Just back from SWDAS on Fantasy Jan 29- Feb 5

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Anyone have any questions? I'm debating doing a trip report since it will be a bit before our next cruise.

Just a couple notes...

Not sure how accurate this is but I heard there were 1500 people scheduled for the cruise and only 1364 made it on past COVID testing.

Our original schedule was changed on the Tuesday before we left on Saturday. We went from Castaway, Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Falmouth to the below:

Though to be fair we were pretty sure for a month that we weren't doing Grand Cayman and that it would be canceled.

Saturday	Port Canaveral, Florida
Sunday	Nassau, The Bahamas
Monday	Disney Castaway Cay, The Bahamas
Tuesday	Day at Sea
Wednesday	Cozumel, Mexico
Thursday	Costa Maya, Mexico
Friday	Day at Sea
Saturday	Port Canaveral, Florida

We ended up having two medical emergencies, which I felt was pretty rare. We had to turn around right after we left Port Canaveral, we really hadn't even left the port yet. The second we had to go to Cozumel and they did a boat transfer.

Our Costa Maya port day was canceled very last minute. We were told it was from rough seas yet at least 3 other cruise ships had docked that day so I'm suspicious that it wasn't COVID related. But doubt we'll ever know for sure. We did not get any onboard credit for missing the port. We just had another sea day. We had wondered if we might do a makeup second day at Castaway but we did not.

Overall we had a fantastic time. I loved the Star Wars day at sea, though we'd never done one before COVID to compare it to.

We did the Remy desserts, many alcohol tastings and the Alebrije excursion on Cozumel.

Anyone have any questions?

 

[cmarsh31]

Remy Desserts! We have this booked in 2 weeks!

 

[JM_97]

1. I've seen where there is no sail away party or pirate night. What were the alternatives like?
2. How were the dining rooms? Any noticeable differences or changes in both the food and service?
3. Overall, do you think DCL is still worth the price with the alterations in place?

 

[disEAR]

Anyone have any questions? I'm debating doing a trip report since it will be a bit before our next cruise.


Overall we had a fantastic time. I loved the Star Wars day at sea, though we'd never done one before COVID to compare it to.


Anyone have any questions?

Any specific callouts from your Star Wars day at sea?

 

[princesserin1350]

I would love to know which alcohol tastings you did and which were your favorite(s). Also, what were the best parts of SWDAS (in your opinion)? I'm sure that day goes fast so trying to plan out where to spend our time when we sail on 2/26!

 

[Alaska777]

Oh those covid numbers scare me….

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Remy Desserts! We have this booked in 2 weeks!

Just wait until you have the famous lemon dessert. Best thing I've ever eaten.

1. I've seen where there is no sail away party or pirate night. What were the alternatives like?
2. How were the dining rooms? Any noticeable differences or changes in both the food and service?
3. Overall, do you think DCL is still worth the price with the alterations in place?

So instead of sail away, you enter the ship party by party and Mickey and Minnie are there to wave at you and when the lobby is socially distanced full, they do a little dance. We didn't have a pirates night because we had star wars night. They did, however, do some of the pirate game shows a different night. Some guests did dress as pirates and they had pirate characters out and about (Hook/Smee, Peter Pan, fab 5 dressed as pirates). But we did not have a dining room pirate show. But again, that was due to Star Wars day at sea. We did go on a cruise in December that had a small pirate show in the dining room.

Some people on our cruise were complaining about food quality, but we both really enjoyed everything we had. I think it is important to listen to the wait staffs recommendations. A couple times we were warned off dishes and I do think they know what they're talking about. Our wait staff was excellent, as usual. We even got recognized by our old head server, who was now the dining manager, Lisa from Scotland. I'm continually amazed at how the wait staff recognizes and remembers past guests.

I think it is worth the price, but I have a few disclaimers. We live in Florida so we paid a discounted FL resident rate. This was only our 5th cruise, so we're still happy with perhaps the basics. We like to meet the characters (which there were plenty of), we love to do trivia (plenty of those) and the broadway style shows were all excellent. We also like to watch the movies in the theater and we were very happy that they played all 11 of the SW movies.

Any specific callouts from your Star Wars day at sea?

Well winning Super Fan trivia was amazing. We also loved the dinner menu. We had really good character interactions with Ezra and Sabine, the Gamorrean Guard and Boba Fett. I enjoyed watching SW movies on the big screen as well. It was also really fun just to be in the SW atmosphere with other guests dressing up. I think I will do a trip report so I'll write a lot more and have tons of pictures.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

I would love to know which alcohol tastings you did and which were your favorite(s). Also, what were the best parts of SWDAS (in your opinion)? I'm sure that day goes fast so trying to plan out where to spend our time when we sail on 2/26!

We did 4: bourbon, whiskey, martini and kick start your day.

