TR Completed! A tale of 2 cruises: same Dream cruise two years in a row, totally different!

[IrishCowboy]

Great report and great pics. Thanks for sharing

 

[astronautmom]

Great report and great pics. Thanks for sharing

Thank you, Irish Cowboy!

Our time on the ship flew by, and here we were on the last day of our cruise. Next to our bed, I was keeping the little spiral book that came with our luggage tags, and it was where I was keeping our tickets and notes about what we couldn't miss before we got off the boat. By night three, I was looking at my navigator and our little folder and I didn't know if we'd be able to fit it all in. We had Arrrcade cards to use from our friend, Nico. We had Rainforest Spa passes to use from our travel agent. We had purchased tickets for the 4 p.m. Mixology class. Besides the show and dinner, that was our only "had to be somewhere at a certain time," but we were also working around the character appearance times. We all wanted to do the Aquaduck together and the kids wanted to go in the family hot tub, because usually kids aren't welcome in hot tubs. (I say for good reason, but...) The kids wanted to do Goofy Golf and table tennis, and the Midship Detective Agency. We had planned to watch both Alexander and the Terrible..Day and Big Hero 6 on the ship, but the timings for Alexander were, wait for it, Terrible, so we gave up on that one. Finally, we planned on one more late night of karaoke, because the kids love it and I wanted to get a video. We also wanted to say goodbye to our favorite CM's in the D Lounge.

We did end up getting to do most of those things, it was a great day, and I will have reviews of the activities. At this point, my memory of the order of events is strained. I know we went to the Rainforest Spa in the morning and then had lunch as a couple in the Royal Palace. That was the first time the kids went to the club that day. We took them again later for our 4 p.m. Mixology class, and I think that was the only time that our schedule got a little stressful. (Yes, I'm going to string you along for that gem of a story til the very end.)

Since I feel like this post needs some pictures, here are a couple that we took because the kids remembered taking pictures in the same spot last year. I love that they initiated these. This was probably while we were running around doing the detective game. It is outside Cabana's but not usually the exit we used.

Last year, same spot:

Last year:

I'll skip to the end of the night right now, just because it's on my mind and I want to write it down before I forget. Come back for Part 2 with pictures and stories from the biggest chunk of our day at sea.

The night ended, as we had hoped, in the D Lounge. We did get our karaoke on, and some of it on tape (I don't care what year it is, I will always say that I taped something.) Unfortunately, the trio we had gotten used to in the D Lounge was otherwise occupied, so we didn't get to say goodbye to them. The host this time was Jamesy, and we hadn't met him before. You know that huge instrumental portion of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" where all the action happens in the movie and the parents die and etc? Well, it's there, a big awkward gap, in the karaoke version. He was entertainingly trying to engage my daughter during this time and she was just focused on the screen, not wanting to miss her next entrance. It's not easy to host family karaoke, especially when there are 1-3 families in the room total! I sang "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper and dedicated it to my kids. It was certainly cheesy and embarrassing and a little yell-ie, but at the end of it Jamesy asked me to adopt him. So I think (hope) we were a little entertaining for him as well.

When we got back to our cabin after karaoke, our bags had already been taken by the porters, and we found a little package by our door. Diane from Canada, our very favorite Entertainment Host, had written a personal note about how much she enjoyed our family and she awarded us a trophy, the kind they give game show winners. Our first one ever! We had seen her everywhere around the ship and Castaway Cay and we always greeted each other warmly. She was fun and talented and I hope she goes far. This was the icing on the cake of our cruise and proof that the outgoing attitudes we brought with us this year made it even better than last.

 

[astronautmom]

As I mentioned in the previous post, my biggest concern on our final day of the cruise was to make sure everybody got their "to-do" wishes granted. Number one on my list was the Rainforest Spa. Last year we had taken the spa tour on the first day, and I remembered heated loungers and aromatherapy showers. The passes we had been gifted were good for unlimited visits on any one day. Here at home, we belong to a nice gym that has adults-only hot tubs and a dry sauna, as well as steam rooms in the same-sex locker rooms. I don't take advantage of them nearly enough.

The kids got to enjoy the Oceaneer's Lab while we took our spa time. Just like our Serenity Beach time on Castaway Cay, we knew they were fine, and we were going to enjoy ourselves, but we are also both fast movers and it's hard to "relax" for any extended period of time when there are still things on our to-do list. In hindsight, maybe we should have saved our Rainforest Pass for the end of the night, in order to linger. The spa CM gave us the tour and how-to's and then set us loose. We used the separate locker rooms to change into provided robes (with swimsuits.)

