Of course they added Broadway Trivia because you asked!
I’m sorry you missed Lookout Cay - it must have been really bad if they cancelled the night before! But I’m glad you got to visit Castaway Cay!
We were on a 7 night. But that seems odd that they wouldn't do this on shorter cruises. I guess a way to get people to book a longer cruise maybe.
I didn’t do bad but was far from the best in the room, which was humbling because I requested it to be added to the day’s activities. But it was so much fun to be in a room with other theatre kids singing songs from different shows for an hour!
I loved this. For ours (August of 2018) it was Winnie the Pooh. It was a live action but more of the back story. I knew I wanted to see it but wasn't going to pay the money for it. When I saw that it was playing on the cruise I was so excited and we went one day. I think it was raining that day so a good rainy day activity.
August 17
Embarkation day
Our First Steps on the Magic
I got out of bed at 7 in the morning on our embarkation day and got dressed to start the day. Our PAT wasn’t until 12:00, but I was just too excited to lay in bed any longer! A little OOTD, featuring my Lightning McQueen crocs:
Mom and Grace were still sleeping when I finished getting dressed, but dad and I decided to go check out the breakfast the hotel was offering. It was a good selection, actually, with eggs, biscuits, gravy, bacon, sausage, your typical waffle maker, and these cheesy potatoes that looked really good. I just couldn’t eat anything! On big days like this, I always seem to be so excited that I can’t eat breakfast. The anticipation is too much for me. I fixed myself a bowl of cereal and milk and a little cup of coffee and once dad was finished eating, we went back to the room. There, Mom & Grace were finishing up getting ready and it was their turn to go get some breakfast.
When they came back, it was closer to 9:00. Thankfully, I had checked Facebook, because if I hadn’t, I would have missed another pre-arrival form that gets emailed the morning of your embarkation day. It was a very simple health questionnaire, and mom & I finished it quickly for both staterooms.
We had some hours to fill, and ended up watching Spongebob Squarepants in the hotel room until 10:30 or so. Even though we had an hour and a half until our actual PAT, the parents decided they just couldn’t sit around any longer. Plus, we had to check out of the room in half an hour anyway and we didn’t know what traffic would look like, so we decided to head to the port a little early. We threw our bags into the back of the truck and then we were off!
Like I said, the port was very close to our hotel, so we weren’t on the road for even 10 minutes before we started seeing signs directing us to the Magic. I really did feel like a kid as we drove over the bridge to the terminal, hyper focused on the skyline in front of me waiting to see the first glimpse of the ship. In a lot of ways, it was like seeing the castle for the first time when these two red stacks came into our sightline:
As we pulled up to the building where we’d check in, we were greeted by tons of friendly porters who assisted us with our bags. Then we had to wait to park, since the parking lot didn’t open until 11 and it was ~10:45. There were a couple of cars in front of us waiting to park, and dad got out of the truck to talk to some other dads who were standing around. I also jumped out to take a few photos of the ship.
Once we parked, I told my family I didn’t want to get out of the car until 11:30 because I heard DCL was going to be strict about our time and I didn’t want us to be standing outside in the brutal heat for an hour. Mom & dad decided they were going to stand outside anyway and look at the ship, but Grace and I sat in the car and I connected to the DCL wifi for the first time, which meant I could start looking at the Navigator!
The first thing I did was look for our dining rotation this trip. What does that mean? Well, with Disney Cruise Line, each ship has three rotational dining rooms that you’ll enjoy throughout your week. Each night you’ll visit a different one, and your dining staff will rotate with you. I was very eager to see what our rotation was, as we had booked Palo dinner for one evening. Our plan was to head to dining services as soon as we got on board to see if we could switch our dinner reservation to Brunch, but I felt like our chances could be slim given our later PAT for the day. If we did dinner at Palo, we would miss a “regular” menu at one of the restaurants, and I really didn’t want to miss the show at Rapunzel’s Royal Table, so I was anxious to know what we’d be skipping for Palo.
Our rotation was LAARL, so we’d start with Lumiere’s, do Animator’s Palate twice in a row for the Pirate Night menu and the regular menu, do Rapunzel’s Royal Table once, and then end at Lumiere’s/have breakfast at Lumiere’s before we disembarked. And the Palo reservation fell on Rapunzel’s Royal Table evening, so I was determined to change things around once we got on board.
