"Olaf's head falls off if you kick it...accidentally of course" **Fantasy Oct 4-11**

[epfootballcutie04]

MNSSHP is on our Disney bucket list still... in fact, we are in cahoots with the friends we traveled with for the cruise in contemplating an adults only trip in 2016 just for MNSSHO and F&W. If course, the five children involved are not happy with us.

I like MNSSHP and the Christmas Party Being an adult, I totally applaud your decision haha. I would be so upset if I were a kid though . We even went trick or treating, which I will go into in my next post... probably this weekend

 

[epfootballcutie04]

I wasn't going to post the rest of the update until this weekend, buttttt I decided to do it now anyway so without further hesitation, I present to you :

MNSSHP Part 2

I left off with Small World.... We decided to make the best of it.



I really don't like that ride. It's so annoying... but it's part of Disney so i sucked it up

This year we actually just stayed in fantasy land and tomorrow land. We didn't do any other ride (except for haunted mansion). We tried our luck at the Sword in the Stone.... we were unsuccessful.





and I GOT MY HIGH SCORE ON BUZZ LIGHTYEAR SPACE RANGER SPIN!!





I have no idea how I got that high, but my normal score is about 16-25,000 so I went WAY above that! I schooled the rest of my family!

This is the 3rd year that we have gone to MNSSHP and the 3rd year that we have missed the parade... shame on us... we are always just SO TIRED by the Parade time. But we made part of the fireworks. I miss regular wishes. I need to go to MK some other time than October



We went on a few other rides and I got my obligatory dole whip then head to the monorail to work our way back to the hotel.... where we discovered that at some point the contemporary lost Jenna and Shawns Luggage.

They had told us before MNSSHP that they had it and were going to deliver it to our room for us and we were all set to go to the party w/ no worries. So imagine their surprise when they got to the hotel room and they had someone else's luggage in our room and no one would help them. No one. No manager, no luggage person no nothing. They were mad. beyond mad. They eventually found it. But not until super late at night and not without giving them a really hard time about it. It was absolutely terrible customer service at the contemporary when handling this situation. Having working the front desk at Disney resorts, i get that it happens... but we would do everything in our power to help the guest and if we couldn't for whatever reason, we would let them get ANYTHING they needed... clothes, toiletries, ANYTHING and mickey would eat the cost. Im just left so underwhelmed with how Jenna and Shawn were treated.

But anyway... overall about Magic Kingdom:

I'm happy that we could use our party ticket to get in at 4pm. The crowd levels were the highest that I had experienced in the last 3 years going to the party. The Pooh ride had a 25 minute wait... seriously ?
We really wanted to go on the Mine Train but it was still a very long wait line so we skipped it. Sadly. I wish the rain wouldn't have been around but it's Florida and you can't control the weather. We made the best of it. Im REALLY glad they kept the Dole Whip station opened for the Party. They didn't have it open for the Christmas Party and it sort of broke my heart
I liked the trick or treating. I thought I would feel silly doing it, but it was fun! They had a lot of spots that you could get candy and we STILL have a huge container full of stuff... 2 weeks later...
Overall I would rate the party an 8/10. The only thing that would make it better is stuff that's not really in Disney's control like the weather and crowd levels. I can't really even call it a "crowd" it's no where near "normal" levels... but like I mentioned before, anything over 20 minutes and we just don't bother.


Ok, I feel like I've been typing forever. My next update will be.... EMBARKATION DAYYYYYYY!!!!

 

[Benchley]

We've done both the Halloween and Christmas party. Halloween as DINKYs, Christmas with our 4 year old. Both special in teir own way but Christmas party was magical. Watching my dons face when he saw Father Christmas - wow.

 

[FeFeMJ]

The Halloween party is our favorite event. We love the Boo to You Parade and trick or treating.

That is really disappointing to hear how they handled the luggage issue!

 

[epfootballcutie04]

Embarkation Day

After a long, frustrating night, we were all a bit tired. We were supposed to meet our transportation to port at 10:30am in the main Contemporary building near the coffee shop and Tim was a wee bit sleepy.



I got a frozen mocha and it was super gross.... but the donut we got was out of this world delicious and it was HUGE! We didn't get a photo of it, but it was SO BIG!!

Our bus was right on time and we were the last stop on the route. I'm assuming it followed the same route as the Magical Express bus did the day before...



We needed to document our excitement for our Facebook group and let them know we were on our way, so we snapped this photo:



But that excitement was short lived... I was SO TIRED and we had about an hour and a half to kill so this eventually happened.... take note in my face position and the window decal...



