One day last September, Jay, Morgan, Tess, and I were out in Cocoa Beach and we decided to drive by Port Canaveral to see the Disney Fantasy. We managed to time it just as the ship was leaving port and heading out to sea. A well-meaning Morgan asked, “Hey, how are we getting here anyway?”
It was at this moment that I realized no matter how much time and love you put into your wedding website, no one reads it anyway.
I had covered multiple transportation options to the port on our wedding website: two different parking options, two shuttle options, and hotels in Port Canaveral that offer free cruise parking. However, Morgan’s question made me realize that I was going to have to sort out transportation for everyone if I didn’t want to deal with a lot of last-minute stress and questions.
I could just see it. Two days before the cruise: “Hey, so how do I get there?”
The one downside to planning a cruise wedding: it’s a lot like trying to herd cats onto a boat.
Getting a bus out to Port Canaveral so we could all ride together sounded like the most logical and fun option, but even calling in a favor with a transportation company I know, it was going to be over $600 round trip, and we would have to find somewhere to leave our cars in Orlando. Looking at companies I didn’t have a contact at, was over $800.
I still have like three different locations in Knoxville, Tennessee I could leave cars for a weekend without a problem. Orlando, not so much.
Plus, since so many of us were going to be at Fort Wilderness after the Welcome Party, it would mean we’d have to get up, drive somewhere to meet everyone else, and that just seemed like the extra hassle I was trying to avoid, by staying at Fort Wilderness.
Carpooling seemed like the next most logical option, but then that left the issue of who pays for the parking. If there’s four people in a car, they would have to pay less than people in a three-person car, and that didn’t seem fair. Finally, after a lot of deliberation, I came to the conclusion the easiest and fairest thing to do would be to assign who was riding with whom, and I would just pay for all the parking. Not money I really wanted to spend, but I knew it would save me stress down the road.
So, I went to our Facebook group to make sure everyone would be okay with this plan. I only had to take care of transportation for 20 out of our 23 guests, because Jay’s parents were staying at the Port the night before, and Lauren would be riding Disney transportation with her parents. By my count, that meant we needed six vehicles to have enough room for everyone and luggage, and I asked for volunteers to drive said six vehicles.
I actually used Wedding Wire’s seating chart planner to sort out who went in what vehicle. I cannot say enough good things about that seating chart interface. Then I made cute little charts in Canva.
I had to do some tweaks to my first version because some people weren’t coming directly back to Orlando, but everyone had a ride, and that’s what mattered.
There’s really only two main places to park for Disney Cruise Line out of Port Canaveral: the official Port Canaveral Cruise parking which is a connected parking garage, and Park n’ Cruise: an offsite fenced in lot, about five minutes from Port Canaveral with a free shuttle.
Port Canaveral Cruise parking is $17 per day, so it’s $68 for a three-night cruise, because you’re also paying for Embarkation day. Park n’ Cruise is $10.95 per day for $52.87 for a three-night cruise. Well, that’s a no brainer, isn’t it?
I actually even reached out to Park n’ Cruise about how many vehicles we had, and they gave us a 20% off code that I was SUPER grateful for. It dropped it to $42.49 per vehicle for us, so we paid $256.94 for all six vehicles. Not bad, considering I was originally looking at over $600 for a bus!
Since we couldn’t all ride together, I wanted to give everyone something to make the drive more fun. Jay and I put together a playlist of songs that mean something to us, or are significant to the trip in one way or another, and I burned CDs for all the vehicles. I put together packets with the CD, driving directions to Park n’ Cruise, and our wedding program, but the wedding program is a story for another day. I also already had the CDs and envelopes on hand, so yay, something I didn’t have to buy!
You can listen to the playlist on Spotify, minus one song because it’s a parody we wrote for the wedding video.
Out of pocket expenses so far:
Cruise Fare: $4,944.06
Invitations and Postage: $89
Disney Fine Art Photography: $2875.50
Fairytale Hair and Makeup Deposit: $100
Hair and Makeup Trial: $180 ($150 base plus tip)
Hoop-Dee-Doo: $444 (Category 1 seating for us, plus both sets of parents, tax and tip included)
Park n’ Cruise for 6 Vehicles: $256.94
Total: $8,789.50