Worth mentioning is that there are also two dining times for Disney Cruise Line – the first seating is at 5:45 and the second seating is at 8:15. This time, we chose the 5:45 seating.
I think I sat on my phone for 15 minutes once I had access to our navigator just looking at the activities every day and the different characters that would be meeting like this:
So at 11:20ish, we grabbed our bags and went to get in the “holding line” for the 12:00-12:15 PAT arrivals.
Surprisingly, there were very few people in this terminal on this morning. Everyone says that they are very strict about PAT times, but with only one other family around, a CM waved us over and said she’d pixie dust us to get us in sooner than our PAT, which was extremely kind of her!
We made our way inside and got in line to go through security. It looked long but it moved very, very quickly. We presented our boarding passes & passports, a CM scanned our magic band, and then it was time for us to go through the bag check/metal detectors. All in all, we were past security by 11:30 – mind you, that was maybe 10 or 11 minutes after the first Cast Member told us we could go inside! So I was very pleasantly surprised at how quickly this all moved.
Here we are entering the famous DCL terminal!
I love that even the port is fun and gets you excited to be on the boat! The first thing we did was get some photos taken by two incredible Shutters CMs, Nemo & Aaron, who we’d see time and time again on our sailing and loved getting to know.
Once we were done with the Shutters photos, we decided to head out to the observation deck to get some more photos and see the ship up close for the very first time.
It was quite warm out, so once we were done, we went back inside to find a seat so I could help my parents connect to the on-board WiFi and set up our Navigator chat. One great feature of the Navigator is that even if you don’t have a WiFi package, you can message members of your party with an in-app messaging system! You can also message people outside of your stateroom & traveling party, you just need their unique code.
They started the boarding process closer to 12 and it was so thrilling hearing those “when you wish upon a star” chimes for the first time! We were in Boarding Group 13, so we’d still have to wait some time to board, but dad filled that time collecting pressed pennies.
Finally, it was our turn to board and walk through these iconic ears for the very first time!
By 12:30, our feet were on the Magic, and a Cast Member was welcoming our family onto the ship!
Our first stop was to head to dining services to see if we could change our Palo reservation. Dining Services was at Soul Cat Lounge, which is on the atrium level, so we didn’t have far to go. I was shocked to see that there were only 2 or 3 families ahead of us, as I was told to anticipate a long wait to speak to the Palo team.
I was even more shocked to reach the front of the line and hear that Palo had brunch availability for the very next morning! We changed our reservation from dinner to brunch and I was a very happy girl.
With all this talk about brunch, we were hungry. I heard the buffet, Cabanas, could be pretty crowded before staterooms opened, so we decided to head to Rapunzel’s Royal Table, where a dining room was serving lunch. That was a really nice touch to DCL – if you didn’t want Cabanas for breakfast or lunch on any given day, you could always visit Lumiere’s for breakfast or Rapunzel’s Royal Table for a seated lunch included in the cost of your cruise.
They brought us some rolls to start. I wanted something lighter, so I had a bowl of soup and a salad for lunch. I had the Leek & Potato Soup with Soda Bread and the Mixed Salad with a raspberry vinaigrette dressing.
Honestly, neither of them were anything to write home about. Didn’t love the potato soup, but the produce was really fresh and crispy in the salad and I loved the raspberry dressing.
I ordered the welcome aboard ice cream sundae for dessert, but I only had a spoonful of it. Again, it just wasn’t anything spectacular.
Honestly? The embarkation sit-down lunch was a bit of a bust. Not only did it take much longer than we anticipated, the menu was kind of blah. We ended up wishing we had gone to Cabana’s, and we’ll do that next time we sail. We didn’t go to the dining room for lunch again during the cruise, but I did notice that the menu on every other day was much more robust, with offerings like meatloaf, burgers, pasta, and chocolate lava cake.
We had no time to sit and be disappointed, though. By the time we were done eating, staterooms were open and ready for us, and it was time to head upstairs to see our rooms for the first time!
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