Schemin' and Dreamin' - a July 2014 (4-night Bahamian/Dream) Trip Report!

[Ariel484]

Hi! I am loving your trip report and all the pictures!!! I have a couple questions if you don't mind!

Thank you!!

You said you booked two cruises on board one with three staterooms; when you canceled the one were you charged anything? We are thinking about booking on board and doing two rooms but if the other group cancels on us we don't want to be left with the bill.

We didn't get charged anything, but we DID cancel well ahead of the required dates. Hopefully you'll be okay with plenty of advanced notice! Really, hopefully you don't get canceled on by the other group in the first place!

We have a Palo brunch reservation; can you explain to me how it works? You said you got two plates so I am assuming you can get a couple of the stuff that is out. Can you only get one entree or multiples?

There's the buffet portion and then there are other things that you can order - between the two of us we ordered 3 entrees (my husband's eggs, my chicken parm and the pizza to split) and I also ordered the strawberry soup. And I went to the buffet 2-3 times. It's truly all you can eat!

Thank you in advance! This is our first cruise and I am just trying to research and get as many tips and tricks ahead of time that I can!

Isn't it so confusing/slightly overwhelming the first time?! I thought it was. I hope you guys have a blast!

Oh my goodness that brunch looks sooooo good! We have it booked for May and your pics really got me looking forward to it even more! Love your report!

It WAS so good! May is almost here, yay!!

Great atrium pictures! I never get in the right spot for the pirate show due to the crowds. I love the chilled strawberry soup! Only 32 days until I get some! Thanks for sharing!

Thank you! Oh my gosh, I love that strawberry soup too! I can't wait to have it again!

32 days! You'll be back on board before you know it!

 

[Ariel484]

Day 5: Wednesday, July 23, 2014, Part 2 (Where's Dale?)

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't take notes on this trip. So I can't really remember a lot of what we did on this day. I know we packed, and relaxed, and at one point we went to check out the character dance party in the atrium.

Same CM that did Sail Away and Match Your Mate was running the party. What a fun job that must be!

Seeing the chandelier turned off was really, really weird.

Work it, sir!

At one point, I noticed that Dale had slipped away. I'm still curious as to why - did "he" get down too hard and twist an ankle? Or get overheated? I'll never know.

Party's over, wave bye-bye.

Skipping away together - CUTE!

Byeeeeee

The case of the missing 'munk remains unsolved.

Continued in Next Post

 

[Ariel484]

Day 5: Wednesday, July 23, 2014, Part 3 (Education at Sea)

Now, time to draw some characters! This is something we really like to do at the parks so we were really looking forward to doing it here on the ship.

They even drew the circles for us! How nice.

Class was held in the D Lounge.

Words of wisdom from the man himself.

We watched a little video about Disney animation and then the class began (led by one of the CMs that was leading the Castaway Cay 5K). We (poorly) drew Mickey and Donald.

D Lounge lighting on the wall:

As soon as class was over, we high-tailed it into the District and headed to Skyline.

Time for an entirely different kind of class - Mixology!

We actually only got to mix two of the drinks. The CMs brought us the first one - the Captain's Mai Tai. I liked this one a LOT - my favorite of the class - and so did Will.

Next up, they brought us a margarita. Again, I liked this one. Will could take it or leave it.

We got to "make" the mango mojito. A lot of the ingredients were already in the glasses when we arrived - we just muddled them and then added the booze and soda.

We were both really surprised by how much we liked this one. At the time neither of us liked regular mojitos - add in some mango, and all of a sudden they are delicious! This was Will's favorite drink of the class, and since then he's become sort of a mojito connoiseur.

The CMs brought us drink #4, a chocolate martini. This one was a lot stronger than I expected - I was surprised that it was my least favorite of the 5 drinks.

Cheers!

Our last drink was (I think) a B52 shot. The CM is showing us how to pour the alcohol to make the layers, talking about how tough that is...

This picture cracks me up. She looks really proud of herself!

This was the other one we got to make. They called us up to the bar in pairs.

During the mixology class I'd participated in on my previous cruise, I botched my layered drink by pouring too quickly...so I was extra super careful this time. Look at that beauty!

The lighting in Skyline is not great for pictures. Look at these two creeps!

At the end of class, the CMs collected our tickets and put them in a drawing - whoever they picked would win a free full-sized drink, one of the 5 we'd just made. Neither of us won, though (there were maybe 10-15 other people in the class with us). The CMs also mentioned that there was another class starting up right after ours, and there were still slots open - again, 5 drinks, none of them the same as what we'd just had! We passed. Seriously, I would have been on the floor at the end of that!

I have to say, though, Mixology is another must-do for me. At the time it was $15 for 5 drinks...I think now it may be $20 for 4 or 5 drinks? Either way - bargain! And of the 5 we made that day, just 1 was the same as the class I'd done during my other cruise. Love the variety!