I must have taken a nice nap because I woke up just in time for us to be about 5 minutes from the ship! We arrived to port at about 12:45pm and had just a few person wait through port security and then it was up to the top level to check in!



My parents were called up a couple people before Tim and I were but we still finished before them! So we took a minute to get a shot we missed the last couple years. A really nice cast member saw us trying to do the selfie thing and offered to take our photo for us



Once my parents wrapped up their check in process we were able to board right away! My mom had pre ordered the Shutters CD so we made sure to take the welcome embarkation photo that they provide. They do this photo to use for facial recognition.





Then it was onto the Fantasy!!!!!

The very first thing I did was Run up to Deck 5 Port Adventures Desk since the Navigator said that's where we could get tickets to the Anna and Elsa / Princess Gathering meets.

Well, Everyone else on the ship was in line for them practically and when we checked in at the port building, the CM basically told us "you're just now getting on board, you'll never get tickets this later...." so after seeing the line I had given up hope and decided to meet everyone up in Cabanas for lunch.
It was yummy as usual!!

We then went to deck 8 since it was 1:25 and rooms would be ready in about 5 minutes. Well... they were late getting rooms ready. It was clear that the Room Host's were running around like crazy trying to get everything prepared and a guest on the other side of the hallway took it upon themselves to release the rope to let them in so the CM's let us in too even though they weren't ready. I still don't understand people and the lack of patience that most of them have.

Our room was awesome though! 8563. Standard inside stateroom with virtual porthole: Midship. I will go more into detail about our room later in my report. Our lifeboat drill station was "D" and that is located in the Walt Disney Theater Deck 3 stage right. I don't know how we keep getting so lucky with being in there for our life boat area the last three times... we've been in different parts of the ship the last 3 years but I'm not complaining about AC

Not long after that was the sail away party. We looked everywhere for our Bon Voyage drinks and finalllllllllly it felt like we were on vacation!









And then.... it was time for SAIL AWAY!!!! I logged onto the port canaveral webcam to try to screen shot us as we sailed away but they went right over us! Oh well I got a screen shot of the ship and that was good enough for me



After sail away is when specific details of when we did stuff becomes unclear. I remember everything that we did though... so starting with my next post, i'll just be doing different topics to review.

Until next time!

 

[jenpink]

Good trip report In the picture where you are showing your drink of the day at the Sailaway Party, I see the back of my blue t-shirt in the background Wondered if I would be in any of the pictures

Jen

 

[epfootballcutie04]

Time for another update This is the point in my trip report when I'm going to just do "topic" reviews. I tried to be much more organized. It just didn't happen.

St. Maarten

St. Maarten was the first island that we went to. I originally wasn't planning on even getting off the boat w/ the exception of Castaway Cay but we decided last minute to go on a Bernard's tour so we could see some of the island. We met up with a bunch of people from our Facebook group that were also going on the same tour and it was kind of a chaotic mess waiting to check in. I'm not sure anyone knew what was really going on on that island during this time They (Bernard's) told us to meet them in the most populated place possible.



Most people look miserable... with the exception of my smiling sister

While waiting we had a quick minute for another photo opportunity:



The tour was interesting though. Our guide was Junior and he was really nice. He had complimentary rum punch (which I thought was VERY strong), coke, juice and water available for everyone. We had close to 30 people in our private group and we had a nice air conditioned bus to take us around. As the tour went on and the hotter we all got, I noticed more and more about how the seats were VERY close together. Not much arm room.

The first stop on the tour was at a look out point. We stopped for about 5 minutes for picture taking opportunities...







Our next stop on the tour was to Maho Beach. We had approximately an hour and a half there, or so. As soon as we got there it started to rain pretty hard so we found a table at the bar and ordered some appetizers and drinks... the food was okay and WAY over priced but that's to be expected.



Once the rain stopped we went and got our spot on the "Beach" to see the big plane come in. Jenna thought the Danger sign was really cool...



The actual beach is mostly Rocks. There is very little sand. I was really surprised though at how clear the water was for being so close to an airport. It wasn't long until the beach got VERY crowded for the big plane of the day and then she finally showed up...







We were told to go straight to our bus after the big plane landed and once everyone made it back we were on our way to some shopping!



I got a couple bracelets, a new purse and a tshirt. We also got a ceramic turtle figurine for our travel shelves at home. I love all the stuff that you could purchase but I HATE being bombarded by the shop keepers. They were so in my face. I get why they do it, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. I refused to buy stuff from the people that wouldn't leave me alone. But the people that gave me some space... I made some purchases.

