In this post, I’m going to go through how much we spent on our recent trip on the Disney Fantasy. I’ll include airfare and cruise fare, but also discuss what we spent on food, drinks, merchandise, activities, and more. Read on to learn how we spent our money on a trip aboard the Disney Fatasy!
About This Post and Related Posts
In this post I cover every dollar we spent on our 5-Night Bahamas cruise aboard the Disney Fantasy. There are two particular related posts you might be interested in:
In this post, I generally round to the nearest dollar, but you’ll sometimes see more specific figures. I’ll include comparisons to our budget from the 3 nights we spent on the Disney Wish in a few spots, too.
Summary of Budget
Let’s start with a summary. Then I’ll dive into the categories specifically with some commentary on each.
Airfare - $2,110
Airport Snacks - $32
Parking - $109
Cruise Fare - $4,787
Onboard Expenses - $1,142
Total - $8,180
Since this doesn’t include the buffer days before and after the cruise, it compares more directly to the $6,738 figure from our 3-Night Disney Wish cruise. On the one hand it looks like that math makes sense, but when you factor in that over $1000 of the difference is actually just airfare, you can see we got much better value on this cruise.
Comparing just cruise fare and onboard expenses, we’d get:
$5929 for 5 nights on Disney Fantasy
$5322 for 3 nights on Disney Wish
This isn’t shocking—the Disney Wish is a newer and theoretically better / more impressive ship than the Fantasy. Between the two, we all had a better time on the Fantasy, I think. Add in that this itinerary visited both Castaway Cay and Lookout Cay, and it starts to look like a real steal.
Airfare ($2,110)
Our airfare costs for this trip were absolutely bananas. This trip coincided with New York City schools’ mid-winter break, so it’s not shocking that prices from New York to Orlando were high. We also had to make some changes to make our buffer days make sense, which added to the cost. It’s pretty funny that for last cruise we spent $1,043 to fly over Easter weekend and I thought that was notably high.
Airport Meals / Snacks ($32)
We spent $32 on food at the airport. We had reasonably timed flights this trip, which is also probably why they were so expensive. That meant we were able to plan our meals before and after the flights, keeping our expenses at the airport more reasonable. On an early flight you can count on me to drop $30 just grabbing an assortment of food for Zoe before we get on the plane.
Parking ($109)
This one is a bit wonky of an inclusion. We got a ride from Emily’s parents to Port Canaveral (they were sailing with us), but we paid for parking. Usually if you’re paying for parking you either won’t have airfare costs or you will have rental car costs. I’d note there are decent shuttle services between MCO and Port Canaveral for about $30 per person.
Cruise Cost ($4,787)
The cruise cost came to $4,787, broken down as follows:
Guest 1 Voyage Fare - $1,611
Guest 2 Voyage Fare - $1,611
Guest 3 Voyage Fare - $994
Taxes, Fees, and Port Expenses - $353
Prepaid Gratuities - $218
It’s possible you’ll see this figure about $50 higher elsewhere in our coverage—the “Taxes, Fees, and Port Expenses” dropped between booking and final payment for unknown reasons. This was only about $500 more than our 3-Night trip on the Disney Wish.
Our Expenses Onboard the Disney Fantasy ($1,142)
Next we come to onboard expenses, including Port Adventures and expenses on Castaway Cay and Lookout Cay. It helps to immediately address the big-ticket items in this category:
Shutters - $289.95
Senses Spa - $220
Internet - $110
Laundry - $48.75
These four items account for $669 of our onboard expenses. We’re not spa people, but that’s Emily’s share of a special treat for her and her mom.
We are Shutters, Internet, and Laundry people. I’d have liked to have spent less on laundry, but I didn’t feel like taking the time to navigate the machines, so that was for laundry service. We always wind up buying the full Shutters photography package. It’s less expensive in advance, I think, but I don’t always remember to buy it. And I needed internet for this trip because I was prepping for the bar exam.
We spent $103 on shopping—a hook for Zoe, some buttons, and a few other small items.
We spent $246 on food and drink. That’s actually less than the $295 we spent over 3 days on the Disney Wish. I estimate $137 of the $246 was for nine alcoholic drinks, or just under 1 per adult per day. The remaining $109 was specialty coffee, “fun” drinks like smoothies, and extras at dinner (sparkling water).
Finally, we spent $124 on activities. These included snorkeling, Zoe’s Oceaneer Club band deposit ($25), and the Goofy Sports Simulator (for which, magically, only Zoe was charged).
Overall I suspect we’re still on the more conservative end of spending on the ship. We’re not big drinkers or shoppers. But the spa appointment for $220 was a splurge that brought us to $76 per person per day for onboard expenses over the 5-day trip (compared to $123 for our time on the Disney Wish).
About That Buffer Day…
For this budget, I’m opting not to include the costs of the buffer days at Disney World. You can see in our Disney Wish 3-Day Budget that we spent $1,235 on a budget day at Disney World. That number was iffy to include there, and this trip was different for a few reasons.
We had two nights on either end of the cruise, and we bought Lightning Lane Premier Pass for a day at Magic Kingdom. Moreover, that $1,235 figure was itself already a bit inflated by over $800 spent on one night in a family suite at Art of Animation.
All this is to say your buffer costs will vary greatly. We have annual passes, so there’s no ticket cost for us to go to the parks in the day or days around our cruise. We could come in well under $1,235 by opting for a lower-cost hotel, but you might wind up well over $1,235 if you have to buy park tickets.