4-Night Very Merrytime Western Caribbean Cruise From Galveston

[Julia M]

Hi Everyone,
I booked this Very Merrytime cruise yesterday, very spontaneously, because I received an email for verandah rooms being so discounted. I've only been on one Disney Cruise, a two night Halloween cruise out of San Diego.

1. Does anyone know what has been done before Covid for this kind of themed cruise?
2. There are three dining rooms on the Wonder. Will we go to one of the dining rooms a second time? Is there any way to know ahead of time, if we wanted to book specialty dining? We have the second seating, but the Disney website says that dining arrival times are "staggered". Does anyone know the range of dining times?
3. I booked the champagne and wine tasting. Has anyone done one of these before? Are they worth it?
4. I was reading some posts about the Rainforest spa room. It sounds like you have to book the entire place, for $175?? Do I have that correct? If so, I guess I won't be doing it!

Any other advice for me?

 

[KashasMom]

Per-Covid:

Very Merrytime was SO much fun...lots of activities from making ornaments to decorating gingerbread cookies. Tree lighting ceremony in the atrium with the characters and Christmas carols, Winter Wonderland Ball with Santa, Mrs Claus and snow in the atrium. The ship is beautifully decorated with a huge tree and gingerbread house. Characters are decked out in their holiday finest. Families getting their photos taken in ugly Christmas sweaters and/or Christmas pajamas. It's a week long celebration!

Also you can order special holiday decorations that will be in your room when you arrive - and also a special Christmas blanket and pillow to take home.

 

[Kwami]

#1. Perhaps one of the best parts of a Very Merrytime cruise is the giant gingerbread house in the atrium. The crews on all four ships have a competition each year to build the best one and they're really incredible. It's fun to see the tree lights, too. I ordered a little Christmas tree for our room and it was nice to see it every day. There are some special Christmas-themed drinks in the cafe and some Christmas-y desserts there and at Cabanas.

I don't know how much of that will happen on a Covid cruise, though. Probably most of it, but maybe not atrium gatherings like the tree lighting.

#2. I've been on two 4-night cruises and on both, the repeat night was night 3. On both cruises, this was "pirate night". But, neither of my 4-night cruises was a Very Merrytime cruise. You can ask your travel agent (if you have one) or DCL (through email or online chat) which night will be the repeat and they should be able to tell you. The staggered times are a Covid-related measure to prevent everyone from pointlessly lining up outside the restaurant. Instead of everyone being assigned one dining time, they'll stagger them. So, you might get 8:15 or 8:20 or 8:25, and so on. But you can basically arrive any time after dinner starts and nobody will much care.

#3. Sorry, I haven't participated in such an activity.

#4. At least as of 9/20, that's correct. It's $175 for 1h45m of private time in the rainforest room. The Magic UK cruises started like this and eventually moved to a cheaper cost for less time, so I was hoping that the ships here would, too, but I haven't seen that happen so far.

 

[erik3dis]

All of the booze tastings are pretty good other than maybe the cocktail one where I found most of the drinks a little too sugary.

These are introductory type tastings, so if you know alot about wine and champagne it may not do much for you, but if you want to learn a little, it's great. With limited capacity these are good to book early, every single tasting on our cruise is sold out. IIRC you get about 5 smaller drinks.