Woody's Mommy
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2009
First off, I just want to say how thankful I am for the previous trip reports and advice from DISers. It was very useful in planning our 1st Disney Cruise. I took tons of pictures and several videos of our 3 night adventure and I am still going back and looking through them daily! I have recommended Disney Cruise Line to everyone I know with kids and kids at heart. I highly recommend it to families with children who are not tall enough to ride the rides at Disney World but love seeing the characters. Disney Cruise Line exceeded our expectations and I hope to be back aboard some time soon!
Pre-Day 1: Port Canaveral is an 11 hour drive for us so we left EARLY the day before and stayed in Cocoa Beach, FL. Our motel was within walking distance of the beach and about 3 miles from the Port. I would suggest staying here for a night or two but I wouldn't want to make a week long beach trip out of it.
Day 1:Taking the advice of the DIS board members, we got to the Port around 9:30 and to my surprise we were
allowed to park and wait for our luggage to be picked up. Here is our 1st view of the ship while waiting for porters to pick up our luggage.
I really enjoyed being able to walk around and take pictures at the terminal before it stared getting really crowded. Not sure if you can tell from this pic but this is how "uncrowded" it was for the 1st hour we were there.
When I saw someone standing in line to check in, I went ahead and got in line...good thing because they opened up 30 minutes early. I had filled out everything online so it took about a minute to get everything signed and ready to go. We got a #2 boarding pass (yay!) Before boarding, we had our 1st character siting. I was impressed at how well my 3yo took to him!
All my little boy talked about before going on our trip was how he was going to swim in the Mickey Mouse pool...so that was our 1st stop. There was only one other child in the pool with him so he pretty much had it to himself the entire time. Never again did I see it like that...
I should also say that this gave me the perfect opportunity to try out my new Olympus 850SW (recommended by DISers) This is my 1st Shockproof/Waterproof camera and I love it!
Around 1:30 we decided to check out our stateroom. This was the part I was most looking forward to because we were upgraded from a Category 9 Oceanview to a Category 7 Navigators Veranda. It was better than I could have ever imagined! I've really missed going to sleep listening to the ocean and waking up to a beautiful sunrise on the sea.The last picture is a the view of Port Canaveral from our veranda.
I was surprised by how the staterooms are so roomy! Way to go DCL! Before the life boat drill started, we took DS to the Oceaneer's Club to play. This is where I seem to differ in opinion with most people on DIS. My son is 3 years old and attends preschool, so he has no problem adjusting to new people...but I definitely did not have any intentions on leaving him alone in the club. 3 reasons....(1)this was our family vacation, (2) I wanted to get some pics of him doing the kids club activities (3) I didn't know anything about the people who would be in charge of taking care of him. The reason why I am saying this is because I felt like I was the only person who thought this way and I almost didn't go on the Disney Cruise because I thought I would not be able to go into the clubs with him. That being said, most of the counselors were really great and attentive to the kids, but there were a couple who seemed impatient and sometimes very rude with the 3 and 4 year olds. I get it...kids at this age have short attention spans and can be difficult to deal with but that was their job and if they couldn't handle this age group, maybe they should move to different age range. Yes, I did comment about this on our comment cards at the end of the cruise. It really disappointed me because I had heard so many great things about it on here. Anyways, the club itself is set up so cute! My son, being a huge Peter Pan fan loved Captain Hook's pirate ship.
After the pleasantly short life boat drill, I took the advice from the boards and sent DH back to the room with the life jackets and headed straight to the Goofy Pool for the Sail Away Party. So far, all of my early planning was paying off because we were in the very front of the stage. DS was too sleepy to stay the entire time so he and DH saw the characters and headed back to the room.I stuck around to take a few more pics of the ship.
Okay, I'm not a cruise expert but I have cruised before and I never once felt the ship move while on the ocean. My DH was really worried about motion sickness but I kept reassuring him that I had never experienced it before. This first night was horrible! Everyone, including the staff, commented on how rough the seas were that night. People were stumbling around everywhere and my poor DH and DS barely made it through the night. We finally broke down and pulled out the Bonine and Dramamine for my little one. We even put the wrist bands on him because I was so worried he was going to throw up at dinner. Luckily, no one ever physically got sick but we cut the night very short.
We had 2nd dining at Triton's on our 1st night. I like 2nd seating because you can get everything you want to get done before dinner and then you can go to bed on a full stomach. We saw the "real" captain of the ship before dinner...
At Triton's, we met our wonderful dinner mates...a mom and dad and their young daughter...Disney does a great job of pairing up families that are similar. We also met our servers for the rest of the trip... Joanie from South Africa and Shafik from Singapore. They did an excellent job of keeping our cranky little boy entertained! I took pictures of some of the meals but they really didn't do them much justice. I had the shrimp for appetizer and the sea bass, DH had some type of beef, and DS went with the pizza and mickey mouse bar with sprinkles and marshmallows (he was in heaven!). Everything tasted great! After the sugar high, DS crashed...on the table...haha.
DS and DH went back to the room to get some sleep but I stayed up a little longer and walked around the ship, took in the sea air from our veranda, and planned for the next day at Nassau. I wanted to make sure I got the most for my money! Day 2 will be in a different post since I'm limited to 25 images....
