TR Completed! A tale of 2 cruises: same Dream cruise two years in a row, totally different!

[astronautmom]

Hi all, this is my first TR. I wasn't planning on writing one, and I didn't take any pictures of my food, or any notes during the cruise. Forgive me! Reading TRs on the DIS was the single best thing I did to prepare for our first trip, so now I want to share our experiences. I'm currently reading up on TR's for Western Carribbean cruises, Disney World, and Aulani to try to decide on our 2016 adventure, so the least I can do is make a small contribution to this forum. (After you get to know us a bit through this TR, maybe you can make a recommendation!)

As you can see, we're a family of five, which complicates every aspect of vacation. Room types are limited or more expensive and the logistics for five are just so different from two, three, or four. My husband and I were both born and raised in the Midwest, high school sweethearts, married after college and moved together to Texas 14 years ago. (You will see this internal midwestern/Texan tension unfold in this report.) We have three little Texans: DS (almost 10), DD (7), and DD (5). My username refers to my fifth-grader, a boy wonder, currently interested in Aerospace Engineering, and it's his fault we dragged our sorry butts around the Kennedy Space Center on our day of disembarkment. Apologies to KSC fans- you'll find out on my Day 6 report why I won't do that again.

In both November 2013 and November 2014 we did 4-day Bahamian cruises on the Dream out of Port Canaveral, FL. I've written a few blog posts already that I will migrate here. The thing that struck me the most was that we could do nearly the same cruise, two years in a row, and have such different experiences. Both excellent! Obviously we loved the first one because we booked it again, in an identical cabin, kicking ourselves for not using OBB. Thankfully, that was our only expensive planning mistake.

There was one obvious difference between the two itineraries: in 2013 our ports were Nassau and Castaway Cay; in 2014, we skipped Nassau in favor of an additional day at Castaway Cay. (Easiest sell ever. How we walked off the ship without booking it on the spot, I still don't know.) We also made some different choices this year about the pre/post cruise hotel and transportation to port. Those differences were expected, but during the course of this trip, we received several doses of Pixie Dust, and I think it makes a pretty good story!

I'll update the next post with links as I get posts up. Meanwhile, here's a quick summary. This will be mostly a TR about our most recent trip, but I will highlight where our choices were informed by the previous cruise and where things got special!

November 10-14, 2014 (Monday through Friday)
4 night Bahamas on the Dream
2 stops at Castaway Cay, 1 full day at Sea
Room 7614, Deluxe Family Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah

Also included in this TR:
November 9 at the Dolphin Hotel (WDW resort)
November 14 at the Kennedy Space Center and Four Points Sheraton, Cocoa Beach

Spoiler Alert! Yes, I would recommend, this ship, this cabin, this itinerary, this time of year, etc. Should you book it? Yes. Are we going to make it three years in a row? Doubtful, but not because we didn't love it.

p.s. Someone else from our cruise already uploaded all the navigators. (Thank you!) Find them here: http://disneycruiselineblog.com/201...se-disney-dream-itinerary-h-november-10-2014/

 

[astronautmom]

Prior to our first cruise, had you asked me to describe a "cruise mindset," I would have talked about things like relaxation, go with the flow... "Island Time." Those aren't things that come naturally to me. I have three young kids and without plans, things quickly go to chaos. My biggest concern going in to the first cruise was that DH had footed the vacation bill and I had done all the planning. If we didn't have a good time, that would be on me. Thankfully, we all enjoyed ourselves, no one was lost overboard, and due to all the pre-cruise planning, I really was able to relax during the vacation itself. But I relaxed in my Midwestern and introverted ways (not that they have to go together, but they do for me.) That means I focused on myself and my immediate family, getting us where we needed to be, making sure we had our survival needs met and trying to keep everyone in our little quintet happy. This is my default operation: take care of business, mind your manners, mind your own business, don't cause anyone else any trouble. Stay under the radar. No need to make new friends on a 4 night cruise when you have your favorite 4 people with you already. Not to mention that it all felt too good to be true and I was almost afraid someone would come along and tell me that I actually didn't belong there!

