Only 56 days to go!

We have been on cruises before but it has been about 8 years since our last one. This is the first cruise that it has been just our family. I have been kicking a cruise vacation around for the last couple of years but it seemed such a waste to not use our time share. I'm not quite sure how I finally talked everyone into a cruise but I am so excited! I think about it daily, ok hourly. Good grief, I really need to get over the feeling of needing to be 100% honest on here! Anywhoo, like I have already admitted, I obsess about our trips. I read everything that I can get my hands on and if I find out that a person has had a cruise experience, I want to hear about theirs too! I get on CruiseCritic message boards often and have learned so much. For those who want the basic info. stuff, when you decide on a Cruise line, date, cabin type and ship, you need to put down a deposit. It varies from line to line but we paid $250 per/person. Yep, that was the do or die point for our cruise! The cruise needs to be paid off 90 days before sailing, until the final pay day you can cancel without penalty. It was pretty easy for us to decide on the basics, everything revolved around the fall break dates. The only point that I really struggled was deciding between the cruise lines. I had to decide between Carnival, which we had been on before, and Royal Caribbean. It sounds really silly but it all boiled down to which ship had more for my kids. I went with RC, even though it was quite a bit more $, because they had the FLO-rider, rock climbing wall and ice rink. Since our kids are no longer little in size (Have you seen my son lately? MERCY!) We went with inside cabins. Inside cabins are the cheapest cabins on a ship but the price allowed us to get two cabins, meaning 2 bathrooms. Yes, I would have loved to get a balcony cabin but the 2 bathroom seemed the better route for my family. I have heard people say that they could not handle the coziness of the inside cabin and not having a window. On the flip side though, I have heard that people say they slept wonderfully, due to the complete darkness. My plan is to use the TV as my "window". The ship has a video camera view on one of the chanels. I will make sure to let you know how it worked out for us....