Disney Fantasy - 7 night - Western Caribbean - 20 August 2016

[The Wombles]

Hi everyone. This is a place to meet for the Fantasy Western cruise on 20th August 2016. Please post if you're coming so that we can get to know you

ROLL CALL

Alencastros: Family of 12 (Erin)
allisonmillam7: Allison & DH, DD16, DD12, Mother and Aunt
Chappers: Chappers, DW, DD13 Holly, DS4, Mother
clymusa: Chris & DW Chin, DD Sydney (13), DS Aaron (5)
CurlyL: Cynthia, DD11, DD9
daipp: David & DW, DD16
DisneyMomJV: Jennifer, DH, DS12, DD9
GeorgiaOnMyMind
Heather Rajkovich: Heather, DH Rob, DD12 Shelby, DD9 Karly
Ivylie1234: Lisa & Mother, DD16,DD6
Jesrbit: Jessica, Jon, DS Wesley
Johanna Baumeister: Jim and Lynn, Carol, Bev, Jenessa, Jay, Jorgina
Kaizen: Suzanne, DH Jim, DD16 Alexa, Exchange Student Julie (18)
Kazia Swierczek: Kevin (41), Kasia (35), Joah (8), Avi (5), Sebastian (5)
kkeegan Kelli, DH, child 7, DS5
Patricia1: Paty & Bob, DD Laureza (11)
Stacey625: Stacey, DH, DD16
TeaBee: TeaBee, DH, DD15, DD11
The Wombles: Dave & Nicky, DD15
tinkintraining: Kerry, DH, DD19, DD14


Here is a useful list of ports and arrival / departure times from the Disney website:

Day 1 Port Canaveral, Florida- guests aboard 3:45 PM
Day 2 At Sea
Day 3 Cozumel, Mexico Guests ashore 8:30 AM, guests aboard 4:45 PM
Day 4 Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands (requires tendering) guests leave ship 10:30 AM guests return 5:30 PM
Day 5 Falmouth, Jamaica guests ashore 7:30 AM guests aboard 4:45 PM
Day 6 At Sea
Day 7 Castaway Cay guests shore 8:30 AM guests aboard 4:45 PM
Day 8 Port Canaveral, Florida ashore from 7:30 AM

 

[The Wombles]

This is to introduce ourselves, we are a family from the UK looking forward to our 4th Disney cruise but the first to the Caribbean and on the Fantasy. We are looking forward to exploring the bigger ship because our earlier cruises were on the Magic and Wonder (to Alaska, the Baltic and the Mediterranean). We took part in the Fish Extender (FE) on our last cruise and enjoyed it so we are hoping that someone will organise one on this cruise - any volunteers?

I am Dave, my DW is Nicky, our daughter Charlie is 15.

We are already excited even though this cruise is (exactly) a year away and we would love to hear other people's experiences and recommendations about the ports that we will be visiting - what are your favourite activities and places to go?

We are looking forward to meeting you.

 

[Ivylie1234]

Hello, I am so happy to be a part of this thread. My name is Lisa and I will be sailing with my dd 16, dd 6, and my mother. My husband is not a fan of cruises and while he has cruised before he's just not that interested anymore. That's okay, all inclusive resorts for him which means more vacations for me. I love to travel.

We have cruised with Disney on the Dream, February, 2015 and August 2012. We have also cruised on NCL, summer 2014. We have been to WDW 5 times and have stayed at Art of Animation, Wilderness Lodge and Pop Century and a couple of times off site. I am excited about the Western ports although we plan to be in Jamaica for spring break, we certainly will not mind going back.

We have never done Fish Extenders and I just looked it up last night on Pinterest and saw many wonderful ideas. I am looking forward to participating on this cruise. Thanks for starting this thread Dave, looking forward to meeting you.

 

[The Wombles]

Thanks for starting this thread Dave, looking forward to meeting you.

Welcome Lisa and thanks for asking for this thread - I'd been waiting since our last cruise a few weeks back for someone to start it, your post was my incentive to get the ball rolling . You have been on the Dream quite recently, where did you sail to?

It is great to think that this cruise is already less than a year away, we have been leaving 2 year gaps between cruises but we all enjoyed the last one so much that we wanted to book again much earlier. We also haven't been to Florida since the children were much younger so we plan to spend a week in Orlando before the cruise.

 

[Ivylie1234]

Our cruise earlier this year was a short one to Nassau and Castaway Cay coupled with a short trip to WDW. I booked a dummy cruise onboard and was surprised at how fast it became time to book our real cruise. We are ready to start planning so no real interest in pushing back our date at all. We are also considering WDW for next August. Not sure if it will be pre or post cruise. We've done both and there are pluses and minuses to both options. We've done a lot of coin tossing in planning so far, eastern vs western, 20 or 27th. We're pretty flexible so we'll see how it goes.

 

[Patricia1]

Hi all, excited for another DCL! DH Bob, DD Laurenza (11) and me, Paty!! We've been on a few , 13 with this one. Obviously addicted to the Disney experience

 

[The Wombles]

Hi all, excited for another DCL! DH Bob, DD Laurenza (11) and me, Paty!! We've been on a few , 13 with this one. Obviously addicted to the Disney experience

Hi Paty and welcome to this thread. 13 is a very impressive number of cruises, have you visited these ports before and can you make any recommendations?