After that, we stopped at a place to see some sea urchins and some iguanas Normally we would have gone to the iguana farm, but it was closed so we stopped off on the side of some road...







Before long it was time for the tour to end. He dropped off some people about 15 minutes (walk) from the ship to do more shopping and took the rest of us to the boat. By this time it was SO HOT outside and I was SO CRABBY. I went straight back to the ship. I will say this about DCL... they were the only ship that had flavored ice water available and ice cold wet towels available for everyone. It was a nice surprise when I was so hot & sweaty.

Overall Thoughts on St. Maarten & Bernards Tour

Bernards tour was okay. Junior was a good guide but I won't do it again. I'm just not impressed by St. Maarten. I've been there a few times and I would just prefer to stay and explore the ship rather than get off on the island. Am I happy that I did the tour? Yes. It was nice that we were a private group with some of our Facebook people and I'm really happy that they could get us in last minute. It was only $45 a person too so it wasn't TOO expensive.

Up next: St. Thomas

 

[MissDaisyofTexas]

I enjoyed reading about your experience on St. Maarten. We never saw rain that day! I guess we were on a different place when it came down. But we arrived at Maho about 5 minutes before the big airplane.

 

[dryvithome]

Joining in on the report. We're going on the Fantasy for the first time this November and am enjoying reading trip reports about the eastern itinerary.

 

[epfootballcutie04]

I enjoyed reading about your experience on St. Maarten. We never saw rain that day! I guess we were on a different place when it came down. But we arrived at Maho about 5 minutes before the big airplane.

I think that is so weird how you can be at the same place and get totally different weather from another person It only rained for maybe 10-15 minutes, if that. It was brief! But quite the down pour.

Joining in on the report. We're going on the Fantasy for the first time this November and am enjoying reading trip reports about the eastern itinerary.

The Fantasy is a beautiful ship! I've been on all 4 of the Disney ships and she is definitely my favorite I hope you have a wonderful cruise!!

 

[epfootballcutie04]

St. Thomas

It's been a little bit since I did a post. Sorry about that! Life has been busy

St. Thomas was a bit of a disappointment. We were originally supposed to go sea trekking but a couple people in our party had health issues that we didn't know they warn against. So we decided to pick something that everyone could do. Since we didn't realize the health guidelines until after we set sail, no one would refund us any money- so that sucked. However, my mom called the manager at Coral World - where we were supposed to go sea trekking- and after she argued with my mom ( ) she agreed to still let us come to coral world and walk through it.

Let me just say here that Coral World... SUCKS. There will be people that disagree with me but i was really disappointed.

Once we got off the ship we caught a taxi to take us there. It was about a 20-30 minute drive. We set up a time for them to come pick us up and went in to Coral World. We went down into the little under water viewing area and I was bored to tears after about a minute. Then we saw some people in the water with some sea turtles. That looked cool! Shoulda signed up for that...

So we went into this little bird house and they let us feed some birds.... that was the best part of Coral World....









That was about all we did there... With the exception of going to their "private" beach. I don't really think it's private, but they told us it was so whatever. It's next to Coral World but you don't have to pay to use it so theres that....

That was actually the best part of that whole experience.
A few of us got a drink...



And some of us went Snorkeling...







And we REALLY enjoyed the view!!



We ran into a couple of iguanas too





After about an hour and a half at the beach it was time for our taxi to come get us! She was pretty snippy with me because I was the first one back to the taxi and she had to wait a few minutes for the rest of my family to show up. We still left on time... I just didn't feel like it was necessary.

Overall Opinion of St. Thomas
Blah. Same opinion of St. Maarten for the most part. If I have the opportunity to go on another cruise and if it stops at St. Thomas, I will just be staying on the ship

 

[epfootballcutie04]

Character Interactions & Shutters

I LOVE CHARACTERS!!!! I think it's so much fun to interact with them as adults

One thing that I really liked about the meet times was that they were generally 15 minutes apart from each other. For example, Mickey would be Deck 4 Atrium Balcony and then Minnie would be Deck 3 Atrium 15 minutes later then someone else would replace Mickey 15 minutes after Minnie's start time. There were a few times that we knocked out 4 characters within about 30 minutes by going up, down, back up and back down. Here are some of my favorite character photos that were NOT a ticketed event









They also have ticketed events for Character meets now. One for the Princesses and one for Anna and Elsa. Check your daily navigators for meet times and where to get tickets. They generally hand out tickets on day 1. Our first Navigator said to go to Deck 5 Port Adventures desk to get tickets but by the time we boarded then line was HUGE and the lady at the Port that checked us in basically said in so many words that since we were just now getting there that we would never be able to get tickets since they were so popular... so I sort of gave up hope.

