Another Castaway Cay question

[PRINCESS VIJA]

When you find your spot on the beach, do they have chairs for everyone, or should you bring beach towels, or a blanket for a place to come back to?

where do you put your things while you go swimming, etc?

And if they have chairs and you put your things there, can you leave them there all day while you go back and forth between swimming/ lunch, etc, or is this considered chair hogging.

I just want to make sure we do the right thing, we make sure not to be chair hogs at water parks, and pools etc, so I don't want to make that mistake at CC

Also, can you eat your lunch by your spot on the beach or do they frown upon food being out there, and you need to eat by the restaurant.

and one more question, is there a map of where things are located on Castaway Cay, for example where the kids clubs are related to the family beach, etc.

Thanks!

 

[Favorite Auntie]

You might not get a chair at the beach if you are one of the last people off the ship... try to get off early. People do leave a tolwe on their chair if they get up to go get lunch, use the restrooms, etc...this is not considered chair hogging!

You can eat your lunch where ever you want. They do have a covered area with picnic tables for lunch, but you certainly eat on the beach.

Visit Barb's website for details on CC

www.castawayclub.com

 

[jackdis]

We were given a map of CC which was very helpful. I believe it was left in our stateroom with the navigator for that day. We dropped off DD4 at the club before we got to the beach. That way, we did not have to backtrack and we could start snorkeling. She had a ball there too...just as much as in the club on the ship!

 

[FantasticDisFamily]

Things are pretty safe on the beach although you might not want to leave expensive camera equipment for long stretches. When going to lunch you may want to consider leaving something besides the plain towel or a CM might consider the chair abandoned. A paperback or perhaps a container of sunscreen should do the trick.

We also let the folks around us know we were going to lunch in case anyone asked if the chairs were available.

Deb

 

[Wishing on a star]

Hi Vija!

There is a nice color map of Castaway Cay at castawayclub.com . I printed it off...

Barb and Tony haven't left much of anything out!

 

[trishy]

Okay, I'll add something about chair-hogging on CC. What I have seen a lot of families do is run to the beach, take up a chair for each member of the family, place their belongings there and only use about 2-3 chairs out of the 5+ they saved. I consider this chair-hogging. The thing is, not everyone is going to come back to the chairs at the same time during any single period of time. It's very unusual. For our family of 5 we take 2 chairs knowing that at any one time, it'll be me and my littlest, or my dh and my middle child. The oldest does her own thing. This is reality and I find while sitting there observing the chair-saving ritual that so many are unused while families who got off the boat "too late" are left wandering CC scrounging for left over chairs to make a set. This is pitiful in my opinion. I'd like to see more common courtesy exercised at CC.

 

[hydster]

On our next cruise I do not plan on bringing ANYTHING of value with me on CC. We had ALL of our stuff stolen while we were in the water including but not limited to brand new beach buckets we had just bought at the store on the island, clothes, cameras, camera bags, hats and everything else that we brought with us. Next time we wont bring anything but a ships towel with us since everything got stolen! We are to blame because we had a false sense of security that everyone was nice and honest but we learned the really hard expensive way that even on a Disney cruise people suck! My suggestion would be to not take off anything you cant do without if it gets stolen AND have someone from your party with them at ALL times no matter what!!!!
We learned a really hard lesson and I hope that others will learn from it as well!
Heidi

 

[trishy]

Oh my gosh Hydster! That is really awful.
Did you report it to DCL? Did you have trip insurance? It might have helped cover the theft. I haven't heard of this happening before. We usually keep our stuff zipped up in our large duffel - including digital video camera, digital camera, even dh's wallet. Sheesh, people are sick to stoop that low. It's not like you were on some beach at St. Thomas or Cozumel - for heaven's sake it's Castaway Cay - it's all of us. That's frustrating.

