Help! Calling All Dcl Cruisers!

[deannalew]

Hi everyone!

My DH and I were planning a 7 day land and sea cruise for our anniversary in June 2003. After looking at some things, we are thinking about doing the 7 night cruise instead. This will be our first cruise and so we have some questions.

HELP! CALLING ALL DCL CRUISERS!

My DH wants to know if we will get bored on the ship if we are on it for 7 days?

Can you tell us what they do on the Magic during the 7 day cruise that is different than the 4 day (additional stuff since you are on the ship for more days)?

AND....please tell us your experiences/excursions (or maybe something inexpensive you did instead of an acutal excursion??) on St. Marteen and St. Thomas/St. Johns.

We are interested in possibly parasailing on St. Johns....anyone do that?

Thank you so much! We are so excited to be planning this vacation! Your help is soooo appreciated.

 

[Bri]

I haven't taken the four day on Disney, so I'm not good with the details on difference but I thought I could mention the big difference. In the past, 3 or 4 days seems too short to me. Just when you get used to a ship and where everything is, you are gone. You get to more of things a cruise ship is about pamper yourself and enjoy your family. The seven night has a few more theme dinners. I believe the 7 night is the only option for high tea and brunch at Palo's. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong on that one. 7 nights gives you a better chance of getting to Palo's or getting there more than once. More Rainforest room.
In regards to the islands, I really St. Thomas and St. Marteen. My family enjoys snorkeling and the beaches. In St. Marteen, I recommend the Golden Eagle catamaran. On St. Thomas, there are several nice beaches and we did a sailboat for the first time last June.

 

[Cruise]

Keep in mind too that on the 7 day cruise, you'll really only have 3 days at sea. The other days, you probably will be off the ship on the islands anyway.

Part of the appeal of the 7 day for me were the days at sea. We never got bored. There were always plenty of activities to take part in and sometimes we just relaxed by the pool. Before we knew it, it was time to get ready for the show and dinner. I don't think 3 or 4 days would have been nearly enough for us.

Some of the additional things you were asking about are the Art of Entertainment series, Behind the Scenes, etc. These are classes or guided tours or simply gatherings for a talk about different topics. How to throw a party, how the theater works, tours of the galley. There is a wine tasting siminar that you can sign up for. There are games - basketball and ping pong tournements, pictionary, trivia. There are movies available in the theater. All kinds of things

HTH,
Julie

 

[deannalew]

Thanks for the info....

Has anyone done para sailing on St. Johns before? We keep reading about it, but none of the excursions mention it.

 

[duskysmom]

My dh and dd(10)parasailed tandem on Castaway Cay.....They loved it...dh had parasailed years ago (alone) and said it was much more fun with someone. It was $70 pp, but they both enjoyed it so much that they didn't mind the cost.

We did our own tour on St. M.....didn't want to spend $20/pp to do the shopping tour and be subject to someone else's time table. We found a taxi driver who agreed to show us the island for 2-3 hours for $40 total (four of us!). He stopped where we wanted to shop and kept going when we wanted to finish up and get to the beach.

On St. T....we knew which beach we wanted to go to, so we just arranged our own taxi to and from (Coki Beach $7pp each way)

 

[deannalew]

Thanks for the information about parasailing on Cataway Cay! My husband and I are very interested in doing that!

We are also really interested in doing the excursions on our own on the islands like you did and another one I read.

I wonder if anyone has done the butterfly farm, though? That is the only one that really sounds interesting to us that we probably can't book on our own.

 

["Ginger"]

My family and I have been on 4 Disney Cruises. Our first was a 3 days which was not long enough. Our last 3 have been 7 nights and we still do not have enough time to do everything. We'll be doing the Western Carribean cruise for Halloween this year. We'll have even less time onboard the ship with the Western itinerary, only 2 days at sea. I think we may need a vacation after see the new ports of call.

Never a boring moment on a Disney Cruise....

 

[SingingMom]

We MUST go on another 7 day cruise, because we didn't get to do HALF of what we wanted!!

Your best bet is to visit Dave's site www.dcltribute.com and browse through some of the Daily Navigators. That will be info enough to squash any thoughts about being "bored"!! There is SO MUCH to do!! I can't wait until we can return!

 

[stormkrow]

All the discussion has been about the eastern Caribbean Cruise. As of this May, DCL will now be offering the western Caribbean Cruise on alternating weeks with the eastern Caribbean cruise.

If you want to have more stops (do you really think you'll be bored during those days at sea?), the western Caribbean cruise has four stops (Key West, Cayman, Cozumel, and Castaway Cay) instead of three on the eastern version. That means one less day at sea.

Just something else to consider!