Fantasy April 11-18 Eastern Bullet Review

[Cfudge]

Port Canaveral/Sea/Sea/St Maarten/San Juan/Sea/Castaway/Port Canaveral

3702 Passengers according to ship staff. Felt busy near pools on sea days, otherwise fine.

Room 9168 - Port Side - Last Cabin Aft before the rear facing cabins

Dad/Mom/5 Year Old/2 Year Old - 5YRO in top bunk, 2YRO in Pack and Play

Used: Nursery, Kids Club, Palo

Cabin was great, very quiet area far aft with little passenger traffic. Occasional bangs from "ship stuff"? Yep Occasional bit of noise through connecting door? Yep but pretty quiet. Do you feel the incredibly powerful engines working to dock the 140,000 ton ship on port mornings? Of course you do. But it's not a big deal.

Balcony was amazing, location meant you could look left and see a wide angle off the back corner of the ship. Two thoughts to sum up the cabin - "It looks just like the official pictures, but a lot narrower than I thought it would be" and "Based on this experience, I'd let them assign me any balcony cabin on the ship." FYI - The pack and play kills a ton of space at the balcony end of the room when it's setup, but it's still manageable.

5YRO loved Kids Club, 2 YRO hated the nursery. The staff were great but she would have been happier with her brother next door and so that was an issue.

Palo was well worth the money for the experience. Make sure you take the time to order a drink first and go outside on their aft balcony. They will hold the table. We watched the sun set in San Juan - amazing.

St Maarten - Did the afternoon beach excursion to Orient. Likely would not book again. It took a lot longer to get off the ship and to the beach than indicated, which meant less beach time. The beach itself was beautiful with large waves and a strong strong undertow. The whole guaranteed beach chair thing felt like you were being corralled in one small section of the beach with a million chairs 10 rows deep. Constant stream of locals walking by asking to give you a massage or braid your kids hair. Other assigned locals running around asking for $3 for the umbrella that's already setup between your two chairs or else they take it away. Tell the first guy you paid the second guy. They both ran around with giant wads of cash, had no system of marking who had paid or not. Just a scam.

San Juan - Everyone in our extended group loved it. Some did a car tour (half the price of the boat if you deal with the guys on the dock...according to the guys on the dock. Some of our group did and loved their tour.) The rest of us just walked the area off the pier. Some good shopping. Wanted nachos and drinks but it was still breakfast time so most local places couldn't help us...ended up at Señor Frogs...say what you will, the nachos were good.

Castaway Cay - Hot, beautiful, great food, really great live music. Didn't play the run off the boat first thing for a chair game, had to look for chairs for a few minutes, found chairs and were good to go. Warm water, some fish swimming around, felt like Heaven.

Aquaduck - Sea Days 45 minute plus wait - Port Days 10 minutes. Saw the Aquaduck get shut down twice in one morning (second time we were two away from going down, standing at the top). Both times because the SAME girl who was tall enough to ride alone but not nearly heavy enough apparently, got stuck. Watched it happen the second time from the top. Her slide stopped almost immediately after the launcher sent her. She didn't even clear the first turn. Water turned off, radio call for small staff member to come up, walk into the tube, pull the girls slide down the Aquaduck while the girl slid behind it on her rear end with no water running. I don't know if they have an escape hatch anywhere, otherwise they did the entire 700 plus feet. Both times they had to do a "safety check" - we watched three staff walk the entire inside of the Aquaduck and presumably deal with issues resulting from shutting down the water pumps. The second time it was closed for 1.5 hours! Our estimate is that one really tiny rider caused 2.5 hours of no rides that morning. Don't like your tiny people ride alone!

Fireworks - Worth staying up for.

Night time movies on the funnel vision - Stay up late some night, let your kids watch a few minutes of a movie outside while sailing. You will be almost alone and it's a guaranteed good memory.

Flight out of MCO was at 10:10AM - Private shuttle, express walk off, still had time to eat a quick breakfast at Animators Palette at 6:45AM when they opened. No issues.

I'll probably think of more to add later, ask questions if you have any!

 

[ayz75]

Did you 2 year old cry a lot and get "returned" from the nursery or did they manage to calm her down after a while? We're crusing next month and our 2 YR will be in the nursery one night while we eat at Remy. She goes to daycare but is a very shy girl, I am expecting her to cry a bit for sure.. just wondering how experience the staff are at handling crying young toddlers! Thanks in advance!

 

[Lizzards]

I love your nighttime movie tip! Going to try to do that when we cruise in June! Thanks for taking time to write up your impressions and itinerary!

 

[genki3]

Where did you watch the fireworks from?

 

[Cfudge]

Did you 2 year old cry a lot and get "returned" from the nursery or did they manage to calm her down after a while? We're crusing next month and our 2 YR will be in the nursery one night while we eat at Remy. She goes to daycare but is a very shy girl, I am expecting her to cry a bit for sure.. just wondering how experience the staff are at handling crying young toddlers! Thanks in advance!