We followed the proper order of Rainforest: dry sauna, moist sauna, steam room, then the scented showers. The showers were not intuitive to me. There were lots of buttons and I think the deal was that they were timed, so you chose a program and then you stay in there until the water stops. I'm not really that patient and some of that water was COLD and weird. I think I remember that I still liked it overall. My husband kind of zipped through them. The heated loungers were going to be my favorite. I understand how people fall asleep there. If I were alone, I would have brought a book and could have spent a long, long time there. The ocean views from the loungers were beautiful. In front of the loungers were the two private hot tubs. Their deck was somewhat open, and you could look to your left and see the Bridge. Each hot tub seated two, with a lounger-shaped double seat. Perfect for taking in the view.

I would say that the time went by too fast, but we were the ones that chose our pace, and as much as we enjoyed it, we were ready to move on to the rest of our day.

 

[kp3690]

Thanks for sharing your trip report! I'm really enjoying it!

 

[astronautmom]

We spent a lot of our last day on the ship together as a family. I remember by this point on our first cruise, my husband remarked, "I thought the kids would be in the kids' clubs more than they have been," and I replied that they had been in the clubs more than I had expected. I'd say they spent about the same amount of time there this year as well-- about twice each day for a couple or three hours each time, including Scuttle's Cove on Castaway Cay. Out of all the kids' spaces, I think they liked the Oceaneer's Lab the best. Keep in mind that the days were longer on vacation than real life (about 7am-11pm,) so even with childcare, we still had a normal full day's worth of family time.

We had already picked up our Detective Agency cards at some point, so throughout the day, we tried to hit the magic paintings as we went along. I can see this picture of the Detective Agency is from later in the day, because the kids are eating ice cream from the self-serve station. There are two different mysteries to solve on the Dream, so it was nice to have a different adventure this year than last.

This isn't actually part of the detective game, it's just another interactive painting.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we split from the kids for the Rainforest spa and we took advantage of the alone time to have a sit down lunch at the Royal Palace. It was our first time eating lunch in a Main Dining Room and we enjoyed it. We would be at the RP again for dinner that night.

After lunch we collected the kids and we had until 4 p.m to check some more things off our family to-do list. This might have been when we all rode the Aquaduck together. The sign said the wait was 30 minutes, but it felt like it moved faster than that. I hate to keep saying, "we did this, and we enjoyed it," and move on to the next topic, but that's about all I have to say about the Aquaduck. The kids loved it, and probably could have done it all day long, but none of us were really up for killing 20-30 minutes at a time to line up for the ride again.

We had Arrcade cards to use. It was a little bit confusing because the machines seemed to accept points and we had "minutes" loaded on our cards. Once we figured out the translation, the kids enjoyed the games. These were just games to play, not winning tickets to trade for junk.

We all watched Disney's Believe in the Walt Disney Theatre before dinner. The kids had come straight from the Lab and they had their craft with them. It was a turtle made out of a paper bowl, and their plan was to catch the confetti in the bowls at the end of the show. Last year we had sat under the balcony and didn't catch any of our own confetti, so this year we made sure to get better seats.

The kids love miniature golf and couldn't wait to do Goofy Golf again. They wanted to play ping pong up there as well, but it was getting cold and windy. We didn't really keep score, kind of rushed through the golf game. I would have liked another Day at Sea to take some more time with each of the things we did, but it was also fun racing around trying to check things off our ship "bucket" list. Based on the night sky in this picture, I'm thinking we did it after the show.

We also fit in our last two character greetings:

I am supposed to be able to remember that Chip has the chocolate chip nose. Okay, well, is that milk chocolate or dark chocolate? Is it a mini chip? I didn't find that a helpful hint at all. These guys were fun, one of them fixed my husband's collar, which saved me getting in trouble later had he ended up with a wonky collar in these pictures.

I've got a few more little stories about day 4, including our second grown-up date time and our last dinner on the ship. So tune in for the final installment of Day 4 and then Day 5 at Kennedy Space Center and Cocoa Beach.

 

[astronautmom]

Thanks for sharing your trip report! I'm really enjoying it!

Thank you kp! Glad you are reading.

 

[Skin2000]

Thanks for your report! Very informative. We just booked our first cruise.

 

[astronautmom]

Thank you, Skin2000! I'm almost finished with the day by day report. Congrats on booking your cruise! Let me know if I haven't covered something you are curious about.

