Excessive luggage after WDW stay getting on a cruise

[BruinEd03]

I would and could never do this.

I do laundry, but I babysit it.

As a 20something I had the bulk of my clothes stolen from an apartment laundry room, and it was devastating. I can’t have that happen again.

Slightly different crowd that's on the ship. You also get notices when your laundry will be down (it says its done about 2 minutes before it's actually done). So you can be there to pick it up right when it's finished.

What you are more likely to see happen is your laundry moved out into the center. Or, what happened once was, a laundry load got moved in between the time someone went back to the room to get the soap or dryer sheets. Oops.

 

[lanejudy]

I would ship your WDW souvenirs home before the cruise. Maybe let each kid pick out one item to bring with them (like a new plush or t-shirt or something). Everything else goes home. I believe you can arrange to have items shipped home from WDW shops, or just collect it all and use one of those flat-rate boxes from USPS; if it already has the postage included, the front desk of your resort will handle shipping it for you.

For the stroller -- where is great-grandma in relation to Orlando? You can rent from third-party vendors and use the stroller other than WDW. So if you will be in the Orlando area, I'd look into the rental. DCL Guest Services does offer strollers to "borrow" (with a refundable deposit), but I think it would be 2 singles and not a double.

And we do laundry on pretty much any vacations longer than 5 days. It cuts down on luggage (especially for longer trips) and doesn't take much time as I'll do it when we're hanging at the pool or after DD goes to bed.

Enjoy your cruise!

 

[Cruising Engineer]

My DH and I "survived" on one roll on bag each for the 14 day EBPC cruise.

Laundry isn't that bad on the ship. I'm and early riser, get the laundry in the machine (use WashEZE 3 in 1 laundry sheets from Amazon) then walk the decks several laps. Check the time, move the laundry to the dryer, get some fruit and coffee for the DH at Daisy's. While he's getting ready the dryer is done, clothes folded, return to the room, put them away and we're off to breakfast. It's strictly organization and setting limits.

 

[Rjw615]

I’ve totally thought about renting or downsizing our stroller situation but we’re also visiting great grandma and doing none Disney activities while in Florida. Maybe I’ll change my mind by next spring.

You can rent from places outside of Disney, just Google "Stroller Rentals Disney" The stroller wont be confined to Disney property, you can take it anywhere. They will drop it off at your designated time and place and pick up from your designated time and place as well within reason of course. Super easy.

That would be the way I go so I wouldn't have the worry of taking a double stroller on the ship.

 

[kiford]

We never do laundry on vacation especially a cruise and we've done a 12-day cruise preceeded by 5 days in Munich and 3 days in London and been able to store it all in our room. Now, there are only two of us and no stroller but we had formal and semi-formal wear for both of us. We pack mix and match clothing. As others have said - you pretty much only wear nicer things for dinner for a couple of hours so you can easily wear those multiple times. We unpacked everything and put it away and still had room to spare. All suitcases under the bed and there would still have been room in the closet for larger items on the floor. Before they raised the beds, we used to put our luggage in the closet and still didn't feel cramped.

 

[otten]

We never pack more than 7 days worth of clothes no matter how long the trip. That's way too much stuff to drag along. We do laundry partway through.

As for souvenirs, I would suggest making use of the ship to home option at the Disney stores or limit your purchases to smaller souvenirs that are easier to pack.

 

[meliscan]

You can also send your laundry out on the ship. It's not cheap but it's not crazy.

https://disneycruiselineblog.com/2013/01/onboard-self-and-full-service-laundry-and-dry-cleaning/

I have also bought a cheap stroller and shipped it to the hotel for Disney then I just pixie dusted it to someone when I leave the hotel so I don't have to deal with it. I found the stroller rental kind of pricey and the strollers big and bulky. Buying a $30 stroller was easier.

 

[hrhdhd]

I would ship your WDW souvenirs home before the cruise. Maybe let each kid pick out one item to bring with them (like a new plush or t-shirt or something). Everything else goes home. I believe you can arrange to have items shipped home from WDW shops, or just collect it all and use one of those flat-rate boxes from USPS; if it already has the postage included, the front desk of your resort will handle shipping it for you.

I would ship dirty laundry to an empty house before I'd ship new purchases. Perhaps you can ship to a neighbor who will be home and can hold the box for you?

 

[DietCokeMommy]

I’ve totally thought about renting or downsizing our stroller situation but we’re also visiting great grandma and doing none Disney activities while in Florida. Maybe I’ll change my mind by next spring.

There are non-disney rental companies that are awesome. They will drop the stroller off at your hotel and pick it back up from the front desk when you’re done. We did this last year and got a double city mini. Check out Kingdom Strollers. On board you don’t really need it unless you’ve got a non-mobile baby.

As for laundry, before our cruise I thought there was no way I’d want to spend time doing laundry in my vacation. But we had spent 3 days in Puerto Rico before we boarded and all 4 of us had multiple wet bathing suits that wouldn’t dry. I had them hung up all over the bathroom - first in the hotel then on the ship. I decided to wash and dry them, along with the rest of our dirty stuff and it was super simple. We were right down the hall from laundry andI did it one night after the kids went to bed.

 

[DisneyGirlMI]

We also do WDW vacation before our cruise. We drive a long way, so we almost always are gone for over two weeks. We are a family of five and each person has a suitcase along with an extra for shoes, toiletries, etc. the kids also each bring a backpack. (My family has never figured out how to pack light! ) We have plenty of room in our stateroom to store everything. It’s actually the resort that we struggle with storing stuff as in most rooms we stay in there is no under bed storage. We also do laundry at the end of our WDW portion. My DH takes the kids to the pool and I do laundry. We stay at the BC and the laundry room is right by the quiet pool so I hang out there.

 

[cyclenut]

We recently sailed for two weeks plus a couple of days at WDW followed by a few days afterward. That required a lot of planning. We used a couple of large checked luggage pieces, a large duffel that included all shoes, sunscreen, belts, hats, etc., a backpack each, and a couple carry-on sized pieces of luggage. Duffel is good because it collapses well to be stuffed under the bed. We used the luggage like large drawers and slid them under the bed full. We just left them unzipped but closed. Slide them out, get your clothes and slide them back in. Put all your dirty clothes from WDW in a separate bag that you don't have to gain access to and slide that to an area under the bed that is harder to get to.
Other than concerns about our bags being overweight (they were very close), we had plenty of room in the cabin.

 

[GuardMusic]

Once we shipped things home from the resort prior to leaving for the port.

 

[Vista20]

We looked into shipping the extra luggage home but found a better option with Orlando Baggage Storage, they even delivered our bags to the airport after our cruise.

 

[disneylove69]

Dont bring dressy clothes. That will mean less shoes as well.