scrapbookingpro
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2006
MARVEL DAY at SEA!!!!
Disney Magic, January 21, 2018
I just wanted to share our recent experience with Marvel day, for anyone who is thinking of booking one.
A Very short background:
We are a family of five (Me, DH, DS-10, and twin 4 year olds), plus we traveled with my mom. We always book very last minute (in this case just two weeks before our sail date), and we have cruised with Disney many many times.
Truth be told, we didn't even know about the Marvel Day when we first booked, we just picked a week that worked for us. I confess that I did not even know a lot about the Marvel universe, although I do love Agents of Shield and I had seen the first Avengers movie, and Spiderman.
When we learned about Marvel Day, I decided to make a few shirts just for fun, but we did not put much more thought into it.
Marvel Day at Sea on our cruise was a wednesday, our second sea day. There was nothing Marvel about the cruise on any day but this one, which made it all the more exciting.
Early that morning, and armed with my Navigator, we headed up to Cabanas for breakfast. Right away we could see Marvel things everywhere!
It's not just a drink station now.....it's a Captain America drink station!!
These hero banners were all over deck 9, and immediately got us in the Marvel mood. I may not know a lot about the movies, but I was pretty sure that I needed to meet every single one of them. My 10 year old son was getting super excited also.
At breakfast they had Marvel labels on on all the food.
Immediately after breakfast we went back to our room to change into our Marvel shirts. Since Agents of Shield is my favorite TV show, I made us all Shield shirts. They were very last minute and not the best, but they were so fun to wear, and my DD4 was So into it. I told her she was Quake (from the tv show) and she stuck to that all day long, telling everyone her name was Quake. Even my DS4, who usually hates everything was pretty proud of his Shield shirt .
Here they are, dressed and ready to go:
Now, we quickly learned that the reality of Marvel Day is that if you want to see ALL of the characters, you are going to spend most of your day in a line. It also helps a LOT if you have a big party and can split up. We often sent someone to wait in one line while we tackled another line somewhere else. In 13 cruises, I have never seen character lines as long as the ones for Marvel Day, but I will add that is was completely worth it. Just bring your patience, or you can just pick a few of your favorites and wait for them.
We were determined to see them all, so.....in lines we stood!
Here is what you need to know about the meet and greets:
1. There are 2 ticketed events for Marvel Day. Groot is one, and the other is called Heroic Encounters, and includes Spider Man, Iron Man and Black Panther. Both of these meet and greets required a ticket to attend, and they will not let you in if you don't have one. Tickets are available to book online before your cruise, but the Groot one fills up very quickly. If you can not get tickets online, be sure to check with Guest Services when you get on board to see if there are any still available. There were still tickets available for Heroic Encounters when we boarded, but I confess that we were only able to get Groot tickets because we had a friend who works on the ship. If you are planning a Marvel cruise, be sure to get your Groot tickets as soon as you possibly can.
2. There are several characters listed in the navigator with set times and locations. On our cruise this included Black Widow, Captain America, Thor, and Loki. All of these heroes had very long lines, all day long, and you had to be aware that they would sometimes switch out, so you may get in line for Thor, but then a CM would come by and say you are actually in line for Loki. Now, I don't know if this is always the case or not, but on our cruise the shortest lines were the last set times of the day. Also, if you really want to "win" at meet and greets, try to catch them when they switch out. We saw some GREAT interactions between Thor and Loki when they switched out for their last set.
3. Many characters have no set times or locations. Instead they just "roam" the ship, usually on decks 3,4 and 5, but we also saw them on deck 9. This means you just have to keep an eye out for them if you want to meet them. Roaming characters were Doctor Strange, Star Lord, Gamora and Hawkeye. Later in the day we also saw Black Widow roaming as well. The roaming characters had far shorter lines and were much easier to meet in our experience. In fact, we saw Star Lord and Gamora SO many times on accident- we just kept running into them everywhere.
SO.....
with my navigator clutched in my hand, we headed off to the first meet and greet which was Loki, scheduled for 9:15AM. When we got to deck 3, he was already out, up on deck 5 yelling down to his "fans" below. The crowd was going crazy. We went to find his actual line, and no surprise...it was wrapped so far around deck 4 that I couldn't even see where (or if) the line ended! Yikes.
Plan B. I sent DH to Preludes to check the line for Black Widow. He came back with a thumbs up, so we moved over to Preludes to wait for her. It was still about 9:15 and her set time wasn't until 9:45, so I knew we had a least a half hour wait, and then there were about 20 people in front of us in line.
So at about 9:30, my extreme FOMO (fear of missing out) kicks in, and I decided to leave DH in line for Black Widow while DD4 and I went looking for other heroes.
We walked out around deck 4 for a ways and then I turned around and saw Starlord and Gamora walking right towards us. YES.
I have actually seen Guardians 1 and 2, so I was excited to meet them. They immediately saw my daughter's "Agent in Training" shirt and Starlord told her he needed to see her training moves. She was acting a bit scared (that Gamora is pretty intimidating), so Starlord changed the request to dance moves.
DD started doing some weird dance moves that Gamora said she "didn't get". Then they agreed to a picture.
We went back to Preludes just in time to see Black Widow arriving.
She looked fantastic.
When it was our turn she noticed our shirts and greeted us as "fellow agents". She then gave DS10 some specific things to work on for his agent training. 1- Intelligence, 2- Stealth, 3- Accuracy He was taking in every word. She was really fantastic.