 

[kaoden39]

I enjoyed reading your trip report. We are cruising on the Dream in December and I really was hoping to find a trip report about it. Thank you.

 

[pspielm]

I, being from the Midwest, get where you are coming from but being out going adds a lot more fun. Love the report

 

[astronautmom]

I enjoyed reading your trip report. We are cruising on the Dream in December and I really was hoping to find a trip report about it. Thank you.

Thanks!

I, being from the Midwest, get where you are coming from but being out going adds a lot more fun. Love the report

Thank you!

I'm sorry, friends, I know I've been taking a long time to finish the report. I'll wrap up our last day on the ship with two stories so that I can move on. I'm sure I'm missing details, but once I finish the day by day reports, I'll go back over everything and see what pictures and details I missed. Otherwise I'll get hung up on trying to remember the exact order of events. See next post.

 

[astronautmom]

Two more stories about our day at sea/last day on the ship.

Our final dinner was at the Royal Palace. My husband and I had eaten lunch there already that day, but the menu was completely different. We would see our servers for breakfast at RP again the next day, and that was pretty much the only reason I would consider doing the late seating again next cruise, to get late sit-down breakfast on disembarkation day.

I had a running joke with our server about my order. I always took his recommendation on the entrees, and it was always the steak option out of his two recommendations. On the third night I told him that he needed to stop offering me steak. So on the fourth night, he recommended the salmon and the lamb... and I chose the Beef Tenderloin. He may have said a non-Disney word and almost fell to the floor. (Unless there is someone reading this that would get him in trouble, I definitely imagined the non-Disney word.) I tried lots of different foods in Cabanas, but for my main dining experience, I enjoyed all the steaks.

Finally, the Mixology story I promised. It was both headache and pixie dust. Last year, we did the Mixology (bartending class) and enjoyed it. It was in the Skyline bar, and we were crowded around the bar itself. We each made our own drinks, sharing the tools, but I think they overbooked the class and I had wished we had an opportunity with fewer people. It was still quite a bit of alcohol for $15/person. The only other items on our bar tab for the trip were the BOGO Bahama Mamas on Castaway Cay (first year only) and the drink of the day in the District when we went to see the illusionist (2013) and the ventriloquist (2014.) This should correctly lead you to believe we aren't huge drinkers.

We knew we wanted to do Mixology again this year, and were happy they offered on on our day at sea. If you recall from my earlier report, this was one of the first things we reserved when we boarded the ship. There was a little bit of confusion with the ticket printer there at guest services, but eventually they got it working and we put our tickets in my little folder and didn't worry any more about it. So on our last day, when we were scrambling to fit all the onboard activities into our waking hours, we got the kids to Oceaneer's Lab and hustled to the Skyline again. A lady inside said, "Hi, what's your name?" and I said, "Do you want our tickets or are you just being friendly?" After a brief moment of confusion, we figured out that she was hosting a private class for a facebook group and we had been sold tickets to it accidentally.

Everybody seemed willing to let us join in, but some mental wheels were turning for me and I told one of the assistant bartenders to call somebody, because there would probably be a bunch more behind us with the same tickets. Pretty soon the room was full of people like us that had bought their tickets from GS. Somebody in all white was called in to tell us that they were sorry and the class was full and none of us would be charged. And that was it.

Well, this was our special, magical cruise, and I was getting used to the star treatment, so our next move was to smile kindly at everyone there and let them know that it wasn't any of their faults. Then we hustled down to GS with a pair of ladies who were in agreement that this could be milked a little. So, again, very kindly and cheerfully, we let GS know that we were unhappy to miss our last opportunity at Mixology. We had a tiny bit of waiting while they sorted things out, but within 20 minutes, we got a call on our wave phone that they would be holding a complimentary class for all of us at 5 p.m. (instead of 4.) We would have to hustle after the class to get the kids and get changed for the show and dinner, but we were happy.

We went back to Skyline in time for our 5 p.m. class and the previous class was still having a grand time. I didn't begrudge them running over, because they started late with our snafu. I felt bad for the bartenders, just because they had been in an awkward situation. I was also thinking that last year it had not even occurred to me to tip the bartender, because it was all prepaid on our ship account and they didn't present us with any slips.