 

[hydster]

We did report it to DCL but there isnt much they could do about it. We did have a little trip insurance through our homeowners policy so we did recoup some of the loss but not much. We ended up figuring we lost somewhere around 900 dollars worth of stuff but after paying our deductible and not having proof of purchase for some of the stuff we got about 200 bucks back. I guess it's better than nothing but the worst part was they took our Digital Camera and it had ALL of our trip pictures on it on the one flash card so we lost all the memories of our trip from still pictures. Fortunately my inlaws were with us and were able to give us some pictures for the scrapbooks but still....we had some they didnt have. We learned a very valuable lesson the hard way and I wont do it again. My dh's wallet was in there and they got about 100 dollars cash and some credit cards along with his drivers license. Fortunately we had passports so it wasnt a big deal but it could have been disastrous! I think the worst part was having to tell my 3 year old he couldnt play in the sand anymore cause some lowlife stole his stuff!
It is true though you get lulled into a false sense of security and we take full blame for it and dont hold DCL liable for any of it it was just very unfortunate!
Heidi

 

[RellingTwin]

Trishy, I agree! We were a party of 8. We settled in with 2 lounge chairs with the two short beach chairs, and 1 umbrella.With the kids coming and going, hair braiding, swimming, shopping, and eating lunch, there was never a time we needed more seating. On the rare occation there were more the 4 of us, the kids shared a lounge chair. We also made sure there was never a time our belongings were unattended. A very nice lady and her daughter were seated next to us. They asked us to keep an eye on their things for the time they went to eat, then they did the same for us while we went to round up the kids.
Heidi...I am so sorry your belongings were stolen! How awful! Yes, there are dishonest people everywhere, even at a Disney owned island.

 

[PRINCESS VIJA]

If we choose to not take our things with us, how do you deal with your driver's license and KTWC? where do you put them, can they get wet if you have them in a lanyard carrier? Thanks!

 

[Rock'n Robin]

I had my license and all our KTTW cards in one of those waterproof holders you can buy. I got mine at nutztogo.com, but they sell them on the ship for $6. Everything in there stays dry, so I wore it in the ocean and everything. I also only took a disposable and a waterproof camera with us, leaving our expensive equipment on the ship. Didn't want to get sand in our camcorder or digital anyhow.
We got two chairs together with an umbrella. Truly, we hardly used them (there are 5 of us). If I'd found a hammock, though, it would have been a different story! I did put a little chair in the water for a while though, but a huge family next to us was doing the same thing and I was hearing their whole life story so I decided to go on my raft instead!
Robin M.

 

[S. C.]

We also took waterproof cameras and left the good one on board in the safe. And we had the waterproof lanyards. we bought the cheaper vinyl ones, we didn't lose anything but the items did get wet. next time i will buy the better ones on the ship they also looked like they might float.

We got off the ship late and found 2 chairs under an umbrella by the snorkeling beach. We had our own snorkel equipment so we just put the snorkle bags on the ground between the 2 chairs leaning against the umbrella, figured we had a place for our stuff and if anyone needed the chairs they could use them.

 

[two-foxes]

My DH, being the constant cool toy collector, found this fanny pack called a "Splash Caddy." It is a bit smaller than your average fanny pack, with mesh and holes in it to let it drain water. It has 2 or 3 air tight "baggies on steriods" that come with it that will keep all valuables dry. He used it all the time...went in the Dolphin Encounter, snorkling at CC with it...if we were in water, then he had it on! I worked great. I had the water proof lanyard, but I wasn't comfortable swimming and such with it on. So all our must-have valuables were safe and dry all the time! He ordered it from one of his military/police catalogs, but I am sure if you do an internet search for splash caddy, you'll be able to find it!

 

[ZebraStripes]

As far as chairs go, we go to the very end of the family beach. In the two times we've gone, there have always been free chairs all day. And now that hydster has gotton things stolen, I think I'm going to look for one of those fanny packs. You are right, you think Disney and everything is perfect and get lulled into a false sense of security. Even those sand toys you buy on the ship are so darn expensive...its a loss if someone lifts those too. Hydster, sorry about the theft.