Fantasy Becomes Reality - A Land and Sea "Merrytime" Extravaganza

Loving it so far!!! Fantasy ship, Eastern Itinerary, Dec. 16' cruise (first disney), 1st WDW visit (DVC owners hoping for Animal Kingdom) and with extended family....Excited to hear more!!!!
 

Loving your trip report! I so agree with you about them announcing your name for all to hear upon arrival. I do not like that aspect either. I have always been tempted (but never attempted) to give them a funny name or something Disney related. "Please welcome aboard the Elsa family!" LOL
 
Loving this TR! I have never been on a cruise so your information is incredible, I am taking lots of notes :)
Looking forward to reading more.
 
Great report, so fun to read!
Our DD was 3 too when we first took her to Disney. It was great to see her experience the pure magic. Looking forward to reading more!
 
Loving your trip report so far! We are sailing on the Magic in November for a Merrytime Cruise with the in-laws so I'm anxious to see how everything went for you guys! We were on the Fantasy this past September and loved every minute of it!
 
Loving your trip report so far, we are booked on the Fantasy for Christmas 2016 so I am excited to learn of all the things to do and see. Glad you said about the gingerbread house queue first as this is something my DD really wants to do so I shall definitely go there first.

The 'rolling' bothers me a little as I don't know how we will deal with it, however I shall carry on reading your trip report and take all your hints and tips.

Looking forward to more!
 
Your trip report is fantastic so far! I love your attention to details. :love: I am a planner as well, but I have no patience. When I decide I want to go somewhere I'm like a two year old and want to do it now! Can't wait to read more. We did a three night cruise on the Dream October 2014 with my then 21 month old and 12 year old. I'm interested to read how your daughter liked her week on the ship. I'm trying to decide when to book our next cruise with my now 3 and 13 year old. :flower:
 
Man, I have got to get going on this! Even my (lurker) husband is asking why I haven't updated! Oh, he also wants me to stress that the lifeboat drill was very hot and very uncomfortable, and the sun was in his eyes.

Episode VII - The One with Formal Night

We had zero plans for the day, and so we chose to sleep in.

While it was still dark out my internal clock woke me enough so that I could tell the boat was not rocking anymore. "Yay!" I thought, "DH will be so happy!" But alas, when I awoke again a few hours later the rocking had returned. It wasn't as bad as the night before, but it was still noticeable. I wasn't just dreaming the still waters either, other guests confirmed that it had been smooth sailing in the wee hours.

After cleaning myself up a bit I wandered up on deck to get coffee. I then returned to the cabin and tried to sit out on deck and enjoy the view. It was okay, but kind of boring. I'm used to sailing with land at least somewhat in sight. Endless ocean waves doesn't really do it for me. After a little while, Bee got up, and sometime after that her daddy as well. My parents came back, then, from an enjoyable breakfast at the Royal Court. They raved about the food again.

Knowing that the Royal Court was no longer an option, and that the remainder of my family could not, like me, survive on coffee alone, I decided we would head up on deck and catch the end of Cabanas breakfast. However, looking at our Navigator I noticed that there were some interesting folks scheduled for meetings in the atrium. We had missed a bunch of friends sleeping in, but Woody was on the schedule, so I thought we should go try for him. We headed down the stairs, and ran into someone else on our way.

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This was Bee's official first character meet. However, I didn't really have my camera ready and the lighting was poor. Bee was happy, though, and got her first autograph! Then we got in line to meet Woody. During our wait, Bee acted very excited about meeting Woody and seemed happy to be there, but the second it was her turn to go up, that changed. She became afraid of Woody and had to be carried. She also, refused to smile. The picture came out terrible.

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In retrospect, look how freaking tall Woody is! That is not a child's plaything! I can understand why Bee was intimidated. Regardless, now DH and I were worried that she would react this way to all non-face characters. Still, maybe it was just that she needed some food in her stomach.

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It was definitely warm enough to sit outside, though a bit windy.

After that it was time to get our bathing suits on and try out the pool. On our way back to the cabin Bee admired this mosaic mural and insisted I take a photo of her in front of it.

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(I swear I'm a better photographer than this series of photos would lead you to believe. At this point I had NOT figured out the lighting of the ship yet!)

Despite the fact that it was close on to noon we were able to snag several chairs close together on the main deck. We all then took turns shepherding Bee around to the different water areas of the ship.