So imagine my surprise when on day 2 I went to guest services and they had ONE pair of tickets left. YAY ME!

I love love love how they are ticketed events now! It went so smoothly. First up, were Anna and Elsa... My hubby was being less than enthusiastic about meeting them so my sister joined me. I didn't even wait 5 minutes and it was time to go in We were excited!!



They had the meet in Animators Pallate and had the screens all "frozen" over with scenes from the movie and a really nice backdrop for photos. We literally had like no wait with them and it was PERFECT! They were SPOT ON with their personalities in the movie and my sister and I just kept giggling through everyones interactions. They were SO funny! It was my favorite interaction with any character on board!



When I told the hubby about how much fun it was, he suddenly decided that he wished he would stuck with us to meet them

Then we went to the princess meet... I was actually pretty peeved that Belle wasn't there. She's my favorite... but whatever. I'm an adult and I decided not to thrown a tantrum because that would just be weird.

Here's those photos though...









We were in and out of the princess gathering in probably under 5 minutes. It was great.

Other Character Interactions
I would highly recommend going to one of the farewell performances that they do in the lobby. It was FANTASTIC! They let the characters do pictures for about 10 minutes to catch your favorite one last time. We got SO MANY in ten minutes! Donald, Daisy, Goofy, Mickey, Pluto, Minnie... it was amazing.

On other cruises we have randomly run into characters when walking around the ship... this didn't happen this time, but it's always fun when it has

Shutters

My mom preordered the full CD package online before the vacation so we knew to go to every photo op that we could. Photos are really important to us. Then because our rooms were linked, I was able to get the entire photo package once we were on board for 50% off !! Yay!!

Besides the photo ops with the characters you will also get random photos on there from dinners, Formal Night, castaway, Palo, Remy, the Aqua Duck, etc. I'll post my Palo and Castaway Photos when I get to the reviews of those. If you see anything with any sort of border or logo , that's from the CD

If you like pictures and take time to have them take your photo... it's a great deal! We had just under 100 photos on ours. for $150 bucks. Not too bad! Considering each picture normally is around $20 bucks!

I also really like it because normally Tim and I aren't able to be in the same picture unless it's a selfie. So it was nice that we could be in pictures together

 

[Kiren]

Following! It's surprising but I like hearing about the trips that aren't 'perfect' it helps me keep my head closer to the ground and not feel as disappointed when things don't go the way I think they should!

 

[epfootballcutie04]

Following! It's surprising but I like hearing about the trips that aren't 'perfect' it helps me keep my head closer to the ground and not feel as disappointed when things don't go the way I think they should!

Hi Thanks for following along!
It's refreshing to hear your glass half full perspective! I'll be making some more entries today I might finish it... we'll see! Stay tuned!

 

[epfootballcutie04]

If you're still sticking around me and following around, THANKS! Sorry I don't update often but my life is hectic

So I'm just going to dig right into my Castaway Cay Review because I love it and wanted to start this entry off on a positive note!


Castaway Cay
The best way to start any day on castaway is to view it as you're eating breakfast in cabanas! Excuse my squinty-ness. It was a bit bright!





Shortly after breakfast we head down to deck 3 to get ready to disembark and I have no idea why, but it took FOREVER to get off that boat once we got clearance. Everyone was talking about how long it took. it was crazy. And people were crazy about it. I heard adults tell their kids to push their way through and knock people over and run to the beach to get a good spot... what is wrong with people?!?

Once we actually got off, we took a leisurely stroll over to the tram to the family beach! Even though it's more crowded in the family beach, I prefer that over the adult beach. I find it not to be so rocky.

When we were on St. Thomas, Tim got REALLY sunburnt over his entire back and neck so I decided to be that person that wore a shirt in the water because Castaway Cay is the only place that I will get really burnt no matter how much and no matter what the SPF sunscreen i put on!

Something that totally fascinates me is facial recognition on the cameras that shutters people use because once we got back on board, these photos showed up on our account and no one ever swiped our cards







After some time in the water we head over to lunch at Cookies BBQ The burgers were B-L-A-N-D. So i got some lemon chicken and it was scrumptious! We did some shopping and I walked out with a couple shirts, a magnet, and a tervis mug

Something I normally do on Castaway that I did not do this time.... was get a monk cooler. I just wasn't in the mood for alcohol. But I can tell you that they are yummy!

