Disney Destiny - 2025 Thanksgiving Cruise

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Family and I sailed on the Disney Destiny, on the Nov 24-28 Bahamian cruise. Had a wonderful time and really enjoyed the ship. This was our 9th Disney cruise. Below are some thoughts on our trip.

Pros:

• The ship is absolutely gorgeous! Everything is fresh & new - totally beautiful. Amazing touches throughout the ship, as to be expected on a Disney production.
• One of our favorite activities was the Haunted Mansion Happy Hunt. Tracking down the various ghosts was loads of fun & a great use of our Magic Bands.
• The show during the Pride Lands dinner was fantastic. The performers are amazing. Really enjoyed that entire experience.
• The staff throughout the ship was extremely friendly, polite, and seemed genuinely happy to be there.
• Zayah and Goofball are hilarious storytellers and shouldn't be missed. Their shows are great fun for the whole family. Yes, I know his name is really Gamble, but Goofball seems way more appropriate.
• Speaking of Zayah and Goofball, the 18-and-up Marvel show was tons of fun, but I'm not quite sure why it was billed as Adults only. There were a few suggestive themes during the show, but it seemed to me most of that element would have gone over most kid's heads. However, my kids are in their 20's now, so maybe I'm a bit out of touch.
• We had tons of fun answering the trivia questions during the Worlds of Marvel dinner. Bummed that there were no character appearances, but since we're big Rocket fans, the entire show was a hit for us.
• Our rooms, #10642 and #10644, were fantastic. Everything was so new and nice. #10642 was Big Hero 6 themed and #10644 was Incredibles themed. Lots of great storage, showers were huge (compared to most cruise ships) and we still love the separate toilet & shower areas. Lots of outlets and plugs by the bed and at the desk.
• Embarkation was seamless and easy. We did Express Walk Off and were off the ship before 7:30am. Please note that we got in line at 7am and it was already pretty significant.
• Lounges throughout the ship were great, staff was attentive and friendly - and not overly pushy about buying drinks.
• Castaway Cay is still one of our most favorite places to visit. We especially love Castaway Ray's Stingray Adventure.
• We never felt like the ship was crowded. Our server told us that there were 3,900 passengers but it never seemed overwhelmingly crazy.
• Elevators are plentiful and quick. We never had to wait very long for an elevator and they were almost always empty or half empty.

Cons:

• Service at dinner was poor. Our assistant server was on her 2nd ever cruise and it showed. She disappeared after the 2nd night and our replacement assistant server was covering two sets of servers. As such, drink service was a 1-time per meal experience. The head waiter ended up pulling service duty to bring out food, clear plates, and eventually get us drink refills. It didn't help that our server was assigned 3 huge (15+) parties in addition to our small group of 4. We had late dining and almost always ended up being the last people out of the dining room.
• Lots of under-18 people invading Serenity Bay at both islands. Plenty of area to spread out, so it's not a big deal for us. Just weird seeing kids handing out at the ice cream machine at the Serenity Bay restaurants.
• They need more signs at Lookout Cay. Finding where Serenity Bay was, was an adventure. We ended up going down many wrong paths. We got there eventually, but it took a minute. Maybe we missed the signs, either way it was not as well marked as we would have liked.
• Yes, the walk from the ship to the beach at Lookout Cay is long, that's been noted many times by many others. We were expecting it and prepared.
• While we had fund with the Happy Hunt, it did experience some technical difficulties on our sea day. We couldn't get one of the elements to work and when we tried to get a clue, the system glitched. We ended up getting past it, not entirely sure how, but we completed the hunt. As the sea day wore on, the system got noticeably slower.
• So many people walking through and filming the Haunted Mansion Lounge ruined the experience. We were sitting next to one of the elements that moves & interacts with the show and people kept invading our little seating area to film it. It was uncomfortable & we had our drinks almost knocked over several times by people focused on filming the action.
• DeVil's almost always had a sign up saying it was at capacity. Never got to see that show, but people seemed to really enjoy it.

I'm sure I'm leaving things out, but overall we had a spectacular time. Tons of people had their doors decorated, which was awesome to see. We had our Fish Extender hanging out and got pixie dusted multiple times. We took tons of stuff and reciprocated the pixie dusting whenever something had a room number listed, but then spent a bunch of time on the sea day pixie dusting others. It's always so much fun gifting others.

Let me know if you have any specific questions about the ship & I'll do my best to answer. We don't drink alcohol, so I can't speak to the drink prices or quality. We tried some of the non-alcoholic drinks in the Haunted Mansion lounge and Sanctum, but that's about it.