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Nemo's Reef was pretty cool, and Bee enjoyed playing in the various water jets. However, she did not like the stingray slide, which is odd because she usually loves slides. I think it was because of how slippery the floor was in front of the slide. She fell down on her way to it, and then slid across the floor after going down the slide. That was it; no more stingray for her.

As many others have commented, the pools are extremely crowded on sea days, but in all honesty, I didn't think it was that bad.

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DH and I got in the pool with her, while her grandparents stayed dry.

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We grabbed lunch and ate at our lounge chairs. Then we decided to check out the other water play area. I don't know if its because its sort of hidden behind the aft funnel, or what, but we almost never saw anyone in this water play area. Those kids we did see tended to be older and unsupervised, but it's a perfectly good place for toddlers to have fun as well.

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Bee had fun playing with the water spouts and trying to plug them all. She also met a little boy who had a brand new set of water toys he was playing with. Bee obviously wanted to play with them, but I didn't want to interrupt the boy. Then his mom noticed and suggested they play together, so they did. It was very sweet. I found out they were form Michigan too, so small world.

After that, we were pretty much done with water and Bee was ready for a nap (whether she liked the idea or not). My mom reiterated the request she had made to me earlier - that we be ready to go an hour before showtime that evening so we could all have cocktails and cheese together in their room. I told her that of course we would do that. [FORESHADOWING!]

So, we got back to our cabin, cleaned Bee up in the shower (Have I mentioned yet how much I like the showers? Well, they're excellent.), and got her regretfully into bed. At that point, DH and I decided we needed a rest, so we both laid down for naps of our own. I could have sworn I set the alarm, but apparently I didn't because I was woken up by the sound of my dad knocking at the door between our cabins to see if we were ready for cocktails yet as it was after 5pm.

Oh. Heck. No.

Cue me racing around the cabin like a madwoman. I got Bee up and into her adorable formal night dress in record time. I knew that her presence in my parents' cabin was the most important thing, so I tossed her through the door and ran to get my own clothes on. It took me, literally, less than 5 minutes to get my gown on and hair up, and then I could enter my parents' cabin looking halfway prepared. Then I finished with Bee's hair and my own makeup, and of course all of this before DH manged to finish getting up and putting his suit on. My mom was super impressed at how fast I had gotten my hair in place.

So, everything was together, and after sharing some more of our bountiful cheese plates, we headed up to see the Aladdin show. I had heard that this was the one not to miss. Bee is usually good about sitting for movies and the like, but she's never seen a live show like this. We had explained to her that, if she could sit and was quiet throughout, that we would consider taking her to a show at the theater near where her daddy works (something she had expressed interest in), so she knew what her job was for the evening. I will say that she performed marvelously!

Outside the theater we ran into yet another new friend, but without our autograph book!

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Afraid we might have a repeat of the Woody incident from earlier in the day, I started coaching her while we were in line. I asked her what she was going to ask Minnie when she got up to her. I don't remember what she actually said to Minnie, but having a job to do seemed to make the difference! She was not afraid of characters again the entire trip.

Bee loved the show. She especially liked all the streamers and stuff that rained down on the crowd from time to time. Although she'd never had much interest in the Aladdin movie before that evening, it's now become one of her favorites.

There was a loooooonnnnnggggg line for photos at the staircase, and our dinner was to start fairly soon, but we decided to wait anyways because, darnit, I was going to get one nice picture of everyone in their pretty formalwear. I also sent DH back to the room to get Bee's autograph book. This was useful as we also decided to get our picture with the Captain. I had left special room in the book for officers' signatures. There were free drinks and live music during this time, so we were at leatst entertained during our wait. Bee danced with her grandpa.

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And here's the finished product!

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I think it was worth it.

Despite being late to dinner, we were not nearly as late as some other folks. Also, Rita and Frano were forgiving. This would turn out to be the only dinner in the Enchanted Garden for DH and myself, and I don't think we missed much. We saw the lights change, but it wasn't a big deal or anything. The food was good, but no better than at the other two main dining rooms on board. At the end of the evening, Frano made Bee's menu into a flower, which was cute (you can see it in the photo below). Then we all headed back to our staterooms to remark over our new towel animal and get some rest.

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Episode VIII: The One with All the Princesses

I woke up to an alarm and got dressed. I grabbed a coffee from on deck and brought it back down to the room. I sat out on the balcony and had my coffee while the waves went by. I considered getting my family up to actually go to a real sit down breakfast, so I went back into the room and checked the time. It was then that my eyes fell onto the tickets. The tickets for that morning's character breakfast. Which was already started.