Pre-Day 1: Port Canaveral is an 11 hour drive for us so we left EARLY the day before and stayed in Cocoa Beach, FL. Our motel was within walking distance of the beach and about 3 miles from the Port. I would suggest staying here for a night or two but I wouldn't want to make a week long beach trip out of it.
Day 1:Taking the advice of the DIS board members, we got to the Port around 9:30 and to my surprise we were
allowed to park and wait for our luggage to be picked up. Here is our 1st view of the ship while waiting for porters to pick up our luggage.
I really enjoyed being able to walk around and take pictures at the terminal before it stared getting really crowded. Not sure if you can tell from this pic but this is how "uncrowded" it was for the 1st hour we were there.
When I saw someone standing in line to check in, I went ahead and got in line...good thing because they opened up 30 minutes early. I had filled out everything online so it took about a minute to get everything signed and ready to go. We got a #2 boarding pass (yay!) Before boarding, we had our 1st character siting. I was impressed at how well my 3yo took to him!
All my little boy talked about before going on our trip was how he was going to swim in the Mickey Mouse pool...so that was our 1st stop. There was only one other child in the pool with him so he pretty much had it to himself the entire time. Never again did I see it like that...
I should also say that this gave me the perfect opportunity to try out my new Olympus 850SW (recommended by DISers) This is my 1st Shockproof/Waterproof camera and I love it!
Around 1:30 we decided to check out our stateroom. This was the part I was most looking forward to because we were upgraded from a Category 9 Oceanview to a Category 7 Navigators Veranda. It was better than I could have ever imagined! I've really missed going to sleep listening to the ocean and waking up to a beautiful sunrise on the sea.The last picture is a the view of Port Canaveral from our veranda.
I was surprised by how the staterooms are so roomy! Way to go DCL! Before the life boat drill started, we took DS to the Oceaneer's Club to play. This is where I seem to differ in opinion with most people on DIS. My son is 3 years old and attends preschool, so he has no problem adjusting to new people...but I definitely did not have any intentions on leaving him alone in the club. 3 reasons....(1)this was our family vacation, (2) I wanted to get some pics of him doing the kids club activities (3) I didn't know anything about the people who would be in charge of taking care of him. The reason why I am saying this is because I felt like I was the only person who thought this way and I almost didn't go on the Disney Cruise because I thought I would not be able to go into the clubs with him. That being said, most of the counselors were really great and attentive to the kids, but there were a couple who seemed impatient and sometimes very rude with the 3 and 4 year olds. I get it...kids at this age have short attention spans and can be difficult to deal with but that was their job and if they couldn't handle this age group, maybe they should move to different age range. Yes, I did comment about this on our comment cards at the end of the cruise. It really disappointed me because I had heard so many great things about it on here. Anyways, the club itself is set up so cute! My son, being a huge Peter Pan fan loved Captain Hook's pirate ship.
After the pleasantly short life boat drill, I took the advice from the boards and sent DH back to the room with the life jackets and headed straight to the Goofy Pool for the Sail Away Party. So far, all of my early planning was paying off because we were in the very front of the stage. DS was too sleepy to stay the entire time so he and DH saw the characters and headed back to the room.I stuck around to take a few more pics of the ship.
Okay, I'm not a cruise expert but I have cruised before and I never once felt the ship move while on the ocean. My DH was really worried about motion sickness but I kept reassuring him that I had never experienced it before. This first night was horrible! Everyone, including the staff, commented on how rough the seas were that night. People were stumbling around everywhere and my poor DH and DS barely made it through the night. We finally broke down and pulled out the Bonine and Dramamine for my little one. We even put the wrist bands on him because I was so worried he was going to throw up at dinner. Luckily, no one ever physically got sick but we cut the night very short.
We had 2nd dining at Triton's on our 1st night. I like 2nd seating because you can get everything you want to get done before dinner and then you can go to bed on a full stomach. We saw the "real" captain of the ship before dinner...
At Triton's, we met our wonderful dinner mates...a mom and dad and their young daughter...Disney does a great job of pairing up families that are similar. We also met our servers for the rest of the trip... Joanie from South Africa and Shafik from Singapore. They did an excellent job of keeping our cranky little boy entertained! I took pictures of some of the meals but they really didn't do them much justice. I had the shrimp for appetizer and the sea bass, DH had some type of beef, and DS went with the pizza and mickey mouse bar with sprinkles and marshmallows (he was in heaven!). Everything tasted great! After the sugar high, DS crashed...on the table...haha.
DS and DH went back to the room to get some sleep but I stayed up a little longer and walked around the ship, took in the sea air from our veranda, and planned for the next day at Nassau. I wanted to make sure I got the most for my money! Day 2 will be in a different post since I'm limited to 25 images....
That night was the hugely popular Pirate Night...I was amazed by how some families really go all out! Not really our thing, but I still thought it was cute how other families did. We dressed in our dinner wear for that night and put a pirate shirt on our 3 year old with Mickey pirate ears and a hook...just enough to make him happy. Oh, I know this is a big question on the boards...What to wear to dinner? The only dressing up I could get DH to do was khaki pants and a button up shirt. My son usually wore khaki or plaid shorts with a polo or button up shirt and I wore sundresses (nothing fancy). I saw a few people wearing jeans but the majority of people went with this style. On the last night (optional dress-up), my dress was a little dressier but it seemed like the people wearing suits or formal dresses were out of place, because so many other families wore more casual clothing. 
