Disney Treasure — September 2025 — The *almost* Halloween cruise

[morethanfairytales]

My partner and I recently sailed on the Treasure — a first for both of us — and loved a lot of things about our sailing. Here's a recap!

A bit of background: I'm a lifelong Disney Parks fan and fairly recent cruiser. Past cruises have included the Disney Magic (1998), RC Enchantment of the Seas (2018), and the Disney Wish (2023 + 2024). Although I enjoy Disney cruises for their own sake (the theming! The food! The relative peace & quiet!), I typically use them to get some extra time to work on personal writing projects. It may not be the most glamorous reason to take a cruise, but treating that time away from home as a personal writing retreat has felt like a small luxury. I was excited about what a seven-night sailing might offer, too, since my recent four-night sailings on the Wish felt frustratingly short.

My partner, B., has a more contentious relationship with cruising. Until this year, his only experience had been on Carnival, and it was one of those "anything that can go wrong will go wrong" kind of situations. Despite swearing off all future cruises, he started dropping hints that he "wouldn't mind" trying it again and "could definitely occupy himself" while I was writing, so we ended up making it a couples' trip after all.

If you want to skip the full breakdown of each day, here are the highlights (and lowlights) from our week on the Treasure...

What we loved:​

• Overall ship layout + theming​
• Live music @ Scat Cat Lounge​
• Plaza de Coco​
• Palo Steakhouse​
• The Tale of Moana​
• Match Your Mate​
• Jumbeaux's Sweets (pro tip: birthday cake gelato + a chocolate cone)​
• All of the coffee spots: Heihei Café, Jade Cricket Café, Cove Café​
• Pixie dusting our neighbors!​

What we skipped:​

• Deck parties + fireworks at sea​
• Character meet-and-greets​
• Pools + AquaMouse​
• Seas the Adventure​
• Port excursions​
• Spa services​
• Alcohol tastings​
• Brunch at Palo / Enchanté​
• Getting off the ship in Falmouth, Jamaica​

What we wouldn't do again:

• Spa / shopping raffles
• Bingo (B. and I might disagree on this one)
• Beauty and the Beast
• Haunted Mansion Parlor
• Walk around Cozumel, Mexico
• Mickey churro waffles
• Room service "secret menu" cookies

 

[morethanfairytales]

September 5: Pre-cruise arrival

We flew into MCO a day early and, after a 5:00 a.m. wake-up time and a six-hour flight from the West Coast, went straight to our resort: Disney's Coronado Springs. This was already a welcome change from last year, when the airline lost my suitcase and I pulled an all-nighter at the airport right before my cruise (something I hope never to experience again!).



Normally, I book a hotel closer to the cruise terminal to cut down on potential traffic on embarkation day, but staying on WDW property allowed us to secure a slightly earlier PAT (12:00 p.m. instead of 1:15 p.m.), and we got the added bonus of starting our trip off with some extra Disney magic. Add to that the fact that I could just show up and get on the bus the next morning — without having to plan for an Uber or factor in any other logistics or delays — and this was a no-brainer.

While we should have used our first night to catch up on sleep and repack for the cruise, both B. and I are guilty of trying to do too much in too little time. After settling into our room, we explored the resort for a couple of hours, checked out all of the Halloween merch at Panchito's, and grabbed dinner at Maya Grill before catching the bus to Disney Springs for some late-night window shopping. The dinner, by the way, was among the best I've had at WDW, and I don't think we ate anything better on our entire trip than the queso chorizo fundido. It was that good.



Had we not been about to leave for a seven-night cruise, we might have done far more damage at Disney Springs — especially in the two-story Uniqlo, which put our hometown Uniqlo to shame. Since I was already at the point of having to sit on my suitcase to close it, however, we kept things light: a goofy photostrip at the Rainforest Café photobooth and a Snow White ornament from the Christmas shop that I just couldn't pass up.