Depending on where you are from and maybe your natural tendencies, that either makes complete sense to you, or it sounds totally boring and/or rude. I never intend to be "unfriendly" but "reserved" can read as offensive rather than neutral when everyone else around you is gregarious. Now, having lived in Texas for 14 years, I've learned how to have random conversations in the grocery line, elevators, the gym, basically any where I'm not alone. I'm not outgoing, but I can fake it pretty well and I admit that it can lead to immediate benefits as well as real friendships.

All that is to say, for my second cruise, I decided to make my cruise mindset Friendly Texan. I had been reading for the DIS for almost two years and I didn't understand why people requested the same servers on repeat cruises or kept in touch with their stateroom hosts. I couldn't remember any of the CM's from our first cruise. Isn't everybody just doing their jobs? Getting paid, getting tipped, trained to be Disney-style friendly? So this year I gave myself permission to do an experiment. I already knew we'd have a great time, I was familiar with the ship and Castaway Cay and how everything worked. It freed me up mentally to be able walk onto the ship like I owned it and extend hospitality to everyone we met. My DH, who is naturally more extroverted (slightly,) tapped into the spirit and it just rippled through the kids too. This really did change our entire cruise experience and the objective proof will be in the report.

Here is an outline of what is to come. If you have specific questions on any of our activities, I'm happy to answer them. Links are to posts in this thread, unless labeled "blog."

Edited 5/16/16- I have taken down my old blog, and so the blog links originally posted below no longer work. You can find my new blog at kateskitchencounter.blogspot.com and you can search by the tag "Disney Cruise." There is a Disney Cruise Diaries Index Post here: http://kateskitchencounter.blogspot.com/2016/05/vacation-party-of-five-index-to-my.html

Day 0: Arrival in Orlando, WDW Dolphin Hotel, Downtown Disney
Day 1: Embarkation, Cabin pictures and more of Day 1, Evening 1 and Pixie Dust begins!
Day 2: Of Shutters and Shoes, Princess Gathering & Gingerbread House, Castaway Cay, Formal Night
Day 3: Disney Jr. Meet & Greet, Castaway Cay again, Bike ride, More Bike Photos, Last post on Castaway Cay, Pirate Night
Day 4: At Sea, Rainforest Spa, Midship Detectives, Mixology Mix-up and our final Dinner
Day 5: Last Breakfast, Kennedy Space Center, Cocoa Beach

Also! Every day of the cruise: Towel Animals, More Suprises, Cabanas, Table Service (AEER,) Characters, D Lounge, and Shutters.

p.s. A great reason to choose a Veranda room on the Starboard side:

Pirate Night Fireworks

 

[astronautmom]

Forgive me, I still don't know exactly what I'm doing, but in order to upload as I go and have a place for my photos to live, I wrote posts in blogger. But when I'm reading trip reports that take me off the Dis, I groan a little. So I'm going to try a little hybrid here.

First of all, here is the link to the blog in general: http://kateges.blogspot.com/
The two oldest posts on there are for a wider audience and may bore you, but they are about Why DCL and a little of our planning process.

As for the third post that actually gets into the travel journal, it is on the blog here. I also will paste it below if you are just here for the quick read!

We flew our hometown airline non-stop to Orlando. Thankfully, all of our flights were covered by frequent flyer miles and my husband is a Platinum flyer, so we got priority status and free checked bags. A row to ourselves in the front of the coach section, it went as well as flying with kids can go. Much better than our previous family flight which included layovers, multiple rows, all carry-ons, and, as a result, cranky mom. Just like last year, we planned to spend the night in Orlando with hotel points before heading to the Port in the morning.

This is the part where I thank my husband for the traveling he does throughout the year that makes these trips possible. It's hard on all of us, him included, when he's gone, and although he does get some great photos of international landmarks, he is mostly tied up working, traveling weird hours to strange places, trying not to lose luggage along the way. He did more of this recently, earning the status on the hometown carrier and enough hotel points for a significant upgrade in that arena as well.

