Adventure In The Great Wide Somewhere

Who wouldn't love an upgrade? Moving from an interior stateroom to a verandah or from a verandah to a concierge suite doesn't have to be only a Dream.  Live the dream. Upgrading is easier than you think! The question, of course, is when and how exactly to score an upgrade. Before the Sail Date There are two ways to score an upgrade in advance of packing your bags. 1.) Pixie Dust! Imagine logging in to your reservation one day and the stateroom number doesn't match your memories. You go to look up if they've moved you down the hall to an identical porthole room. No, the room is up a deck and seems to be a verandah stateroom. That can't be right. That's not what you paid for so you call up Disney Cruise Line only to find out "Surprise!" they've sprinkled pixie dust on your stateroom and you will be enjoying ocean breezes from the privacy of your very own verandah at no additional cost. More often you will shift staterooms to one withi...

We stepped forward and surrendered a key to the world card to the cast member at the supervisor desk as we asked if any upgrades were still available. She said that there were in fact two upgrades available. She said that an upgrade to a one bedroom concierge suite was available for a little over a thousand dollars. (That's about when the ridiculous grins broke out, because we were under our discussed budget and would be cruising concierge!) Then she scanned sideways on her grid and said that the Walter E Disney suite was available for a little over three thousand dollars. Ben and I discussed it in depth. In advance. So, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, we turned over all of our stateroom 5052 key to the world cards. (They let Kylee keep her old card after it was deactivated, just so she could have a card in her lanyard.) They charged the upgrade to our room, then they handed our new (gold) key to the world cards to a concierge cast member who walked us to the...

After taking their sweet time settling down to bed the night before, I was quite startled when Kylee woke up at four in the morning. Eastern Standard Time. When we're from the Central Time Zone. Well anyways, we were up. Chris stayed asleep, so I let Kylee crawl in on my side of the bed hoping that everyone else could stay asleep and maybe I could get some winks in too. By five-thirty it became painfully obvious that Kylee wasn't going to go back to sleep, so we grabbed her "embarkation day" Ziploc bag. (We always pack full outfits for the kids together with bows and accessories to make it easy to hand out clothes for the day.) While Kylee brushed her hair, I took a quick shower. Since we were still on the dark o'clock side of things, I dressed and got ready for the day because Kylee loves watching me get ready and it keeps her calm and quiet. Deluxe King Hyatt Regency-pardon the mess Ben admitted defeat and dressed as well and last of all, Chris rustled...