Our new class consisted of my husband and me and a group of four other couples. Those couples were obviously all together and had filled one seating area, so we sat down with a solo drinker who had just come to enjoy the bar. He decided he didn't want to hang around and watch the class, and then we were on our own. In the interest of time, the bartender had already made the first several drinks for the group. He showed us what went into the first one and then, as his assistant was passing them out, one of the other couples said, "Wait, we don't drink. We need virgins over here!" So their alcoholic drinks ended on our table, in addition to our own. For at least two rounds, I'm thinking three. For the last two drinks, we each got to take a turn behind the bar to make our own. So that's about eight drinks each that we were offered gratis. In the span of one hour. Not all of them were full size, and we didn't drink all of each of them, but these were very heavy drinks to boot. I'm not sure how he made a virgin martini for that other couple, because ours was made exclusively of alcohol. The rest of the other group was trying to hand theirs off to us as well. We had enough to really feel the ship's motion that night, and maybe explains why I thought the steak story I wrote above was so funny at the time.

All in all, a fun way to spend another hour alone with my husband on the cruise, and we ended up tipping the bar staff what the class would have cost us anyway. A silly thing to note, but the Skyline bar is pretty cool with cityscapes that change. You would assume that they are just giant display monitors, but you don't really notice until one of them goes out and you are looking at a blue error screen where you should be seeing the middle of the city landscape. Very unDisney.

We did get to do everything we had hoped on our day at sea, and enjoyed every bit of it. We were very sad to be leaving the next day, and we thought just one more day would be perfect for our family. I've got my eye on the 5 Day Wonder for 2016 for that reason. But we may do WDW that summer instead.

Thanks to everyone for reading so far. My next post will be debarkation and our day at Kennedy Space Center, but that won't be today. Everybody stay warm, wherever you are.

 

[DnA2010]

Great review! We haven't done a disney cruise yet (Just Royal carribbean) really enjoying your comparison between your two trips! You packed a lot in!

 

[Tammy4642]

Thanks for the great report! We're also a family of 5 and will be cruising Aug 21, 2015.

 

[2Pirates2Princesses]

Thank you for doing this TR! We have never cruised as a family, but we are looking into the possibility of booking a Disney cruise for next year because we will be celebrating both DH's 40th birthday and our 15 year wedding anniversary in 2016 and think this would be a great time to try a different Disney experience. I have five kids that are spread out in age (toddler to teenagers ), and I think we would benefit from all a DCL experience offers since there is something for everyone. I didn't realize that there are so many character meet n' greet opportunities on the cruise until I read your TR. I also didn't know that the Disney Jr characters are on board as well. This would be icing on the cake for us since we have a toddler I also love how you were able to spend two days at Castaway Cay

 

[astronautmom]

Great review! We haven't done a disney cruise yet (Just Royal carribbean) really enjoying your comparison between your two trips! You packed a lot in!

Thanks for the great report! We're also a family of 5 and will be cruising Aug 21, 2015.

Thank you for doing this TR!

Thanks for reading! I've got the last day of pictures up on the blog. http://kateges.blogspot.com/2015/02/day-5-kennedy-space-center-and-day-6-to.html

I'll migrate them over here as usual, but I'm on borrowed time after being home with kids on "snow day" all day today. It's all I've got left as far as chronology goes, but my intention is to go back through our scrapbook and see if I've left out anything. Of course I'm happy to answer questions as well! Everybody stay warm tonight!

 

[Hokie2000]

Thanks for your trip report! I am considering a 4-day Dream cruise in 2016 so I really enjoyed reading about your experiences. We have 3 kids as well, they're 9, 7, and 5. Did you find that the room was big enough/comfortable for you guys?

 

[hjvigz72]

Thank you so much for sharing! We are going on our first ever cruise with Disney (or any line for that matter) in just a few short weeks and your information is so helpful. We're nervous to cruise, but knew if we were going to do it right, it had to be Disney!

We too have pre-booked a mixology class through a Facebook group (which sounds like a better idea!) and it sounds like we will definitely get our money's worth! Can't wait!

 

[astronautmom]

Thanks for your trip report! I am considering a 4-day Dream cruise in 2016 so I really enjoyed reading about your experiences. We have 3 kids as well, they're 9, 7, and 5. Did you find that the room was big enough/comfortable for you guys?

Thanks for reading! We were quite comfortable in the room. I've considered booking a next cruise in adjoining rooms, and while the additional bathroom would be nice, I actually think I prefer being together. If we didn't have the balcony, it would be a different story. We also didn't spend much waking time in the room. More like resting and waiting on each other to get ready.

 

[BLTtinkerbell]

Thank you for taking the time to write this trip report! I'm going on my first cruise in July!