November 3, 2009

  • Nothing Cures the Dumps like a Disney Cruise!

    So I've been really depressed recently. Just so overwhelmed with school, family stresses, finances due to Jeremy's hours cuts, pregnancy hormones, more school, my church calling, constant back pain, everything. I've been extremely unmotivated and fallen behind in school due to my back being impossible. Yesterday was kind of the breaking point and I just had to cry all over Jeremy for a while. He was very patient and rubbed my back. I love him. He didn't even tell me to stop crying! He was perfect.

    Well today my mom plants this idea in my head about a Disney Cruise to Alaska. It was kind of exactly what I needed. A reason to be excited, something to think about besides all my other worries, something to plan, etc. I love planning! She calls going on and on about how wonderful it would be and has already come up with all the prices for my little family to go along with the rest of my family. She figured that the cheapest available room that Me, Jeremy, Joey, and Baby Girl Swafford could stay in for the 7-night Alaskan Disney Cruise would be just under $5000. We would only have to save up about $300 a month to pay for it by the due date. It would require sacrifices, especially with Jeremy's large pay cut, but I felt we could do it. The sacrifices would be worth it. I got VERY EXCITED. And VERY HAPPY.

    So I call the Disney Cruise Line (DCL) about a wheelchair accessible room. You can't get that info anywhere online, you have to call. And guess what? There are BARELY any handicap rooms left. FOR A 2011 CRUISE! I was shocked. Every single cruise we could potentially go on (all 7 of them) only had the expensive, large, staterooms with a veranda. And not many of them. Some dates only had ONE wheelchair room available on the entire ship. The rooms that ARE available are the exact same rooms me and Jeremy had on our honeymoon. Sure, it would be magical to have breathtaking views of Alaska's mountains and glaciers, not to mention the memories of being in the same room from our honeymoon, but did I mention they are expensive? I wasn't planning on having a room that nice ever again in my cruising lifetime. However, that's all that is left. That bumps our total cost up to about $7700. Making our monthly saving requirement about $460.

    OUCH.

    I wanted to cry again. I wanted to scream at how unfair it is that I have to have an expensive wheelchair room. I wanted to complain to DCL for having so few wheelchair rooms. I was angry that I ever got my hopes up only to have them stomped to little bits. I considered getting a normal room and crawling through the tiny doorway on the floor and crawling into the tiny bathroom for every shower and pee break. Then I remembered that I will already have a child crawling/tottering around and requiring constant attention. I can't be trying to drag myself AND my baby in and out of my room and the bathroom on the floor. I just can't. It's not safe. For either of us.

    But you know what? I want to go on that cruise. I NEED to go on that cruise. It would be the perfect graduation present. (I'm graduating December 2010. Fingers crossed.) I need a reason to stop eating out so often and cook healthier, cheaper food at home. I want something to look forward to after the baby comes when I'm sleep deprived and dying for human interaction after spending most of my days stuck on bed rest. I want a prize to focus on while I'm desperately trying to finish school with an infant. I need motivation more than I've ever needed it in my life.

    Our baby girl will be at such a great age. 16-17 months. Sure, she won't remember the cruise when she's older, but I will remember her face lighting up when she gets to meet her favorite princess, character, or even Mickey Mouse! I will have so many precious photos of a time when she's old enough to recognize and love the character, yet young enough to believe they're the REAL THING. I can't imagine many things better than that. I SO WANT THAT.

    I made a short term room reserve. The agent practically forced me to. It's a free courtesy to reserve a room for three days until you come up with the initial deposit. ($1800 for us.) It's impossible, but she was adamant. She asked the name of the infant that will be on the cruise and I told her she didn't have a name yet because she isn't born yet. The agent just thought that was the sweetest thing, and I think it's pretty cool too, to book a cruise for a passenger that hasn't been born yet! It got me excited again. It made me want to make it happen. I want to see my baby meet Ariel, The Little Mermaid, for the first time. I want to see Alaska, for the first and probably only time.

    Actually, I would gladly switch to a cheaper cruise, something in the Caribbean or Bahamas, but my family is definitely going on the Alaskan cruise and I don't want to be left out. Again. My family has already done six of the Caribbean/Bahamian Disney cruises--without ME--so they aren't really interested in those. They're spoiled...haha.

    So I'm going for it. We may not make it. We may not come up with all the money. And if that's the case, so be it. What will likely happen, is even if we can eventually scrape together the $1800 for the initial deposit to permanently reserve the room, the wheelchair rooms will be all gone by then. I have one reserved now, but only for a few days and we'll definitely lose it cause there's no way we can come up with $1800 by then. According to my calculations, we can barely scrape together $800 within the next few days, assuming we eat off the food we have stored up in the house and only spend $100 on groceries and toiletries for the next three weeks.

    But if we ARE able to save up a lot of money, and still not make the $7700 cruise, or not in time to reserve a wheelchair room, then I will try to do something else equally awesome with the money. Maybe a short little 3-day cruise on the new Disney Dream ship? It won't be nearly as meaningful as having a large chunk of my extended family together, but it will be something fun for my new little family. I need the motivation, a little bit of pixie dust. Some MAGIC.

    And a Disney Cruise with my wonderful family is just that.