Tim and my mom rented some bikes and took a couple pictures from the go-pro







Not long after, it seemed like we were heading back to the ship! But not after taking the mandatory photos













In General
Castaway Cay is like my favorite place I love just floating around the ocean, I love how the characters make appearances, I love how the DJ is there, I love the really bland food I love how clean it is... everything

 

[epfootballcutie04]

Fish Extenders

I like the concept of fish extenders but Im not sure I will ever do it again until the day comes when/if we have kids and they can be old enough to participate and get enjoyment out of it.
We got some nice stuff in our fish extender but when we got home with it, we found ourselves saying "well, what are we going to do with X, Y or Z"...

Most of the stuff we got though was super cool and practical like this one... we got a couple bowls for ice cream, some toppings and chocolate sauce! So creative



Our specific Facebook group had quite a large amount of people wanting to do fish extenders so we broke it up between 4 groups of about 20-25 rooms. Even though our rooms were all supposed to be "close by", I still felt like I was going through the entire ship. In reality, it was only spanning a couple of decks, but I blame my tiredness those days and my want to do other things rather that go door-to-door But it's all in the name of spreading pixie dust

Door Magnets

I loved making our door magnets! I loved getting them personalized by some FANTASTIC people on Facebook and printing them, laminating them and sticking magnets on the back! I loved decorating our door and walking around the ship on our place to random places and seeing the ones everyone else made!
Here's our door... you can see our fish extender, too



And this is my family's door



Towel Animals

We had some AWESOME towel animals made for us! Our room host did a great job, but was kind of awkward and flat our kicked us out of our room on the last night when we had ordered room service. But here's some of our towel animals Something I always look forward to seeing!

 

[epfootballcutie04]

Before leaving on this vacation I thought: "Man, I'm going to take all sorts of food pictures and be that total foodie on board!".... well, that didn't happen....

Once I get on board I think that the last thing I want to lug around is our nice big camera sooooo I'll go into my reviews here and post pictures if I have them

Dining Rooms

We had the AERAERA rotation again, 2nd seating. The only food pictures I have are from the first night when I was still excited to be taking them And... to be perfectly honest, we only went to the dining room on the first two nights. We just weren't that impressed with the overall dining room experience this time. It probably would have helped if the table next to us wasn't full of a million adults that had a million kids that kept running all around and crawling under tables and running into servers and everything... while their parents got their drink on. The dining rooms aren't really our "thing" though so we were more than happy not to cause a scene and make things awkward and eat at the pool or Palo (which will have it's own post) or get room service! That's more our "style!"

So without further hesitation, here are my Palo food picks!















I don't have any other dining room photos besides those. Sorry!
Besides that, here are my recommendations on some of the other food areas on board:

Cabanas
I actually really like Cabanas. I'm super picky so having fries and chicken strips and mac and cheese and all the basics were nice for me! I like how casual it is, too. There will be people reading this that can't believe that I prefer Cabanas over the food served in the dining rooms, but... I do. Just get over it lol
We actually went to Cabanas at night time for dinner one night. Not too sure I'll do that again though... For those that don't know: Cabanas is a sit down dinner where new CM's serve you that are working on training. I get that all people need to start somewhere and I'm all for training and learning. I'm a trainer of new employees myself, but it's clear as day that they are training. That's not good and that's not bad but if that's something that's going to annoying you on vacation, I would recommend that you not experience Cabanas Dinner. You get the same food as you do in the main dining rooms... just different atmosphere and different level of service. We were in there forEVER and our poor waiter had no idea what he was doing He was learning though so hopefully he's doing better now!

Pool Area Food
Randomly one day there will be these amazing soft pretzels served. As far as I know, they are not mentioned in the navigator and each cruise you go o n may be served on a different day. Last Fantasy cruise we were on it was served on Castaway day and this year I'm pretty sure it was like St. Thomas day? Definitely not Castaway Day. But they are good. And supposedly they only have a limited number of them.
They also have AMAZING Cesar wraps out by the pool. I think I had about a million of them during the cruise. THEY WERE SO GOOD!!!!
They have pizza and burgers and hot dogs and stuff out by the pool too but I didn't really get any of that.

Coffee Shop Food
In Cove Cafe and the coffee shop on Deck 4, they have a case with little snacks in them. You have to pay for the coffee drinks, but the snacks are free and pretty yummy!

They also have a snack station in the adult only area on deck 4 but I never actually saw food there. It must happen late at night or something... and by "late at night" I mean like... past 11ish.