Last year we stayed at the (MCO) airport Sheraton and took the shuttle there. My review on that is that it's fine. Definitely a business traveler type spot. Blah indoor pool. Nice lobby, in which we spent an extra hour the following morning when I mis-remembered our FL-Tours car service pick up time. (I must have been a little overzealous to get to port, or just anxious to get out of the hotel room with the kids.) We didn't have a rental car that night, but we walked to an IHOP and happened upon a "kids eat free" deal, so that part was a score. There was also a pizza place next to the IHOP, if I recall correctly. Overall, no complaints and not much memorable either.

This year, we originally booked a Sheraton in Studio City, thinking we'd probably drive to Downtown Disney. I have no idea whether that would have been a good idea, because as the trip neared, we figured out we actually had enough Starwood (Westin/Sheraton) points to stay at the Dolphin/Swan, which is a Disney resort in that it is on the inside of this lovely gate:

It is not actually owned by Disney. It's considered an Epcot resort in the Deluxe category, and you can see the little dock in this picture where a boat will take you to the Epcot entrance. This is a view similar to the one from our ground floor "standard" room. I did some research on the Disboards to find out that it has some of the perks of a Disney owned resort, like free buses to the Magic Kingdom, but it's not included in meal plans and other aspects. We definitely thought of it as a scouting trip for a future Disney World trip.

continued in next post with more pictures...

 

[astronautmom]

I mentioned that we previously used FL-Tours to drive us round trip between Orlando and Port Canveral. For a family of five, it was a better rate than using Disney transfers. We had a good experience with them, including the free use of a 5 point car seat and 2 booster seats. I ended the trip thinking I would use them again. I'm afraid if I don't mention it now, I'll forget to explain why we rented a car this time. When we priced a week long rental, it was a better deal, even including using a park 'n cruise type business while we were on the ship. We ended up parking at the port, which maybe made the costs about even, but this way, we had our own car to get around Cocoa Beach after the cruise. On the downside, we had to bring our own booster seats with us because they wouldn't guarantee having them for us at the airport rental place.

Back to the Dolphin/Swan. I'm not sure who/when took this picture, I don't think it's actually from inside our room, but the view is very similar to the view from our window:

Below is a view of our room once the roll away bed was set up. Prior to the bed's arrival, there had been a wide armchair in that spot, which then easily fit opposite the foot of the double bed on the right. You can't see it in the picture, but there is an oddly shaped window to the left of the roll away. Hands down nicest roll away bed I have ever seen. It doesn't fold in any way, it stands up. Nicer than a sofa bed as well. That's all there is to the room besides desk/refrigerator, bathroom, powder area and closet. No suite, but plenty of room and I remarked that I could definitely spend multiple nights there if we were spending our days at the parks and pools.

We had flown, rented a car, driven to Disney World and had our car standing out front while we went in to get room keys and etc. We didn't want to Valet and even though we were going to have to pay for parking eventually, we couldn't get into that lot before we got our room keys, so we basically dropped stuff in the room, used the restroom and ran back out to get our car before the Valets took it. (They had kindly given us a 30 minute window to do this.) So the following pictures were taken when we came back from Downtown Disney and dinner. I had also thought to take the bus to Magic Kindom and ride the monorail around, but the kids had been promised Downtown Disney so we went there first, thinking we might still be up for the monorail or trying to watch Epcot fireworks later.

There are much better pictures of the resort on their website: http://www.swandolphin.com/
I wish we had taken pictures of the pool area, because it was gorgeous. Plan A had been to swim at the resort first, but as soon as we left the airport, I knew that it wasn't pool weather. Florida weather was a giant disappointment on this trip, both before and after the cruise. Last year we had much less time before and none after and the weather was fine. This time, we were looking forward to those before and after days as an extension of our vacation and I'm miserable when I'm cold. Yes, I'm a big baby. It's why I moved South as soon as I could.

