Romelle

My favorite "how do I get from ... to ...." is www.rome2rio.com.

While I'm not personally familiar with the route, the above website shows both shuttle and bus service from MCO to Port Canaveral. The shuttle showed 5 times per day.

My theory is that when I'm doing something lots of other people are doing (Orlando airport to cruise ship) there are people out there that have figured out how to make money on the action.

But with several of you, a one-way car rental might be a better choice.

The cruise ship may well offer transfers for $. They can be a reasonable deal.

And I totally agree with the suggestion of planning to come in a day early. Always.

wrp96

Unless it's only a group of 1 or 2 people, there are few locations where the cruise ship transfers will be the best deal. Port Canaveral isn't one of those locations, especially if flying in the night before. For Orlando to Port Canaveral, look into shuttle services or rental cars. If you want to stay near Port Canaveral, look into hotels at Cocoa Beach. There are a few that run shuttles to the port.

Doc Savage

I'd look into a one way car rental for your family so you'd be able to get around in the Cocoa Beach area and see things. Likely not too expensive compared to shuttle fare X 5.

YZF_Elite

I sailed the Oasis the first year it was in the fleet and it was amazing, huge with many activities. You've never done a cruise so you don't know what you'll like. I like smaller ships for short cruises and the bigger when I have the kids/longer cruises. You won't go wrong with that ship IMO.

arizonawildcat

Appreciate the confirmation. We've booked the 7-day Western Caribbean trip (St. Maarten, San Juan, Labadee) out of Port Canaveral on the Oasis of the Seas. Very excited as this looks to be a cool ship.

Romelle

Sounds wonderful! I'm glad you got it worked out.

All sorts of ways for families to coordinate on group cruises. One family got inexpensive battery-operated walkie-talkies for everybody. Another simply agreed that everybody gets to go their own way, but they always get together at a specific time for dinner and share the day's adventures. There should be in-room phones, on which voice messages can be left. Door bulletin boards work for some, with messages as to where the occupants might be.

In any case, hope you all have a wonderful time. My parents (and of course grandparents) are long gone, but I have no regrets about doing any shared adventure they every wanted me to do.

Starfish

I wouldn't do anything less than 7 nights as it doesn't seem worth the travel to me to a ship otherwise.

I think you picked a great ship for your cruise. Enjoy!

BamaVol

Good choice. I'm glad you avoided the Bahamas. Nassau is a dump - you have to work too hard to find something interesting especially, your 3rd and 4th visit which becomes almost inevitable if you favor the shorter cruises from Florida ports. I found Freeport so uninteresting, I didn't leave the ship.

MSPeconomist

You really shouldn't be planning to go directly from the airport to the ship. Always arrive a day early to allow for IROPs.

bigbuy

Totally agree. I arrive 2 days before cruises outside the USA and always a day early for cruises in the USA. Too many horror stories to mention for folks that missed their ship because of IROPS.

Randyk47

+1

fromthewing1972

Great choice. I recently traveled to Labadee and it was absolutely beautiful. Definitely my favorite port in the Caribbean.

TravelingNomads

We did a 7 night cruise a couple of years ago and it was a bit too long for us. We prefer the 5 night ones. Maybe it was just our itinerary as we were at sea most of the time vs being in port very much. Try not to get sucked into the "art" presentation if you can help it. The cruises that have private beaches are always fun. I only had a balcony once, but it was completely worth it. It was peaceful sitting outside in the evenings. I would definitely recommend the dining room for dinner. I haven't been overly impressed with them during lunch, but they have decent food/service at night. The game shows and magic shows are usually fun. We also usually rent a car when we're in port so that we can visit the non-tourist areas.

Randyk47

We, on the other hand, will not book a cruise shorter than 10 days. Part of it is that our annual cruise is basically our major vacation and anything shorter than 10 days is too short. Secondly, after we've paid for airfare and a pre-cruise hotel we want to get as much "bang for our buck" as we can. I will say we look for port intensive cruises and are not much into sea days. The idea of a say a trans-Atlantic cruise with six or seven straight sea days is of no interest to us.

Hoyaheel

Agree & disagree (travel is so fun - there are options for all of us!) I have no desire to do a 5 day cruise - I have an algorithm of how long a vacation needs to be to make it worth my while to travel there ;-) Most 5 days in the US (I'm on the east coast) tend to be quickie Carib trips and I'm not interested in that at all. And based on what I've read on CC - lots of those short & cheap cruises are party cruises, and I'm really not interested in that!

On the other hand - I am looking forward to doing a TATL repositioning cruise in the future - preferably on a luxury line (repo cruises tend to have the cheapest per diem rates - might be the only way I get to try a luxury line^) Lots of time to enjoy that luxury. But we also like small ships, and TATLs on the small ships take a long time - 10 days without ports might be too much for me. We'll see!