Continued in Next Post

 

[RooRach0906]

Thank you for answering my questions.

The dance party looks like a lot of fun!!!

The classes would be fun. Does the animation one allow kids and did you have to sign up ahead of time for it?

Again great pictures!!!

Also what time was the gym open?

 

[elphie101]

Hey, the CM leading the dance party was on the Fantasy on our cruise! I think his name was Brent or something? Or Brett? Or heck, could have been Steven for all I know. Kind of cool so see he was in the Dream 3 months before our cruise!

Yum yum Mixology - I agree it will always be a must do for us. You've got to go after the booze deals where you can!

 

[mrphoenix]

This was one of the best TR's EVER! Thank you for all the efforts

We are on the same cruise in two weeks!

 

[Ariel484]

Thank you for answering my questions.

You are welcome!

The dance party looks like a lot of fun!!!

It was! I loved watching it!

The classes would be fun. Does the animation one allow kids and did you have to sign up ahead of time for it?

It does allow kids - I think the D Lounge is always the designated family space. When we left they were prepping for a towel animal folding class - we would have stayed for that if it hadn't been time for Mixology. We didn't have to sign up ahead of time, we just showed up for it!

Again great pictures!!!

Thank you!!

Also what time was the gym open?

I don't remember! I would think it was open by 6 or 7 though.

Hey, the CM leading the dance party was on the Fantasy on our cruise! I think his name was Brent or something? Or Brett? Or heck, could have been Steven for all I know. Kind of cool so see he was in the Dream 3 months before our cruise!

You might be right - Brent sounds familiar to me. He was awesome!

Yum yum Mixology - I agree it will always be a must do for us. You've got to go after the booze deals where you can!

EXACTLY. we're definitely doing it again in July. I'm pushing for a champagne and wine tasting, too!

This was one of the best TR's EVER! Thank you for all the efforts

We are on the same cruise in two weeks!

Thank you so much!! Have an AMAZING time!!

 

[Ariel484]

Day 5: Wednesday, July 23, 2014, Part 4 (Dinner at Animator's Palate)

Not sure what we did after Mixology. Not because we were so hammered that the night is a blur, I just don't remember. But eventually it was dinnertime again.

Animator's! My favorite main dining room.

Our table was right by some UP!/Pup art!

Black truffle pasta pursettes YUUMMMM

Our server also brought us this tomato tarte. It was good!

Potato soup yuuummm

Salad for Will:

Cruisin' the EAC! Duuuuuuude!

Given the chance, Will almost always goes with the pasta dish on the menu:

Steak for me. Tasty, but I may try something else next time.

Dessert time! We both ordered the cookies & cream sundae:

Our server also brought us this little trio. The round, yellow one is mango cheesecake but I forget what the others were. Some sort of cream cheese brownie and a key lime tart, maybe?

Last Dream-y dinner done.

Continued in Next Post

 

[PiperGirlInWondrland]

Great update! We loved Mixology as well - can't go wrong!

 

[elphie101]

We did the champagne tasting too! Not as fun as the mixology but we enjoyed it. If anything, it was bad because it introduced me to the wonderful world of Moet Ice!

I can't believe you're down to your last dinner already.....boo!

 

[party-of-five]

Thank you again for this fun and informative trip report. It has been so helpful as I plan our very first cruise. Booked us on the 4 night Bahamas cruise on the Dream for September 14th! Super excited! Loved, loved, loved your photos of castaway cay! Just gorgeous!

Quick question... when do you get the personal navigators for each day? Are they delivered all at one time at the beginning of the cruise, or daily? Just curious.

Thanks!

 

[disneyhorselover]

The drawing class at the parks is one of my favorites so its nice to see they have it on the ship too...your mickey drawing came out so cute!

Yum, the mixology class sounds amazing. Did they demonstrate the drinks that they brought you at least? All of them look delicious! And what a seriously good deal, even if the price has gone up/drinks gone down. I am totally envious of your ability to make those layered shots! (One of my college roommates/good friends is a bartender, so I have zero drink mixing skills since I always left it up to her, lol)

Animators palate is my favorite of the pictures I've seen. Did you only get to eat there once? Is that the norm for each cruise? It looks like it has such a Disney vibe-I'm reminded of AoA.

 

[Ariel484]

Great update! We loved Mixology as well - can't go wrong!

Thanks! I agree, Mixology is awesome!

We did the champagne tasting too! Not as fun as the mixology but we enjoyed it. If anything, it was bad because it introduced me to the wonderful world of Moet Ice!

Yeah I have heard that they bring out the really pricey champagnes for the tastings! I could see that resulting in some expensive habits...

I can't believe you're down to your last dinner already.....boo!

I know!! If nothing else, this cruise taught me that 4 nights is too short. I now know better!