Bourbon was my least fav.

Kick start your day was second worst, we had 5 drinks but only two were alcoholic. The other 3 were blended fruit/veg smoothies, which were good, but I was kind of surprised we paid for an alcohol tasting and over half the drinks were non-alcoholic. I will admit breakfast type drinks are not my fav, we had mimosas and bloody marys. Mostly signed up for that tasting since my boyfriend is a big fan of the early morning type drinks. He did enjoy it.

Whiskey and Martini were both at the top of my list. This is the second martini tasting we've done. I really enjoy the different drinks the bartenders come up with for martinis. Whiskey just had a really good bartender who did an interesting talk and I enjoyed the drinks.

Best parts of SWDAS were the dinner menu, the characters, the movies in the theater and just the general atmosphere.

The worst part was the merch. There really wasn't a lot to pick from. They had a couple kid's costumes, a tshirt for kids and for adults, a SWDAS pin, shoulder porgs and a couple other small things.



A strategy that worked well for us was to try to hit as many of the activities as early as you could. That way if you get shut out you can try to catch a later one. We did a 10 am SW at Lightspeed, which was a hilarious little show were 3 crew members tell the story of the original trilogy in a super fast and condensed manner, and hilarity ensues. That show did fill to capacity because they skip every other row and 3 seats in between parties.



We also did an early quotes trivia and that filled up. We did not do the SW 101, it might be worth it but since we are super fans we skipped it.

Something that wasn't widely advertised was a Porg scavenger hunt that's available at the Port Adventures desk. It's just a fun little activity, I might suggest playing while you look for characters in the lobby.

There are several SW super fan shows throughout the day, the host will call out trivia questions and people from the audience who answer correctly get to go up, and are further winnowed down by answering trivia questions. The final round between 2 people was to name as many characters as you recognize on a TV screen in 45 seconds. They started out real easy and got very hard toward the end.

There is also a Padawan show which I assumed was for younger guests and we never made it to that.

If you want to see SW movies in the theater, the good news is they played them for the entire week. I think Phantom Menace was played several times the first day, Attack of the Clones the 2nd, Revenge of the Sith on the 3rd. SW day itself had the original trilogy and the new one, then Rogue One the 5th day and Solo the 6th. So you can watch SW movies without spending SWDAS in the theater.

The characters can be a bit frustrating, if you want to see particular ones the navigator app does not list particular characters, it will just say characters from 10:30-11:30. All together, in the lobby we saw Ahsoka, Ezra and Sabine (from Rebels), Boba Fett, Gamorrean Guard, Zam Wessel, 2 Imperial officers, stormtroopers and Jawas. We did try to trade something with the Jawas and they said they didn't have anything to trade, so they may or may not be trading. I'm sure we ended up missing some characters in the lobby because we did not hang out all day, but we did check back in between other activities.

You need to reserve a timed ticket time to meet R2 and C3P0, Chewie and Vader. They meet with backdrops back in the Tube and Animator's Palate. So you can't just walk by and see them.

Stormtroopers also roam the top deck, the times are listed in the navigator.



There's tons of little details and surprises and photo backdrops as well. We got lattes and they had Boba Fett and BB8 drawn on top in foam. There were SW themed snacks in the Cove Cafe case. Things like that.





We managed to do one drawing session and drew porgs. We also walked by at another time and saw them drawing BB8.

There is a stage show up on deck towards evening where all the characters come out and there are two lightsaber battles and a bit of pyro.

Then the SW fireworks show was actually the day after SWDAS for us. It is short but I wouldn't miss it.

It was also super fun wearing costumes.




I'm sure there was a ton of stuff we still missed, but we just had a great time.

 

[lilmc]

Mickey and Minnie are there to wave at you and when the lobby is socially distanced full, they do a little dance.

I didn’t understand the social distancing here. We were the week before you and the lobby sequence caused a significant backup in the tight quarters of the gangway.

 

[soniam]

Just wait until you have the famous lemon dessert. Best thing I've ever eaten.

View attachment 645115

Isn't that so amazing!!!!!!!! I can't wait to do it again on our July cruise. Did you like the rest of the desserts and liquors?

The SWDAS sounds cooler than I thought it would. I think showing the movies in the theater all week is brilliant. We might have to try for one of these sometime. Too many itineraries, too little time

How was the weather? It seemed to look sketchy from what other cruisers were posting.

You didn't miss much at Costa Maya in my opinion, but it's still a bummer to miss out on stuff. We missed Cozumel one cruise due to a tropical storm. We were refunded port and excursion fees but nothing else. We didn't mind too much. We aren't big fans of Cozumel but did want to do the caving excursion.

Sounds like you had a great time otherwise! I am so glad. I was worried about the weather and itinerary changes.

