Rather than give a day by day trip report, Ive decided to go with listing Strengths, Needs Development, and Tips. We are a family of four, DH, DW, DS (9), and DD (6). Best quote of the whole trip was from my DD as we boarded the ship, No healthy food for a week!
Strengths
* Food. Yes the food is good, not quite great but good none the less. There were at least two dishes that I made the mistake of ordering, both times I switched to a different dish and was happy with the second dish. If you do not like the dish, do NOT hesitate to ask your service person for a different dish.
* Palos Dinner. Yes, dinner at Palos is amazing with the service, atmosphere, and food! I had skipped lunch that day, due to a shore trip, and so I was very hungry. I ended up ordering both the steak and a half size pasta dish. I was able to finish the steak, but was able to only eat half of the pasta. All the dishes were excellent! We both ordered the soufflé for desert. My wife got the chocolate with chocolate sauce, I had the chocolate with the white chocolate sauce. We both agreed that the white chocolate sauce worked better with the soufflé.
* Palos Brunch. We had a group brunch with some fellow DISers and we all had a great time. Again the food was great and our server, Alexander was excellent.
* The wonderful autograph books that DISer Stacy put together for our kids. She gave them to us during the brunch. My daughter is still going through the whole book, page by page, two weeks after the cruise.
* Seeing all the DISers on the ship. I ran into at least one DISer every day of the cruise!
* Our verandah. For a family of four, worth every penny! Any time one of us needed some fresh air or to escape from the rest of the family, all we needed to do was slide the door open and enjoy the ocean. A bit cold at night, but still very nice.
* The DISer party that Bill had Saturday afternoon in his suite. Very nice living arrangement and a must for those with large families (5 plus). Bill, again thanks for the party and BTW, Carly enjoyed playing with Melanie too!
*
Castaway Cay! Even by Disneys standards, this is one nice place. They have put together just the right touch of rustic settings so you dont get the feeling that you are in some artificial perfect setting. The weather was perfect for this time of the year sunshine all day long. Water was a bit cold, but manageable. I understand the snorkeling was outstanding; I did not have time to snorkel myself. The kids spent half the time in the club and once I had checked them out, proceeded to bury themselves in the sand so that only their head was showing. Quite a sight to see! Yes parts of the shoreline are covered with broken sand shells so bring those water shoes or tennis shoes to the beach.
* Kids clubs. This is why we paid the big bucks to go on the
Disney Cruise in the first place and they did come through! While the kids did not spend every minute there, they did spend enough time there for my wife and I to have our own time together. My DD was in the 5-7 Club and my DS was in the 8-9 Lab.
* Evening Shows. The Golden Mickeys, Twice Charmed, and Disney Dreams, were all well done shows that the whole family enjoyed (even my DS!). We found that setting as close to stage as possible made it even better.
* Pirate Party was very nice, my DS really enjoyed it very much. The fireworks were a great finale. TIP, for those of you with a starboard verandah, you have the option of enjoying the fireworks from there.
* Extra day at sea. We very much enjoyed the extra day at see that the Eastern Cruise provides verses the Western Cruise. More time to relax on the verandah!
* Galley tour. This free adult activity was at the suggestion of my wife and we both enjoyed the 30 minute tour.
* The pizza. Need I say more? The kids thought it was the best, better than any pizza available back home. Every night, one of us would make our way up to pick up 4-5 slices of pizza and some cups of coke and come back to the stateroom for instant pizza party. We never bothered with room service.
* Soft serve ice cream. In addition to the pizza, the kids helped themselves to as much ice cream as they could eat!
* Goofy's Galley! They serve a very nice chicken sandwich.
* Quite Cove Café. Nice adult place that has a bar, Internet access, magazines to read, and a small food case where one can come by at night and pick up a small desert or cheese and crackers or both!
* Crew members. As my wife said, every crew member was highly motivated and happy to do what they needed to do to make the trip a more enjoyable one.
* Spinning Classes. If you like to attend spinning classes, the ones on the ship are great. The instructors are very nice, the bikes are super nice (Johnny G) and if you wear your heart monitor, you can see your heart rate on the bike display. Feel free to bring your SPD bike shoes and clip in!
Needs Development
* Desserts. My wife and I did not have good luck with the desserts for the first half of the cruise. The desserts got better later in the week, but nothing that was even close to the Palo desserts. For some reason, cakes were a disaster and we learned to avoid them.
* Food service. While our assistant food server was good, the rest of the team did not impress us. Missed food orders, slow service, dry jokes, indifferent to our needs, etc.
* Pancakes. I love pancakes, but to see what
DCL has done to the poor thing is sad. These things could be used as miniature Frisbees. How hard is it to make a pancake?
Tips
* Character Signatures. You can bring pillowcases, t-shirts, etc. to the Service Desk and they will fill out a form to have signed by some of the characters. Be sure to wash the items before the trip and put them in a zip lock bag along with some color permanent markers.
* Shutters Photo Service. Avoid the Shutters mad rush on the last night of the cruise and order your pictures early. Plan on spending more money here than perhaps you had budgeted for.
* Recharging electric devices. If you have more than a couple of electric devices, consider bringing a power strip and extension cord. Then you can run the extension cord from the desk outlet to under the desk, where you can plug everything into the power strip. We forgot the extension cord so the power strip along with rechargeing all the electric devices covered half of the desk!
* Port vs. Starboard stateroom? We really liked our stateroom on the Port side of the ship. For both St. Maarten and St. Thomas the port side faced the beautiful open harbor. As an added bonus, one can see the pelicans dive for their dinner from the port side staterooms while the ship is docked at the Port Canaveral terminal.
* Allow extra time for traffic when you need to get to shore excursions not booked through DCL. We booked all of our shore excursions through Shoretrips dot Com and while we liked the shore excursions themselves, we did not always allow enough time to get from one place to another on St. Maarten. Take the estimated time and add at least another 20-30 minutes. Also, be aware that traffic gets even worse once school lets out at 1:00 PM!
* If your shore excursion includes going out on the water, consider bringing a light rain jacket. The weather does change quickly, like the saying in Texas, If you dont like the weather wait five minutes.
* If you are going on one of those two person boats (Rhino Safari, Rock n- Roll Snorkel, etc.) wear a light rain jacket and sunglasses, regardless of the weather (unless it is very hot). While these boats are super fun to drive, you will get completely wet without a jacket. As fast as these boats go and with the wind blowing, they will protect you from both the wind and water.
* 2-way radios. We brought a pair of Motorola 2-way radios and they worked very well throughout the ship. You can purchase a pair of Motorola 2-way radios that have 10 or 12 mile coverage on the Internet for under $70.
* If you like to participate in group exercise class, be sure to sign up as soon as possible. The popular classes, like spinning, fill up quickly.
I was expecting the worst, but DW really liked it and said she would go again! She said the key is for the banana riders 
to LEAN the direction that the boat driver tells you to lean.
, but hey, if that's your thing... 