Thank you again for this fun and informative trip report. It has been so helpful as I plan our very first cruise. Booked us on the 4 night Bahamas cruise on the Dream for September 14th! Super excited! Loved, loved, loved your photos of castaway cay! Just gorgeous!

Thank you for reading and thanks for the kind words on the photos!!

September is a great time to cruise! That's when my first cruise was. We had good weather and, if I remember correctly, we were in the only ship in port on the Nassau day.

Quick question... when do you get the personal navigators for each day? Are they delivered all at one time at the beginning of the cruise, or daily? Just curious.

Thanks!

We got the embarkation day Navigator in the terminal - I forget if they handed them to us right when we walked in or if it was when we checked in to get our KTTW cards. After that, the navigators for each day were put in our rooms by our stateroom hosts the night before. So we had a good amount of time to peruse them and looking over what we were interested in. You can also find old Navitagors on the Disney Cruise Line Blog to get an idea of what's in store!

The drawing class at the parks is one of my favorites so its nice to see they have it on the ship too...your mickey drawing came out so cute!

Thank you! I love the drawing class at Hollywood Studios - it's such a DISNEY thing. Like...you'd never find that at a Six Flags or whatever.

Yum, the mixology class sounds amazing. Did they demonstrate the drinks that they brought you at least? All of them look delicious! And what a seriously good deal, even if the price has gone up/drinks gone down. I am totally envious of your ability to make those layered shots! (One of my college roommates/good friends is a bartender, so I have zero drink mixing skills since I always left it up to her, lol)

I don't remember them demonstrating the drinks that we didn't get to make. I'm sure they told us how to make them but by now it's been long enough that I don't remember for sure.

On my first cruise, we had a bigger group and were able to get a private Mixology class. They handled that one a little differently - they called us up in groups of 5 and each five-some (is that a word?) would make the drinks for the whole group. So in that case I only got to make one drink, but I did get to see exactly how all of the others were made. I think it's a little different every time.

The layered shot was challenging! Don't be too jealous of my skills...during the previous Mixology I was supposed to do a layered drink and messed mine up, so this time I knew to pour extra super slowly...

Me with my messed-up drink. A correct one is sitting to the right on the bar.

Animators palate is my favorite of the pictures I've seen. Did you only get to eat there once? Is that the norm for each cruise? It looks like it has such a Disney vibe-I'm reminded of AoA.

Yes, only once. But they do the dining rotations on the 4-night cruises has you repeating one dining room twice (in our case it would have been Royal Palace twice, but we ate at Palo and Remy instead), so we could have had Animator's twice. When we go on the Fantasy this year we'll be in Animator's twice.

I love Animator's, though. It's SO Disney. It's just awesome.

I haven't been to AoA yet, but I will be in 17.5 days!!!

 

[Ariel484]

Day 5: Wednesday, July 23, 2014, Part 5 (Trivia Fail)

After dinner, we briefly headed back to our room. Towel Piggy was waiting for us...appropriate because I was starting to feel like a pig after constantly eating for days and days...

We decided to skip tonight's show (Believe) and just have a more relaxing evening, bumming around the ship. We headed up to Deck 12 Forward (I think?) to catch the sunset.

Yo.

The sun has set.

One thing I never did on this trip, that I'd been hoping to do, was lug my tripod out to get some night shots. Definitely something on my list for this year since we'll have a longer itinerary.

After the outdoor pictures, we headed into 687 for some trivia.

The CM that was running it was the same guy from Sail Away/Match Your Mate/character dance party!

I'm not gonna lie, we were WAY over-confident going into this. We both like trivia, and this was billed as logic problems. We both work in the math field so we thought the logic stuff would be right up our alley.

I ordered a Sunken Treasure instead of the Drink of the Day. Yum!

11/20 correct. So much for kicking butt at trivia!

Ah well. We headed out into the atrium and I cashed in my free coffee card at Vista Cafe!

Cute plates.

Continued in Next Post

 

[Ariel484]

Day 5: Wednesday, July 23, 2014, Part 6 (See Ya Real Soon)

Everyone was gathering for the See Ya Real Soon party.

Before the party, this act with a singer and a guitar player were entertaining the crowd. She was taking requests - not only did she admit she was sick with a cold (sick on a cruise ship, yay! ) but when someone requested "Reflection" from Mulan, the singer totally botched the lyrics. If you're singing on a Disney Cruise ship, wouldn't you maybe study Disney songs ahead of time??

Cruise Director Christian introducing Tiana. Belle, Snow and Rapunzel were also there...

...along with Pluto, Goofy, Daisy, Donald, Chip, Dale (recovered from the dance party I guess ) Mickey and Minnie.

THE CUTENESS. CANNOT HANDLE IT.

We people-watched for a bit and then headed back to our stateroom. The plan was for us to do express walk-off, which meant we had an early morning ahead of us.