 

[IrishCowboy]

I have added your thread to the cruise meet list
Have a great cruise

 

[Stacey625]

Hi all, we are excited to be on this cruise. Will be sailing with DH, DD 16, and me, Stacey. It will be our 3rd Disney cruise. We sailed on the Dream and Wonder for 4 night cruises. Looking forward to the longer cruise. Might be interested in FE.

 

[The Wombles]

I have added your thread to the cruise meet list
Have a great cruise

Thanks IrishCowboy

 

[The Wombles]

Hi all, we are excited to be on this cruise. Will be sailing with DH, DD 16, and me, Stacey. It will be our 3rd Disney cruise. We sailed on the Dream and Wonder for 4 night cruises. Looking forward to the longer cruise. Might be interested in FE.

Welcome Stacey, glad that you joined us and welcome. This cruise seemed like a long way off and then I realised that it is time to book flights from the UK

 

[daipp]

Been waiting for the cruise thread so thank you for creating it.

This is our seventh cruise and we have cruised on all four of the ships. We are a family from the UK and comprise of me, my wife and DD who will be 16 on the cruise.

The cruise is a very special one for us as we will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary, my 50th birthday and right in the middle of the cruise, my DD16 will be receiving her GCSE results.
Look forward to meeting everyone and following the thread over the coming months.

David

 

[clymusa]

Hello everyone,

We just booked this cruise a couple hours ago. It will be my wife's birthday on the day we board too. Our princess is 13 and prince is 5. This will be our 3rd Disney Cruise and we used our DVC points to partially cover the cost the trip which was cool!
Now going to look for the cool count down timers and history tags you guys have Ok.. just found all the emoticons.LOL

Chris

 

[The Wombles]

Been waiting for the cruise thread so thank you for creating it.

This is our seventh cruise and we have cruised on all four of the ships. We are a family from the UK and comprise of me, my wife and DD who will be 16 on the cruise.

The cruise is a very special one for us as we will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary, my 50th birthday and right in the middle of the cruise, my DD16 will be receiving her GCSE results.
Look forward to meeting everyone and following the thread over the coming months.

David

Welcome David from a Dave, glad you found us. I see you originate from Wales, we have lots of Welsh friends as DW Nicky went to college in Carmarthen. You have plenty of cruises under your belt, have you cruised this part of the Caribbean before and have some memories to share?

 

[The Wombles]

Hello everyone,

We just booked this cruise a couple hours ago. It will be my wife's birthday on the day we board too. Our princess is 13 and prince is 5. This will be our 3rd Disney Cruise and we used our DVC points to partially cover the cost the trip which was cool!
Now going to look for the cool count down timers and history tags you guys have Ok.. just found all the emoticons.LOL

Chris

Hi Chris and welcome. You guys are going to have a special celebration, I see you have cruised here before, any recommendations? This will be our first cruise on the Caribbean.

 

[clymusa]

Hi Chris and welcome. You guys are going to have a special celebration, I see you have cruised here before, any recommendations? This will be our first cruise on the Caribbean.

Hi Dave,

Being this is going to be your first cruise, IMHO you should go all out and Google the heck out of other people's experiences (you have time to do this as its over 200 days away). We thoroughly enjoyed our first time and did a bunch of excursions. It was tough to do it with a 4 year old at that time but fun was had by all. The best time was had at Castaway Cay. So relaxing and unhurried time. We were definitely more targeted the second time. It was probably to short as it was only a 4 day cruise.

We especially enjoyed the warm and friendly staff eager to please. They were lovely and very astute with our needs. They got me to try uncommon dishes too that I would never have tried on our own like Escargot

My only tips are to try to avoid the peddlers and be the tourist, they won't remember you ;-)

 

[daipp]

Dave

This will be our first Western Caribbean cruise for us so lots of first-time experiences for us as well. To date, our favourite Disney Cruise was the 10 day Southern Caribbean in 2006 with visits to ports including Barbados, Antigua and St.Lucia. Jamaica is somewhere I have always wanted to visit and we are really excited about our day there.

One of the best things about every Disney cruise is that you always end with a day on Castaway Cay, Disney's private island and we always find it so relaxing.

Regarding information about the cruise itself, I see Google has been mentioned but there is also a wealth of information within the Disboards.

David

 

[The Wombles]

Chris and Dave, thanks for your pointers. I have to admit that I love researching holidays so it's good advice. We are particularly excited about visiting Castaway Cay because it will be our first visit and everyone speaks so highly about it. I've personally always wanted to visit one of the ancient sites in Mexico so Tulum is at the top of my list. I'll also be looking out for things to engage my teenagers (17 and 15) so ideas welcome.

 

[Wallandall]

Hi - Jay here

 

[DisneyMomJV]

Hi everyone, we'll be joining you on the cruise. It's myself--Jennifer, my husband, our son, 12, and our daughter who will be 9 by cruise time. We took our first cruise on the Dream in August 2015. We did a short 3 night just to test the waters. We found that we were too rushed trying to see and do everything in such a short time. We were also exhausted after a week in the parks. We think the 7 day will be perfect. We thought we weren't going to do the parks this time, but I've heard that lots of great new things will be opening in the world between now and August so we may just have to check them out. The whole light parade on the river in Animal Kingdom sounds phenomenal.

We didn't do the fish extenders last time, but we've heard good things so I'd be interested if someone wanted to start a group.

Jennifer