......tbc
Disney Magic, January 21, 2018
I just wanted to share our recent experience with Marvel day, for anyone who is thinking of booking one.
A Very short background:
We are a family of five (Me, DH, DS-10, and twin 4 year olds), plus we traveled with my mom. We always book very last minute (in this case just two weeks before our sail date), and we have cruised with Disney many many times.
Truth be told, we didn't even know about the Marvel Day when we first booked, we just picked a week that worked for us. I confess that I did not even know a lot about the Marvel universe, although I do love Agents of Shield and I had seen the first Avengers movie, and Spiderman.
When we learned about Marvel Day, I decided to make a few shirts just for fun, but we did not put much more thought into it.
Marvel Day at Sea on our cruise was a wednesday, our second sea day. There was nothing Marvel about the cruise on any day but this one, which made it all the more exciting.
Early that morning, and armed with my Navigator, we headed up to Cabanas for breakfast. Right away we could see Marvel things everywhere!
It's not just a drink station now.....it's a Captain America drink station!!
These hero banners were all over deck 9, and immediately got us in the Marvel mood. I may not know a lot about the movies, but I was pretty sure that I needed to meet every single one of them. My 10 year old son was getting super excited also.
At breakfast they had Marvel labels on on all the food.
Immediately after breakfast we went back to our room to change into our Marvel shirts. Since Agents of Shield is my favorite TV show, I made us all Shield shirts. They were very last minute and not the best, but they were so fun to wear, and my DD4 was So into it. I told her she was Quake (from the tv show) and she stuck to that all day long, telling everyone her name was Quake. Even my DS4, who usually hates everything was pretty proud of his Shield shirt .
Here they are, dressed and ready to go:
Now, we quickly learned that the reality of Marvel Day is that if you want to see ALL of the characters, you are going to spend most of your day in a line. It also helps a LOT if you have a big party and can split up. We often sent someone to wait in one line while we tackled another line somewhere else. In 13 cruises, I have never seen character lines as long as the ones for Marvel Day, but I will add that is was completely worth it. Just bring your patience, or you can just pick a few of your favorites and wait for them.
We were determined to see them all, so.....in lines we stood!
Here is what you need to know about the meet and greets:
1. There are 2 ticketed events for Marvel Day. Groot is one, and the other is called Heroic Encounters, and includes Spider Man, Iron Man and Black Panther. Both of these meet and greets required a ticket to attend, and they will not let you in if you don't have one. Tickets are available to book online before your cruise, but the Groot one fills up very quickly. If you can not get tickets online, be sure to check with Guest Services when you get on board to see if there are any still available. There were still tickets available for Heroic Encounters when we boarded, but I confess that we were only able to get Groot tickets because we had a friend who works on the ship. If you are planning a Marvel cruise, be sure to get your Groot tickets as soon as you possibly can.
2. There are several characters listed in the navigator with set times and locations. On our cruise this included Black Widow, Captain America, Thor, and Loki. All of these heroes had very long lines, all day long, and you had to be aware that they would sometimes switch out, so you may get in line for Thor, but then a CM would come by and say you are actually in line for Loki. Now, I don't know if this is always the case or not, but on our cruise the shortest lines were the last set times of the day. Also, if you really want to "win" at meet and greets, try to catch them when they switch out. We saw some GREAT interactions between Thor and Loki when they switched out for their last set.
3. Many characters have no set times or locations. Instead they just "roam" the ship, usually on decks 3,4 and 5, but we also saw them on deck 9. This means you just have to keep an eye out for them if you want to meet them. Roaming characters were Doctor Strange, Star Lord, Gamora and Hawkeye. Later in the day we also saw Black Widow roaming as well. The roaming characters had far shorter lines and were much easier to meet in our experience. In fact, we saw Star Lord and Gamora SO many times on accident- we just kept running into them everywhere.
SO.....
with my navigator clutched in my hand, we headed off to the first meet and greet which was Loki, scheduled for 9:15AM. When we got to deck 3, he was already out, up on deck 5 yelling down to his "fans" below. The crowd was going crazy. We went to find his actual line, and no surprise...it was wrapped so far around deck 4 that I couldn't even see where (or if) the line ended! Yikes.
Plan B. I sent DH to Preludes to check the line for Black Widow. He came back with a thumbs up, so we moved over to Preludes to wait for her. It was still about 9:15 and her set time wasn't until 9:45, so I knew we had a least a half hour wait, and then there were about 20 people in front of us in line.
So at about 9:30, my extreme FOMO (fear of missing out) kicks in, and I decided to leave DH in line for Black Widow while DD4 and I went looking for other heroes.
We walked out around deck 4 for a ways and then I turned around and saw Starlord and Gamora walking right towards us. YES.
I have actually seen Guardians 1 and 2, so I was excited to meet them. They immediately saw my daughter's "Agent in Training" shirt and Starlord told her he needed to see her training moves. She was acting a bit scared (that Gamora is pretty intimidating), so Starlord changed the request to dance moves.
DD started doing some weird dance moves that Gamora said she "didn't get". Then they agreed to a picture.
We went back to Preludes just in time to see Black Widow arriving.
She looked fantastic.
When it was our turn she noticed our shirts and greeted us as "fellow agents". She then gave DS10 some specific things to work on for his agent training. 1- Intelligence, 2- Stealth, 3- Accuracy He was taking in every word. She was really fantastic.
......tbc