One last room service snack...sandwich and chips for Will, Mickey bar for me.

Continued in Next Post

 

[Ariel484]

Day 6: Thursday, July 24, 2014 (Debarkation)

WAHHH. It's over.

There's no way around it - debarkation day sucks. Get up, eat breakfast, get off the ship. The end. So sad!

We'd opted to keep our bags with us for the night rather than put them outside the room to be collected, so this morning we wheeled them downstairs and left them outside of the dining room.

We were in Animator's by 6:45 for breakfast. Saddest menu ever!

I forget what we ordered - as soon as breakfast came out to me, I just wasn't into the thought of eating anything ever again. I'd finally hit the food wall. Will happily gobbled his meal down.

We breezed through customs (which was the whole reason for getting up early and doing express walk-off - no lines!) and hopped onto a bus to the airport. ROUGHEST BUS RIDE EVER. I hadn't eaten much, so I could handle it, but poor Will was dying. No more needs to be said.

And that's how our trip ended...happily ever after? Errrr. Next time we're just going to grab a light breakfast in Cabana's the morning of debarkataion, I think.

Continued in Next Post

 

[Ariel484]

THE BIG QUESTION

So the big goal with this cruise was to get Will totally addicted to cruising like I am (more on the below).


DID THE SCHEMIN' PAY OFF???


THE ANSWER

A resounding YES!! Not only is Will totally into cruising with DCL, he actually said that he likes it better than taking trips to the parks - and he's the one that got me to first go to Walt Disney World as an adult in the first place (he suggested it as a destination for our honeymoon in 2009...I hadn't been there since I was 11. Little did he know how obsessed with it I'd become...). Honestly, I think if it were up to Will, we'd just cruise and skip the parks altogether for the forseeable future!

So yeah...when I scheme, I SCHEME. Will hearts DCL. Mission complete. Let me pat myself on the back a little more.

I'm not quite sure I'm ready to completely give up the parks, but I really do think that, next to runDisney, DCL is my favorite way to experience Disney. The biggest reason why both of us love DCL is that it really, truly, feels like a VACATION. We got to relax in a way that never happens when we take park trips (and most definitely not during runDisney trips), and we still get a Disney fix. As two people that work full-time and are pretty busy, having that relaxing time together is priceless. I can't wait to do it again (and take better notes and way more pictures)!

As I mentioned in a comment upthread, the biggest thing this cruise taught me is that 4 nights, to me, just isn't enough. Obviously it's better than NO nights on a DCL ship, but I'm looking forward to having longer itineraries.

Speaking of...

I have 2 sailings booked on the Fantasy for this year - new-to-me ship, new-to-me itineraries (both 7-nighters), and for one sailing, new cruisers!

Will and I will be cruising again in July (paid in full and online check-in is less than a month away!), and we are both sooo excited!

Then in October, it'll be me, my mom and my brother - my mom's "milestone birthday" gift. First-ever cruise for both of them. So I get to be nervous all over again as to whether someone I love who is cruising with me will enjoy themselves... They're both pretty excited about it though...and it'll be a Halloween on the High Seas sailing, so that should be pretty cool!

But that's not all...DCL just released their Summer 2016 itineraries last week, and my dream itinerary - which wasn't available this year - suddenly popped up again. After talking it over with Will, we booked it!!! 12 nights on the Magic in Europe!! I keep going from unspeakably excited to totally casual, like it hasn't really hit me that it's truly happening just yet. I'm very nervous for the looong flight (and sickened by how much it'll cost ) and sad at the thought of leaving our dog for that long. Yep, we're THOSE dog owners.

But hey...after this sailing I'll be a Gold Castaway Club member! So that's something.

And that's it for now. Thanks for reading along!

 

[PiperGirlInWondrland]

Loved your report! I'm totally jealous of the Europe cruise! I looked at it but didn't book. It's awesome that your scheming paid off! Glad you had a great cruise!

 

[Ariel484]

Loved your report! I'm totally jealous of the Europe cruise! I looked at it but didn't book. It's awesome that your scheming paid off! Glad you had a great cruise!

Thank you!!

I'm still sort of in shock that we booked it. After getting spoiled by having verandahs we're moving to an inside stateroom this time, so hopefully we can handle having no natural light. But we just couldn't stomach the costs for a verandah this time around.

 

[RooRach0906]

Just to give the singer a little benefit of the doubt there are at least two but I think three versions of Relfections so may have been singing a different version I know the movie and Christina Augliera version are different and I think the sound track on is different too but I am not positive on that. (Drives me crazy as it is one of my favorite songs to sing it can really mess you up)

Wonderful report! I hope we like our cruise because DH says we can book a christmastime cruise for this year if we do, so crossing fingers!! Enjoy your future cruises!!!!!