 

[Sorcerer's Dad]

Anyone have any questions? I'm debating doing a trip report since it will be a bit before our next cruise.

Just a couple notes...

Not sure how accurate this is but I heard there were 1500 people scheduled for the cruise and only 1364 made it on past COVID testing.

Our original schedule was changed on the Tuesday before we left on Saturday. We went from Castaway, Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Falmouth to the below:

Though to be fair we were pretty sure for a month that we weren't doing Grand Cayman and that it would be canceled.

Saturday	Port Canaveral, Florida
Sunday	Nassau, The Bahamas
Monday	Disney Castaway Cay, The Bahamas
Tuesday	Day at Sea
Wednesday	Cozumel, Mexico
Thursday	Costa Maya, Mexico
Friday	Day at Sea
Saturday	Port Canaveral, Florida

We ended up having two medical emergencies, which I felt was pretty rare. We had to turn around right after we left Port Canaveral, we really hadn't even left the port yet. The second we had to go to Cozumel and they did a boat transfer.

Our Costa Maya port day was canceled very last minute. We were told it was from rough seas yet at least 3 other cruise ships had docked that day so I'm suspicious that it wasn't COVID related. But doubt we'll ever know for sure. We did not get any onboard credit for missing the port. We just had another sea day. We had wondered if we might do a makeup second day at Castaway but we did not.

Overall we had a fantastic time. I loved the Star Wars day at sea, though we'd never done one before COVID to compare it to.

We did the Remy desserts, many alcohol tastings and the Alebrije excursion on Cozumel.

Anyone have any questions?

View attachment 645073

Did you play any bingo? Paper/electronic tablets?

Are the shops open? How about the jewelry shop?

 

[IcedCoffee52]

How were the lines for the pool? Did you have to wait long?

Do they play SW movies on the screen at the pool? My sons would die of excitement to watch SW while swimming.

 

[princesscinderella]

Were the Remy desserts all cake based? I have celiac and have to eat gluten free and I’d love to book it but not sure if it can be accommodated.

 

[dreynolds1982]

What was it about the Bourbon tasting you didn't care for? We have that booked and we're both big bourbon fans. We also have the tequila/marg tasting booked.

 

[Anthony Vito]

Question about the key cards - just watching a YouTube video from a couple weeks ago with a couple on embarkation day on the Fantasy: they said you get your key cards left outside your stateroom when the rooms open up. What do you do for the few hours before you can get to the room? How can you buy drinks/coffee/etc.?

 

[Calantha]

What do you do for the few hours before you can get to the room? How can you buy drinks/coffee/etc.?

You give them your room number and they’ll probably give you a paper receipt to sign. Your picture always pops up as soon as you give them the room number.

 

[soniam]

Were the Remy desserts all cake based? I have celiac and have to eat gluten free and I’d love to book it but not sure if it can be accommodated.

They are not all "cake" based, but it's still hard to tell if they used any flour. Sometimes they use flour for things that seem puddingy/creamy. Also, the dessert may not really seem to have cake in it, because they are so intricate, but it really could have cake as a small layer. I would contact them to find out how/if they can accommodate you.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

I didn’t understand the social distancing here. We were the week before you and the lobby sequence caused a significant backup in the tight quarters of the gangway.

Yeah, it's just a theory but I feel like when social distancing is concerned it's more about optics. Not many people post videos or pics about waiting on the gangway, but there are going to be videos of the welcome show circulating.

Isn't that so amazing!!!!!!!! I can't wait to do it again on our July cruise. Did you like the rest of the desserts and liquors?

The SWDAS sounds cooler than I thought it would. I think showing the movies in the theater all week is brilliant. We might have to try for one of these sometime. Too many itineraries, too little time

How was the weather? It seemed to look sketchy from what other cruisers were posting.

You didn't miss much at Costa Maya in my opinion, but it's still a bummer to miss out on stuff. We missed Cozumel one cruise due to a tropical storm. We were refunded port and excursion fees but nothing else. We didn't mind too much. We aren't big fans of Cozumel but did want to do the caving excursion.

Sounds like you had a great time otherwise! I am so glad. I was worried about the weather and itinerary changes.

I had 3 top desserts, 2 that were very good and 1 that I kind of didn't care for. I am going to dream about two of the desserts, including that lemon.

You know how we are with Star Wars, I know the day was a little scaled down from what it used to be. They didn't have the guest speaker, they didn't do droid races and I think there were small shows down in the lobby throughout the day. But besides these things I looked at old navigators and it looks like we got most of the events.

The weather got better as the week went on. The day we boarded, Saturday, was the coldest day in FL in 4 years, I believe. It got below freezing. The first day at sea was also chilly, our Castaway day was sunny but we didn't go into the water. By the end of the week the temps hit 80 degrees and people were using the ship's pool as usual.