With that, we closed out our shopping trip with some ill-advised, almost-midnight coffee from Starbucks, then headed back to the resort to get a few hours of sleep before our morning bus ride.​

 

[morethanfairytales]

September 6: Embarkation day

We woke up bright and early at 6:00 a.m. to prepare for luggage pickup, which got to our room around 7:45. After our suitcases were tagged and taken away, we walked over to Barcelona Lounge to meet up with the rest of the DCL group and check in for our bus transfer. (An added bonus: we had plenty of time to sit and have a cup of coffee, which was a necessity after going to bed around 1:00 a.m. the night before. )



The bus ride itself was smooth and quick, and we arrived at the cruise terminal about 30-ish minutes before Boarding Group #5 was called, which gave us just enough time to connect to the wifi, check our MDR rotation, and review some of the plans that were available that day.

Because this was B.'s first Disney cruise, I didn't want to overwhelm him with all of the activities and events that were going on, so we decided to play everything by ear. For the first hour or so that we were onboard, he explored the ship on his own while I waited in line at Triton Lounge to make some dining requests for a private MDR table and a Palo dinner reservation, the latter of which had gotten slightly messed up with Disney's online system (in a nutshell: we were only able to secure two solo reservations at different times on the same night, rather than a table for two). Thankfully, this sailing ended up being fairly light, so getting those requests approved was super easy — and I even overheard other guests getting last-minute Palo, Enchanté, brunch, and specialty seating requests in, too.

One of the best parts about booking a pre-Halloween sailing is that we got all the benefits of the seasonal decor without the crowd levels that a holiday sailing brings. The Halloween "Ginger tree" was set out in the Grand Hall, there were villain decals on many of the portholes, and throughout our sailing, cast members were hard at work rehearsing for new shows (something we were allowed to watch, but warned very strictly not to take any photos or videos of).



I haven't been on any holiday sailings yet, so I can't say how similar or different this is to other festivities on other Disney ships, but it was really cute to experience. Also worth noting: they weren't playing Halloween music or selling any Halloween merch (nor would I have expected them to), so it felt fairly "autumn-light" overall.

After wandering through the ship for a while, we made it to our room on Deck 8 to start unpacking. I had filled my carry-on with as much room decor as I could fit, and wanted to get everything set up before the muster drill at 3:55 p.m. Our room was themed to Up, so I tried to make the space feel as homey as Carl and Ellie's house — with plenty of personal touches from our own home, too. This was the first time either of us had sailed with a verandah room before… and I've gotta say, it won't be the last.



When muster was checked off the list, we walked around some of the lower decks until the ship set sail. I know this is a hot take, but I personally don't enjoy the bigger parties on Deck 11 (including the sailaway party and pirate night festivities), mostly because of the crowds + humid weather. And, with 99% of the ship's passengers on the higher decks, the rest of the ship felt comparatively empty, which made for a very peaceful send-off.

By this point, B. was ready to check out some of the events around the ship, so we made our way over to Sarabi for some of their spa and shopping raffles. Despite never having won anything before, B.'s name was picked twice — once at each raffle — which felt like insane luck right off the bat. After reading the fine print and doing some research of our own, however, we decided against purchasing any jewelry or higher-end spa services, since $50 off of several hundred dollars is still… several hundred dollars more than we were wanting to spend at the time.

We ended up getting another 4-5 spa vouchers in our stateroom door over the course of the cruise, so it's possible that Disney just hadn't gotten enough prebookings in for this sailing. Anything that wasn't directly addressed to us (and therefore not easily redeemable by another passenger) was handed to someone else who might want it, in the hopes that they could put it to better use than we could.

Once the raffles concluded, we wandered through the rest of the shops, grabbed coffee, then returned to the room to change for our dinner at 1923. Our servers on this sailing were lovely and fairly hands-off, giving us a lot of time to chat between courses. (This isn't a complaint, by the way — the dining room was packed and every table in our section seemed to be far busier than ours.)

For our first dinner, I ordered the ahi tuna, green circle chicken, and burrata (for dessert). The chicken was one of the best things I ate on the cruise, and by far my favorite dish at 1923 — purely for the decadent Yukon potato fondant alone. B. ordered the tri-color tortelloni, peppered filet mignon, and the fudge sundae.

This, apparently, is also when I stopped taking photos for the rest of the evening, but B. and I had fun wandering around the ship after dinner (though both of us were really struggling to keep our eyes open at this point!). Thankfully, we still had six full days ahead of us — enough to keep our FOMO at bay for one more night.​