all of our excursion events that we've done on every cruise out there. They're all out there on our YouTube page. I take video of everything that we do in. I'll edit it down in most cases and get it onto YouTube. With the exception of the Alaska cruise, because I had never done that before. So I put those full videos and they're in their entirety. You can go check those out, but the excursions and the ports on the other cruise lines were better than Disney. Now, Castaway key Disney's island, as far as a private island goes, was amazing. And it was better than what we saw on Carnival's cruise, but carnival has better other ports and better excursions overall compared to all the others. So I do know that if you want to see the world, you want to see these islands. You want to do some cool things. Carnival's had the best excursions we have found to date. Better than Disney, better than Holland America. Service level, no question. Disney's the best. And by a lot. But my question is, that your deciding factor? So how good the service is? Is that going to decide what cruise line you're going to go with now? Carnival was always good. They always had a great entertainment person that was running the whole ship and all the entertainment stuff, the waiting staff at the restaurants were always great, but you'd never had the same person. So they always randomly would put you at a different table and you'd always be assigned to a different server where Disney, they keep the same server with you all the way through and they learn everything. About you. So that is a big difference between the two. Not something that I would say that I go for. But it was definitely worth calling out. It was a big difference. Now clientele, this is probably the biggest difference. You're going to find between your different cruise lines. I encourage you. You can go out and read a lot about this online. There's a lot of different blogs and people talking about the different clientele that are going to be on every single. A ship that's out there. Now we've done Holland America, like I said, for Alaska and going on a Holland American Alaskan cruise, my wife and I as newlyweds when our, before our daughter was born, we were the youngest couple on the ship probably by quite a bit. And we brought down the average age by about five to 10 years. The average age on that ship was definitely north of 70 years old on Holland America. But it was super quiet, really relaxing. And then the places like the piano bar and all that, there was no one in there. So we could just go relax and listen to piano player or go see a show at night. And there was no one in there. And it was really nice because we felt like we had the whole ship to ourselves. So that was really cool. And being that they're all older, it was very clean on the ship. It was very quiet on the ship. There was no chaos. It was just great. We absolutely loved Holland America. And I would love to go on another Holland, American cruise because of that. On carnival. Carnival is a mix. It's a hodgepodge. You definitely have your Walmart crowd. And by Walmart crowd, I'm talking Walmart dollar general. Those types of crowds out there that it may be missing some teeth that are wearing the white undershirts the whole time. Versus wearing a button up with some nice shorts or something like that. So it's a little bit of a rougher crowd on the carnival ship, but we found that those rougher people usually just sit in the buffet all day. They are not out and about in the ship. They do not go to the events. They do not explore the ship. They definitely don't go to the shows and they don't leave the ship for the port excursions. So it doesn't make any sense why they're even on the cruise. But on your first day on the ship, when you go up to the buffet, you're going to find those types of people up there. Additionally, when you go to the buffet during the week, maybe you're having lunch up there. You're going to see three or four tables of those types of clientele up there. Disney definitely has a higher class of clientele. It's a more expensive cruise. So usually it's families with money and you're not running into that same kind of crowd on a Disney cruise. You even want to take it to the next level? I know princess cruise line, celebrity cruise lines, which we've never been on. Those are very nice cruise lines where it's more formal than not formal. Do know that if you're going to go check those out, but I encourage you have clientele is something that you want to consider or think about. There are tons of blogs out there where you can watch or read because some are video and see what other people's experiences have been. So do keep that in mind, if you want to go on a cruise. You may want to research the clientele and make sure you're going to be comfortable with that kind of clientele. So none of the ships have ever been crowded. None of them have ever made us feel like, oh, like there's too many people, with the exception of the very first day, even on the Disney cruise the very first day, when you get on you, can't go to your room. You can't drop your stuff off yet till the rooms are opened up to you. So you're usually going to go to the Lido deck where the buffet is. There's 800 people up there. All looking for tables, carrying trays around, and they're all they've got their backpacks in their carry ons and they're probably not looking their Sunday best meaning. They're looking a little rough and ragged because they've been traveling and that's probably your roughest time in the roughest day that you're going to have. Once the rooms open up and people can go freshen up and drop their luggage off and start dispersing throughout the boat. You're going to see those crowd levels come down. So do know that when he first got on a cruise ship, it's terrible for the first couple hours, and then it starts to calm down. I want you to get. Out of that. Now. Again like I said on a carnival, that is the roughest crowd we've seen. There are some more partiers on carnival. You do have people that are drinking quite a bit. However, you can avoid them if you want to. So we did we weren't around those crowds. We weren't around those people. We went and did our own thing with our family and had a great time away from them. That's a little bit of a difference. On our last episode, I also said that if you have kids between four to 10 years of age, Disney is probably the right cruise for them and for your family. And the reason is Disney. Does families better? They've got better kid clubs. They've got all the character meet and greets. And the ship's going to be full of kids their same age. So they're going to