Pirate Night: What Ye Be Wearin’, Mateys?

If you have yet to experience Pirate Night on a Disney Cruise, you are in for a treat.  DCL really does a good job on this and it is my family’s favorite night of the cruise.  I have noticed that some people spend a lot of time and money on their costumes and that others just wear a “piratey” (let’s just pretend that’s a word) outfit that they put together from pieces they already owned.  I have done a little of both, and I am going to share with you what I have done in the past for my family.  Hopefully this might provide you with some ideas if you are trying to pull together pirate outfits for your own family.

Let’s start with our first Disney cruise in 2013:

For myself, I wore clothes that I already had – a red striped shirt and black capri pants.  I did buy the necklace from Charming Charlie just for the cruise.  For my husband (isn’t he a good sport?!?), I bought him this pirate shirt, found the pirate hat at Goodwill around Halloween (it is just like this one), and bought the belt, eye patch, wig, and boot tops from a Halloween store.  I got them for 90% off the day after Halloween.  If you will be sailing after Halloween this year, I highly recommend hitting up some Halloween stores the day after Halloween.  Yes, there will be mobs of people, but you will find some great deals on pirate stuff.  He finished off his outfit with black pants (but I think these would be GREAT pirate pants!) and shoes.  Here are his items on Amazon:

pirate shirt

pirate hat

pirate pants

Eye Patch & Earring

Black Boot Tops

Buccaneer Pirate Wig

Here’s the best picture I could find of the girls:

The two older girls are wearing shirts they already had (white tank top that I added a sparkly Mickey head iron-on to, red ruffle tank) and skirts that my WONDERFUL mom made for them just for the cruise.  I emphasize wonderful because although she is very experienced at sewing, apparently the pattern I chose was one of the hardest ones she has ever used.  Thus, I would not recommend this particular pattern but I remember there being several ruffle skirt patterns to choose from when I was shopping.  We received a lot of complements on the skirts and have gotten a lot of use out of them as you will see in a minute. My youngest wore a red & black ruffle jumper that I found at a consignment store and striped tights (click here to purchase).  All three girls wore black flip flops.

For our next cruise, my husband recycled most of the same costume (minus the wig, which he said was too itchy) and I once again mostly pulled clothes from my existing wardrobe:

They only thing I bought just for this cruise was the striped skirt (from Ross).  I already had the red flats, black shirt, red scarf, large hoop earrings and necklace.  I also just noticed that my husband rolled his pants up this time (those are his black karate pants) and switched to sneakers.  (FYI, these bandanas are given to you on the cruise, 1 per person, and are usually waiting for you at your dinner table on Pirate Night.  I think one time they were left in our room by our cabin steward.)  For the girls, I switched it up a bit but still used the same skirts that my mom made:

I found these white one shoulder ruffle shirts at JC Penney (which they wear at home all of the time) and found the red pettiskirt at a consignment shop.  My youngest is wearing the same tights from the previous cruise, and the 2 older girls are wearing pirate tights (click here to purchase).  The tights actually had feet in them, but I cut the feet off so that they could wear flip flops and it worked perfectly.  I felt that the outfits needed a belt, so I bought some striped material and made the belts using only scissors and fabric glue.  I don’t sew but needed to put 2 pieces of fabric together for length, so I used fabric glue and it worked great.  Black flip flops completed the outfit!  Here are 2 more pictures from this cruise that are too cute to not share:

For our third cruise, the girls’ outfits barely changed:

The shirts still fit, but the skirts and tights had gotten too small so I had to hand them down to the 2 younger girls.  I bought my oldest a black sparkly pettiskirt (from zulily.com) and new skull tights (click here to purchase), once again with the feet cut off.  Again my husband wore his standard pirate outfit but I switched it up a bit:

I wore red pants and black flats that I already had, the necklace and earrings from the last 2 cruises, and a black shirt with tiny white skulls on it that I found for $5 at Ross.

Here are some more items that I think would be great for pirate night:

Women’s Jolly Roger Leggings

Faux Real Men’s Pirate T-shirt

Men’s Pirate Eye Patch Storm Trooper Shirt

I hope that this may provide you with some ideas if you are in the process of planning a Disney cruise.  FYI, the Alaskan and some European sailings do not have a pirate night, so if you are booked on one of these itineraries, check with DCL before you begin planning for pirate festivities.

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