Doing the Mediterranean cruise with Disney sounded like such a fabulous idea at the time I booked it. We felt this was a great way to see a variety of countries and with only having to unpack our bags once.  Well, I quickly learned this was going to be different than any other Disney Cruise.  Leaving Port Canaveral has always been easy peazy. But the planning for the Med was fun but a little overwhelming.

Since it may be a while before we get back to Spain, France and Italy, I wanted to make sure we got the most of our trip. This required quite a bit of planning. We had to decide on tours, pre-hotel stays, etc.  Plus, the airfare is crazy expensive, so we wanted to get our monies worth out of the trip.

We also knew we didn’t want to do all Disney tours.  We move at a fast pace and I didn’t want to be held up by the pace of a large tour group. We also decided that we weren’t ready to be adventurous and do tours on our own and risk the possibility of getting lost and also not learning as much as possible about the history if we did it on our own. A word of caution, if you find tours outside of Disney and want to compare the cost to Disney’s excursion, be sure you are comparing apples to apples cost wise.  Disney will quote you in US and the tour groups are most likely quoting you in Euros.

For tours, we selected Barcelona Day Tours for Barcelona, Disney Tours for Eze, France and Monte Carlo and Rome in Limo for the ports of La Spezia, Naples and Rome.

Arriving at least 2 days early was very helpful for a few reasons.  1. To get over jetlag. 2. To make sure all our luggage arrived through the connections. 3. We wanted to have a chance to see at least one city for more than a quick tourist stop, so Barcelona is the city that will be blessed with our presence for a couple of days.