October 31st Dream Cruise

[jabuller]

Last week we just booked our first cruise for the Halloween sailing on the Dream, 4 nights out of Port Canaveral. Looking in here it looks like I'm a little behind on planning and this is our first cruise ever. Tell me about some of your cruise "musts" and thong you wish you had known. Also wondering, if you do Disney before the cruise and use Disney transport to get to the cruise, can you just leave you car in the lot at Disney? We haven't made any decisions on what we are doing pre cruise, but we are coming from NC so we will be driving our own car. We are a family of four and our children are 5 and 6. I'm also interested in hearing about dining options, while I think some places sound great, my husband is not a very adventurous eater, think meat and potatoes sort of guy, so I'm hoping to find options to accommodate us both.

 

[cruisehopeful]

Don't use Disney transport from WDW to the port. We did that and it costs $35./pp and we arrived to the ship after 3:00pm and missed lunch. If you take your own car, you can park it near the port and arrive as early as you want. If you haven't already done so, book one of the earlier boarding times because the time on the cruise flies by and you'll want to have as much as possible on the ship.

Read the navigator every day. Plan out what you want to do. You won't be able to do everything. We didn't read the navigator much and while we were busy the entire time, we didn't even know about most things that were going on.

Castaway Cay is great. We made the mistake of paying for floaties (the donut style) before we went to the island. Well, when we were there, we were too busy doing lots of other things and never got our floaties and couldn't get money back for those. Unless you are wanting to do something that will sell out, don't reserve it ahead of time.

We didn't like Nassau. I went to Atlantis for the day and it was fun, but way overpriced and food that comes with the DCL package is awful. If I ever go there again, I'll buy my own food in one of their good restaurants instead. Not sure I'd go there again. My husband took some type of walking tour in Nassau and said it was terrible. He says he will never get off the ship at that port again. I read a trip report where someone had their passport pickpocketed in Atlantis, so always be very aware of your stuff if you are out and about.

Main thing about the ship is to remember to relax and have fun. There's so much to do and it would be easy to just run from activity to activity all the time.