Loving your review - especially since we are doing the same 3 day Dream cruise next week!
Yay! If you do a trip report, link back to it in here, please?
Molly, your photos and descriptions make me want to go on a cruise! But I think I might not like feeling rushed off
Castaway Cay! That's one of the things I've disliked about the idea of the cruise, always feeling like you're on a schedule. But then again, you get to see so many places, do so many things... maybe a little discipline isn't so bad? Hmmmm...
Discipline is a good way to look at it.
And thinking along those lines...it's possible your family dynamic is different, but I know in ours, if we let ourselves just do something all day, like watch TV or play a videogame, by the end of it we're almost hating whatever we were doing. In the specific instance of watching/playing something on a screen, our eyes hurt, we have headaches, we haven't eaten properly, etc. Doing something with no limit doesn't end up feeling great. For us. But if i say (and it's always me) at the beginning of the day "OK we're going to play
Lego Harry Potter for an hour, go for a walk, play for another hour, have lunch and figure out what else we'll do", we have a GREAT time playing the videogame and we have a nice lunch and a nice walk. And our eyeballs feel good.
I guess in a way having a nice set schedule like on a cruise is like that; there are good things to do but a limited amount of time to do them, so the hope is that you enjoy the heck out of those things.
Looking at the schedule right here, on the 9th there were things to do literally from watching Peter Pan on the Funnel Vision starting at 8:30am all the way to having "movie time" in the Oceaneer Club until after midnight. There are SO many things to do. Meet Donald on the Gangway at 8:45, get in line to meet Jack Sparrow a few minutes walk away 45 minutes later, get to the beach, get snorkeling gear and do that for an hour, rent a bike and take an hour to do that, laze on the beach for 2 hours while the kids play in Scuttles Cove (the kid's club on the island), get the kids, have lunch, etc etc. I mean that's a LOT of potential enjoyment for a day!
Or bring another adult along to trade duties with and just laze.
I like looking at it as discipline. Choose your activities, do them, have fun. Leave wanting more.
ND, I'll tell you a secret. There's a cruise November 13, 2014 that is a "double dip". It's a 4 nighter on the Dream, and it has two days, in a row, on Castaway Cay (still 4pm all aboard, but two days). That might be right up your alley. I'm just sayin'.
There's also a nice LONG time between now and then to make sure the money is 100% available as well as enough time to make sure you have thoroughly justified it to yourself. (and I think the latter was more of an issue for you than the former...for me it would be both)