Know your family. And if you are an adventurous family and really want to try something different,

don't be afraid to jump into that seven-day Alaska or even Mediterranean cruise.

Welcome everybody, the first edition of DCL 101.

We're starting a new series, the DCL duo and the DCL podcast are starting a new series together to kind of walk through a bunch of Disney Cruise Line related planning topics, hoping to start at the 101 level, the beginner level, and progress up through the expert level.

So hoping to take this from 101 to 401 and have just 15-minute kind of bite-sized topics to help

you plan and get the most out of your Disney Cruise.

So today we're going to talk about picking a Disney Cruise.

And I have with me today, Steve Creasy, the host of the DCL podcast and Chris Bright,

his co-host. Welcome, guys. Hi. How are you? Good. How are you? Good, good. So we're going to talk

about picking a cruise. What don't we start with Steve, where do you head to get information about the

DCL kind of itineraries? And if you were going to pick your first cruise on Disney Cruise line, to assume we're going to stay out of Port Canaveral Disney's like major home port. Where would you go to learn more information about the itineraries? How would you go about picking a cruise? To be completely honest, I'd probably start with their website because they've got all the information on there that you need as far as the different itineraries that they have. It's pretty self-explanatory. It's easy to use. And that's a great place to start. So it kind of gives you an idea of what you can pick from where they cruise, the number of days, how many ships they have, all that type of information. And then when you start wanting to refine it from there, after you kind of get your ideas, then there's some other great resources out there, like the unofficial guide to Disney Cruise Line, written by Aaron Foster and Len Testa. This is a great resource. As you're starting to do your research, this is a great guide that'll talk you through all the different from the very beginning, finding a cruise, picking your cruise get your state room how dining works everything else it's very very easy to use that way and then from there also i would use scott sanders the dizzy cruise line blogs website he's got a lot of great information on there one of the things that he has which you're not going to totally understand with to begin with are the navigators the daily navigators so you can kind of go back and take a look at previous cruises. So you think, hey, I want to go to Alaska. Well, you can go to his blog site and look back on what happened on those cruises up to Alaska. So it's kind of a step progression that you can kind of go through. And then, of course, you know, my favorite way, and I think you guys as well, is just to listen to podcast, either over at your podcast, Brian, you and Sam at the DCL do or ours at the DCL podcast plus there or many other just general Disney podcast that talk about Disney Cruise Line. And that's a great way to learn from other people's experiences as well. Yeah, so looking at the itinerary, so do you, would you pick your first cruise, and let me throw this over to you, Chris, would you have picked your first cruise based on kind of the amount of time where it was going? Like, what were some of the considerations you'd put into picking a first cruise or telling somebody the things they should be thinking about as they're picking their first cruise? Well, it depends on if you've ever been on a ship before or not, because if you've cruised at some point, regardless of the cruise line, then there are certain

like things you'll know about yourself. Like, do you get motion sick? Do you like inside cabins or

outside cabins or things like that? Which don't really change, in my opinion, between Disney and

other cruise lines. So if you have sailed before and you know you like cruising,

then I say pick it based on the itinerary and the length of a cruise you want.

If you have never sailed before, though,

and you're trying to decide do I even like cruising and do I like Disney cruise line?

And the answer is yes, you will like them.

Then I recommend probably doing something out of Port Canaveral, something that includes a stop at Castaway Key, so that you are getting like a quintessential Disney cruise line experience, but not necessarily having to commit to a longer journey

to get there or a longer duration of a cruise. The dream, for example, sales three and four night

itineraries alternating year round, pretty much. There's a couple like five nights thrown in there on

the dream, but primarily they sail three and four nights. I would tell you that a

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