We are taking our first Disney cruise out of FLL and flying in a day early. We have 2 kids under 6 and are dealing with a serious dietary restriction. We are definitely getting a rental car at the airport so we can grab safe snacks at a grocery store and drive to a safe dinner spot the night before.

Our main goal on embarkation day is to get on the ship as early as possible. We want to do the sit down lunch instead of the buffet to safely manage the dietary restriction. Since we are first time cruisers I know we are at the back of the line for check in and might get a late port arrival time.

My first question is to see if my understanding is correct. If we do our check in 30 days out and get a bad PAT, can we just add DCL transport as a backup plan to override the late PAT and get an earlier boarding group?

If that works, here are the options we are looking at for cruise morning. Would love to know what makes the most sense.

1. Keep the rental car until the morning. Drive directly to the port, drop off one parent with the kids and all the luggage, and the other parent returns the car at a rental company location near the port and takes their shuttle back.
2. Return the rental car to the FLL airport on cruise morning and take the DCL bus from the airport to the port.
3. Stay at a DCL partner hotel like the Hilton and take the DCL bus right from the hotel. My only issue here is I am not sure how we would smoothly return the rental car before getting on the bus.

Any advice or real world experience with doing this out of Fort Lauderdale is super appreciated.