The first time we dropped her off in the afternoon as much for a trial run for our Palo night as anything else. They texted us on the wave phone after an hour and said she was "a bit upset and they were working to calm her down". The text was automated as we couldn't reply. We figured we would give it a bit longer and see if they sent anything else. Never heard anything more and when we picked her up an hour later they said, "Oh yeah, she got over it really quick and did great." On our Palo night I told them that's where we were heading and they wrote it down on the check in book. She was upset when we left but they did a great job at distracting her and we never got a wave phone text. She was fine not long after we left. There were lots of staff and a fair number of kids in there the three different times we put her in and the staff were great, not phased at all by a bit of crying. Very used to it.

 

[Cfudge]

I love your nighttime movie tip! Going to try to do that when we cruise in June! Thanks for taking time to write up your impressions and itinerary!

The night we did it they were showing a DisneyNature film at 10PM. I'd like to say we planned it out but really we just went for a walk to see the Aquaduck lit up and stumbled upon it starting. It was the perfect choice as it was easier to peel the 5YRO away from the nature movie after 20 minutes than something with a full story. Our best move was taking along one of the nice blue blankets they make the animals with, just to take care of the chill from the breeze.

 

[Cfudge]

Where did you watch the fireworks from?

Alright - if you picture yourself standing on the back pool looking towards the funnel vision screen, we were to the left side with our small kids sitting up on the polished wooden bar that runs down the side. This got them up a bit higher to see some of the stage show and then when it was fireworks time they just pivoted on the bar towards the yellow mickey slide across the deck...fireworks were right above the slide. Great view and no fighting to see through tall adults. Again - we aren't that good at planning, just lucked out mainly. Also - those polished wood bars and towel boxes that are on either side of the pool deck are great places to plunk little ones for Sail Away type shows. Nobody on the staff seems to care if the small kids are sitting up there and it's a lot easier on the arms versus holding them up!....they also might be close to the bar service for adults..ahem..just saying.

 

[Cfudge]

Did you 2 year old cry a lot and get "returned" from the nursery or did they manage to calm her down after a while? We're crusing next month and our 2 YR will be in the nursery one night while we eat at Remy. She goes to daycare but is a very shy girl, I am expecting her to cry a bit for sure.. just wondering how experience the staff are at handling crying young toddlers! Thanks in advance!

By the way - two more thoughts for you - 1) We dropped our 2YRO off at the nursery the first time with a small pack of wipes and two diapers. She was very excited to show us the small DCL backpack they gave her (with attached butterfly they made together) to carry her wipes container and unused diaper when we picked her up. So that was cool.
2) If your 2YRO naps in the afternoons like ours does at daycare at home, and you're like us and wondering about what to do about naps on board, AND especially if you have a balcony room...do the naps. Most days one of us took the kids back to the room for an afternoon nap and sat out on the balcony...and it was some of the best times of the cruise. Just sitting and watching the ocean for an hour or more, reading a book, maybe drinking a "drink". The curtains block out the sun nicely and you can leave the balcony door open a bit and peak in. The wind makes it hard to hear anything from inside the cabin while on the balcony but it's easy to peak through the curtains.

 

[PizzieDuster]

Good post. Very interesting about the slide and your stateroom. Did you enjoy any of the shows? Do they still have Dreams? Thanks Cfudge!

 

[Meeko28]

I was on that cruise!! It was amazing. It was just me and my husband (no kids yet), and I agree with a lot of what you're saying.

I would like to point out on St Martin, you can get 2 chairs on the beach with an umbrella and a 6 pack of beer for about $25. no need to sign up for an excursion or even take a taxi, the beaches are right there off the port.

We went to Maho Beach where the airplanes are, and there are chairs and umbrellas for about the same price. It was fantastic. I would HIGHLY recommend St Martin. We have another (not Disney) cruise in December, and I am looking forward to St Martin again. There was only 2 people walking around trying to sell something or a service. One lady had some cute bags and the other had some pieces of aloe she would rub your feet or any sunburn. I think that was my favorite island. We took a taxi to Maho for about $18-20/way for both of us. Next time we go I want to go to the french side since i've seen some reviews that said that was very nice too. The people were very nice and not too pushy like i've seen on other islands.

I really enjoyed San Juan too. We decided to do horseback riding through an outside contractor and it was fantastic. It was just me, my husband, and the guide. We rode horses through the jungle and then onto the beach and back. The guide asked what time we needed to get back on the boat and made sure we had a little extra time to explore the city. The pictures are amazing and it was like a dream. After being dropped off we went on the ship and got changed and went back on the island to have lunch and explore the city a bit. San Juan is BEAUTIFUL. Our table mates explored the fort, and they said it was a lot of fun. That is the MUST DO next time we're there. There will be a next time. I liked that San Juan's economy isnt dependent on tourists, and that the signs and things were in Spanish. I could use the limited Spanish that I learned in High School.

I'm glad your family had such a good time, and it's neat to see a different perspective on the same cruise.

 

[Cfudge]

Good post. Very interesting about the slide and your stateroom. Did you enjoy any of the shows? Do they still have Dreams? Thanks Cfudge!

Thanks!

We enjoyed all of the shows, one night our 2YRO was too tired to go so I took her back to the stateroom and watched the show on the TV channel. We later discovered that I wasn't actually watching the live feed from the theatre, but a pre-recorded version of that nights show that runs at the same time... "Me: I was a bit disappointed that someone different played the Genie tonight...My Wife: Uh...no, it was the same one..."