I want all of you on the Disboards know that I am actually a very organized person. I'm almost never late for things, and I don't forget appointments. But I had now missed an appointment twice, in less than one day.

So, for the second time in only a few hours I found myself running around the cabin, waking up my family, getting them dressed, and pushing them out the door. We ran to Animator's Palace, late for the breakfast, but oddly, not the last people there. So I felt bad, but not too bad. However, once we were seated and waiting for our first visitor, I realized that I had forgotten the autograph book back in the room. So I sent DH to go get it. This was when I decided that, from then on, one of us would carry our bag wherever we went, and that both the camera and the autograph book would always be in that bag. Luckily, we didn't really have these problems again.

So, we got some photos (but no signature) from Jake (of the Neverland pirates). This was not a problem, because I was pretty sure that Bee had no idea who he is. Sadly, since our return, she has gotten into this show, so now I have guilt that we don't have his autograph.

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Also visiting us that morning were Doc McStuffins, Sofia, and Mickey himself. The food was pretty good, and I was glad we got to some of these characters that I wouldn't have waited in line for otherwise, but they did all seem a bit rushed. This was particularly odd because the characters that we met in the lines were very interactive and attentive always.

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Afterwards, there was some time before our remaining tickets of the day (which I was now on top of), so the plan was to put Bee into the kid's club and have some free time. We dropped her off and she seemed fine, so we started a stem to stern tour of the ship.

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We ran into my parents hanging out in the adults only area. They seemed happy. We also walked through the atrium during Jack-Jack's Diaper Dash, which was good because I'd really wanted to catch it. It was cute.

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It was about then that we realized there was some sort of message on the wave phone. We hadn't heard it so we didn't know when it had gone off, and we didn't really know what it was saying. So we headed over to Oceaneer's to see what was going on. Apparently, the Bee had indicated several times that she wanted to see us and that she wanted to leave. She wasn't crying or anything, and she could be distracted with other fun things to do, but she'd eventually come back to the CMs and ask for us. This was dumbfounding, because she usually is happy to play without us at preschool and the like. In fact, when I went to get her, she excitedly showed me the coloring she'd been working on, and then asked to leave.

This would, unfortunately, turn out to be a recurring problem which prevented us from putting her in the kid's clubs for any significant length of time. We did have my parents to rely on as occasional babysitters, but otherwise, it kind of tied us to the kid for the remainder of the trip. '

We caught some lunch, and met a few friends in the atrium while waiting for our appointments with the princesses.

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This time with autograph book!

This was one of the many reasons I was excited to go on the cruise. I knew I'd be able to let Bee meet a good portion of the Disney pantheon without having to wait hours in line at the parks.

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I happen to have admired this Tiana before on others' trip reports. She is stunning.

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And of course, directly after this appointment, it was time to meet everyone's favorite girls from Arendelle!

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After spending half the day visiting characters, we were more than a little tired out. Next up was nap time for the Bee (but not for us, since I was all paranoid from what happened the evening before!). We asked my parents to keep the door between our rooms open while Bee slept and DH and I got to spend a little of the adult time we had gotten cheated out of earlier in the day. We headed to O'Gills to see if they had anything interesting on tap. DH found something he liked, but I wasn't impressed (I like dark porters, and there wasn't a lot of that). So, instead, I got to have the experience of pointing to another lady at the bar and saying, "I'll have what she's having." It turned out she was having a Kir Royale, which I love, but would not have thought to order at an Irish style pub.

DH and I staked out a corner booth and availed ourselves of some of the free games. We ended up playing Scrabble. Then we headed back to the room. The Bee was up and having the cheese plate with my parents while watching Pixar movies on demand. No one was really interested in seeing the show that evening, as I'd heard was it was just meh. We all got cleaned up for dinner and headed to the Royal Court. Although I love the atmosphere of Animator's Palate, I think we were all in agreement that Royal Court had the best food.

The next day was our first landfall of the trip, and we were all looking forward to our scheduled excursions at St. Martin.
 
Great to see your update!

I see the princesses had holiday flowers on their hair. Very nice touch. I did not see them wearing those on our merry time cruise! I wonder if that lovely Tiana is the same one we saw on Magic 2013. She was gorgeous.:lovestruc

Our DD did not enjoy the kids club at age 3. She LOVED and just wanted to go there all the time at age 5. You never know...maybe you can have more adult time on the next cruise!:)
 
Now I'm super excited to be on the fantasy this september with my dd who turns 5 on the cruise!!! She will probably do what your dd did and have the CMs call me or DH constantly from the kids club lol
 


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