It didn't bother us too much, we're not big pool people on the ship anyway. We usually do our swimming and slides at nighttime so I don't need to worry so much about sun tan lotion.

Honestly we were just happy to be on the ship. I would have liked to see Costa Maya but we got to do our most looked forward to excursion on Cozumel (alebrije) anyway.

Did you play any bingo? Paper/electronic tablets?

Are the shops open? How about the jewelry shop?

We're not bingo people but we did walk by once and I saw someone with a paper card. People did show up way early for bingo because capacity was limited.

All the shops were open, though I feel like the merch suffered from the same shipping delays as the parks merch does. There really wasn't much SWDAS stuff.

The giant jewelry shop was open but we didn't go in. Apparently it used to be a Tiffany's and is not anymore, someone in our cruise fb group was sad about that.

How were the lines for the pool? Did you have to wait long?

Do they play SW movies on the screen at the pool? My sons would die of excitement to watch SW while swimming.

We had really cold weather the first couple days, but after that there was never a huge demand for the pools. I don't even think they had to swap out after 15 minutes most of the days.

No SW movies, but they had the Resistance and Rebels cartoons playing throughout the day on the funnel vision.

Were the Remy desserts all cake based? I have celiac and have to eat gluten free and I’d love to book it but not sure if it can be accommodated.

I think you'll have to follow the good advice of soniam. What I might do is go ahead and sign up for the Remy dessert before the sailing, since it does fill up. Then once you board the ship immediately go to guest services and ask them about it. They will most likely put you in touch with Remy.

What was it about the Bourbon tasting you didn't care for? We have that booked and we're both big bourbon fans. We also have the tequila/marg tasting booked.

Honestly it wasn't the bourbon, we had a couple in our tasting who kind of took the whole thing over and the bartender either didn't care to or couldn't get control back. I was annoyed at having to listen to them so it soured the whole experience.

Question about the key cards - just watching a YouTube video from a couple weeks ago with a couple on embarkation day on the Fantasy: they said you get your key cards left outside your stateroom when the rooms open up. What do you do for the few hours before you can get to the room? How can you buy drinks/coffee/etc.?

Yep, they are in the little fish or seahorse outside your door. You will know when the rooms are ready because they keep the doors outside the staircases closed until you're good to go.

We spent our time eating at cabanas and then exploring the ship. You also have to do your muster drill check in on the app at the location specified on the app. Some people wear their swimsuits under their clothes or bring them with their carry ons and get some pool time in. Just be smart with your carry ons, maybe try to bring backpacks so it's easy to walk around with them before you get into your room. If you don't want to lug it around send it at the curbside luggage pick up.

 

[lilmc]

Were the Remy desserts all cake based? I have celiac and have to eat gluten free and I’d love to book it but not sure if it can be accommodated.

What I might do is go ahead and sign up for the Remy dessert before the sailing, since it does fill up. Then once you board the ship immediately go to guest services and ask them about it. They will most likely put you in touch with Remy

I agree I would sign up, but then I’d ask them immediately if gluten free can be accommodated. The lemon takes 3 days to make. It might be too late if already on board.

 

[Me'Me 9]

Anyone have any questions? I'm debating doing a trip report since it will be a bit before our next cruise.

Just a couple notes...

Not sure how accurate this is but I heard there were 1500 people scheduled for the cruise and only 1364 made it on past COVID testing.

Our original schedule was changed on the Tuesday before we left on Saturday. We went from Castaway, Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Falmouth to the below:

Though to be fair we were pretty sure for a month that we weren't doing Grand Cayman and that it would be canceled.

Saturday	Port Canaveral, Florida
Sunday	Nassau, The Bahamas
Monday	Disney Castaway Cay, The Bahamas
Tuesday	Day at Sea
Wednesday	Cozumel, Mexico
Thursday	Costa Maya, Mexico
Friday	Day at Sea
Saturday	Port Canaveral, Florida

We ended up having two medical emergencies, which I felt was pretty rare. We had to turn around right after we left Port Canaveral, we really hadn't even left the port yet. The second we had to go to Cozumel and they did a boat transfer.

Our Costa Maya port day was canceled very last minute. We were told it was from rough seas yet at least 3 other cruise ships had docked that day so I'm suspicious that it wasn't COVID related. But doubt we'll ever know for sure. We did not get any onboard credit for missing the port. We just had another sea day. We had wondered if we might do a makeup second day at Castaway but we did not.

Overall we had a fantastic time. I loved the Star Wars day at sea, though we'd never done one before COVID to compare it to.

We did the Remy desserts, many alcohol tastings and the Alebrije excursion on Cozumel.

Anyone have any questions?

View attachment 645073

Hello and thank you for posting your post cruise photos and information!

Did they offer Jedi Training for the kids?