have lots of kids to play with in those clubs and in those different rooms. And it's just going to be a great time for them where. Obviously, if you take them on Holland America, They may be the only kids on the ship. In fact, on our Alaska cruise, there was a family with two kids and they were the only kids on the ship that we saw the entire time we were there. They, and they were young, I would say four and six. So know that you're not going to find kids on those cruises, carnival, there were tons of kids, but not like Disney took it to a whole new level. Be mindful that if you have kids who you want them interacting with, or maybe hanging out with. Obviously when you go to a Royal Caribbean, that's getting more at a higher price point, similar to Disney, but more towards that party side. So they're going to have more of the teen age where Disney has more of the younger kid age. Those are also things to consider based on the age of your kids. So again, go Google it all, go check out all the other blogs and posts that are out there. Some things to consider is do you want to pay for extras? So on every cruise line, you're going to be paying extra for things like your wifi. Or if you want to do an alcoholic package or alcoholic drinks, but there is a difference in soda. So on carnival, you're paying about $8 a person a day. If you want to do unlimited soda and you have to go pick those up as cans at the bar versus on Disney, they have fountain drinks everywhere, and those are included. Different cruise lines have different policies for this. So I encourage you to go check out those things that you may want to do, or may cost you extra that may contribute to your decision as well. But know that at the end of the day, it's not going to break the bank or it's not going to be a terrible thing. And in fact, I like diet mountain Dew. That's my drink of choice. Any time that we go on a cruise, I always look up the rules before we go. And usually you can bring one case, a 12 pack of pop per person. And so I always bring my own case of diet, mountain Dew. And in my room, I always have a fridge and I loaded up in there. And that way I've got diet mountain Dew. I can take with me to the shows or around the boat during the day, and I don't have to pay for soda. So that's a good way to do it. So with all that being said, we've talked about. Things to look for, like the extra little costs. We've talked about kids on the ship clientele. We've talked about the rooms, the ships, the excursions, the food. It's a great, wonderful time. Trust me when I say cruising is amazing and we've done four, and I can tell you, we will probably do two a year now going forward just because we've enjoyed it so much. And we did two this last year. We will definitely keep cruising. So the question is, it worth it to do a Disney cruise? I will say we loved it. It's the best cruise we've been on and it was super fun. But now that our daughter is 12, we probably won't do a Disney cruise again. The reason being, is she starting to age out of some of those younger programs? She would appreciate some of the teen programs that some of the other cruises have and they're less expensive. So for example, on a carnival cruise for the same number of nights, it costs me half the cost of going on a Disney cruise and everything's included except for my soda, but I can bring a 12 pack of, diet mountain Dew onto that cruise. The shows are more unique there. The port excursions are better. The service isn't as good. The clientele may be a little bit of a step down, but at the same time, it's costing me half as much. So I can cruise twice as often. Now, if you go on a Royal Caribbean, it's going to cost you about the same as Disney. So at that point I would probably select Disney over Royal Caribbean. If I want to go super elite and I'm going to go celebrity or princess. I may leave my daughter at home for those just because those are a little bit high end. And those are going to be more expensive, but I'm probably going for that experience. So I wanna encourage you weigh why you're going. Meaning weighed out am I going to see different places? Am I going for the kids' stuff? Am I taking my kids? Even a, we know a lot of people that don't take their kids on cruises. Am I going for the dining? Am I going for the drinking? Am I going for the casino? Cause maybe that's something like we talked about earlier that you want. Think about all those things and then evaluate, is it worth the cost? For me, I can tell you we've had a great time on carnival it's half the cost, and they have awesome things to do on that boat. Just as much as Disney does. They partner with Dr. Seuss. So they've got all the little kids stuff as well. So we will probably continue to do that. Going forward is to go on the carnival. Now I always do shop multiple cruise lines whenever we're looking for a trip, just to see if there's a deal out there and try to get something a little bit more elite. But we've always had a lot of fun and they have great port excursions. So that is a top consideration of ours. For us, we've decided a few years ago, as we go on these cruises, we want to knock out some of our bucket list things, meaning we want to see new places or places that we want to go to. But like I said earlier, we went swimming with whale sharks and that was on my bucket list. I love Marine life. You could see my aquarium here behind me. I absolutely loved sharks. I studied sharks in college and my goal has been to do a dive or swim with all the different shark species. And I've knocked out the major ones. Except for, at that point in time, I hadn't done whale sharks yet. And so I wanted to do those. So when we went on a carnival cruise, they had an excursion, we were able to go spend the day swimming with whale sharks. It was amazing. So I encourage you to try to knock out some of those bucket list items. That's what we've been doing, and it's made our cruises that much better. Again, you can go check out the videos of our excursions on our different cruises at my Jared Dryer YouTube page. It's you can just Google my name out there and you'll find it. As well as we've done trips to Hawaii. And we've done snorkeling there with manta rays. We've done a lot of cool different things. But that YouTube page has them all highlighted there for you. And then from this Disney cruise, I do have those. On the dryer dose of Disney, a YouTube page as well. So you can go see all the excursions we did with Disney. So lots of fun stuff out there. With that we wish you a magical week as you're planning your next vacation. And we'll talk to you guys next time. Bye. Bye. End Music Thanks for watching.