Having recently come off the 2025 member cruise (our first!) and wanting to extend the good vibes, I am reporting - there still weren't a ton of kids on the cruise (can only compare to one other big boat cruise, 2017 on the Fantasy), but there were still plenty. Luckily my kids (9, 13 and 10yo niece) were pretty self-sufficient. My 13yo went to selected talks and really enjoyed them; I went to some alone, and we all went to the evening shows (and all enjoyed them). During the daytime talks, we tried to get the tweens to go to the kids club (which did have many events scheduled), but they were happy to watch Funnel Vision all day.
I was definitely incorrect that there would be more kids activities since it was early August. They very very rarely had more than one club open and one side was almost always open house. They even had an adults take over Oceaneers adults only hour at some point in the evening (we skipped it— would have considered it on the ships where you can create your own rollercoaster…)
My husband and I ended up spending a bit more time in the kids club and it wasn’t a big deal—BUT it did cause some early frustration because we thought we were dropping our kids to do trivia and they couldn’t do kids’ trivia because they were checked in and it was on the open house side.
I want to know what people chose too. We've always done early dining and the show later, because of the kids. Kids are coming in 2026, too, and we chose early dining but are on the fence. Early dining makes the evening pretty structured - dinner, show, bed for the kids, and DH and I might stay out another hour or so. I feel like with late dining we might miss the show because we were doing something else, but then again, because of the time difference, we might not want dinner at "noon."
We chose late and we usually do late because we live in CA, cruise mostly out of FL and try to stay close to home time. It worked pretty well on this cruise, we have our own routines of catching a show as a family around 6, squeezing in a trivia or activity or sunset, and then going to dinner together. Then the kids go to club for an hour while we have a cocktail.
When we did a Europe cruise, late dinner was REALLY helpful because we weren’t rushing back on days we had long days in port (and Disney is terrible for alternative dining options if you miss your seating)— but I have zero clue how we’d juggle all the Disney activities onboard with busy days on land. We did Disney in Europe once and I can’t imagine doing it again unless they had very unique shore excursions (I believe I read a decade ago they were throwing “balls” in real historic castles, but I haven’t seen anything like that in years and I may have hallucinated it?).
But by 24 hours on the boat, I was definitely ready to book 2026. DH was leaning that way, for sure, but he wasn't a full thumbs up until a few more days into it.
We loved the member cruise even more than I expected (kids were happy to trade oceaneers club activities for gifts in the room each day)! I think if it had been during summer break we probably would have booked it mid-cruise.
@CDKG and others who were on the 2025 cruise - what were your core memories from the cruise? Mine were the shows and the special talks. I would have done more of them if I could. I was a little overwhelmed the first day and missed a lot of things.
We have quite a few core memories— watching the special 80s/90s night (all dressed up in our 80s attire) and seeing Jodi Benson perform Poor Unfortunate Souls (sooooo well) was incredible. Then a few hours later we actually met her (happened to be standing nearby at a deck party) and she graciously agreed to take a pic with my Little Mermaid obsessed daughter (that my son photobombed)— it was an incredible magical moment that made the whole cruise!
The
Disneyland archives event was really special, especially seeing the first ever Disneyland ticket (well the image of it) and the special animated art they used to transform the D lounge.
My daughter and I really enjoyed the live animation event with Stacia, Bret, and Eric. I actually realized I’d met and chatted with Stacia in the spa like 3 hours after embarkation but I had no idea who she was!!
My son loved all the coco themed gifts and made it to every Lorcana event (with his dad in tow)— I think he came home with a couple hundred cards he chats about endlessly.
My husband is not much of a Disneyphile but he has always loved goofy (who reminds him of his father who passed a few years ago)— he said going to the Goofy movie themed events with our son was really unexpectedly special for him and he loved the live performance of the song from the Goofy movie, which he says hits different now that he’s the dad and not the kid. He watched the movie with our son on the cruise and then they found a sequel to watch back at home.
There was silent disco the final night and almost all of the Broadway stars and Disney legends (at least the on screen talent) were there dancing with their friends and families. I wasn’t expecting them to act so much like normal guests, it was cool. Many of them were also just hanging out at Serenity Bay on
Castaway Cay.
Oh, and how can I forget, the sneak previews of Zootopia 2– my kids are super jazzed for that and seeing the process behind the scenes was interesting.