I'll write a separate post on Downtown Disney, the Earl of Sandwich and the rest of our Disney evening, but in order to keep this post focused on the accommodations, I will wrap up with my recommendation of the Dolphin/Swan. If we do a Disney World trip in the future, I would probably use all our Starwood points to stay there as many "free" nights as possible and then switch to a Disney owned resort to link our park passes and all that jazz. I did put "free" in quotations because we had a tab of over $100 at check out from resort fees and parking and some food. We had breakfast from the Picabo cafeteria, and it was the most expensive part of our stay. It also has a sundry shop attached and we grabbed a tiny can of shaving cream for the cruise. It was more expensive in Picabo than it had been upstairs in the gift shop, but at that point we needed to get on the road. (Turns out the same exact can was available on the ship for even less. Lesson learned!)

Overall, the resort was very nice. The pool was the best part. We unfortunately did not use it at all, but gave it a good tour before bedtime and even in the cold weather at night, a few families were in the heated part of the pool, which was warm enough to have steam rising from it. I stuck my hand in a very hot hot tub and I briefly considered sneaking back by myself later because it was completely vacant. Then I thought of the long, cold walk back to the hotel (it's not close) and decided against. There was also a giant "beach" area, but I don't think you could or would want to actually swim in the lake with the boats. (See picture above with green trees.) There was a playground and a giant checkers set there too, but it was not lit for night use at all. The kids were mad that we didn't let them swim, especially once they saw the pool areas. We reminded them they would be putting on their suits in the morning and hitting the mickey pool on the Dream! Note to self: don't make promises like that...

 

[Benchley]

I'm enjoying your report. I'm planning now for our trip in Aug 16. Looking forward to your thoughts on Kennedy. We went there 8 years ago on our honeymoon and are considering taking our, to be, 6 year old there in 16.

 

[astronautmom]

I'm enjoying your report. I'm planning now for our trip in Aug 16. Looking forward to your thoughts on Kennedy. We went there 8 years ago on our honeymoon and are considering taking our, to be, 6 year old there in 16.

Thanks for telling me you are reading! I've been working on shrinking my pictures, but I hope to get the next installment up soon.

Spoiler on our Kennedy Center day, a big factor for me was the weather. It was cold and there was lots of waiting outdoors. Another problem was that it was the day we got off the ship and it was a let down for the younger kids (7 & 5), compared to Disney. My oldest would have enjoyed it much more if we didn't have to pace for the little ones. The hardest part was that even though there was freedom to tour in any order you like, and it was off season (not crowded) there is a built in wait time to get into several of the exhibits. You walk to the door and wait in a large group for it to open, then you get inside and wait for an intro film to start, then the doors open to the actual exhibit. After doing 4 days of lines for character greetings, my kids were D.O.N.E. with lines and they weren't interested in any of the films. I will post pictures of our KSC day, and had we gone at a warmer time and not on debarkment day, it may have been a different experience.

 

[Benchley]

Thank you for your thoughts. As our DS will be right in the middle age wise of your two it's certainly made us stop and think. We intend to do a 7 night cruise, so will be even more Disney mad before we leave the boat.

 

[astronautmom]

I've read plenty of other TR's in which small children enjoyed the KSC, so don't just take my word for it. We have also taken our kids to the Johnson Space Center in Houston when they were 4,6 & 8, and they enjoyed it very much. The Angry Birds playground at Johnson was far superior to the Angry Birds area at KSC, but there was a really cool outdoor play area at KSC and my kids would have loved to stay and play there for an hour if it hadn't been so cold. The Angry Birds play area at KSC is mostly ipads with Angry Bird games, a little area of real sling shots and a small mirror maze. When I post with the pictures, it will jog my memory of the good parts of KSC. I wish the kids were just a bit older and we could have all done the hands on stuff as intended.

 

[astronautmom]

We dropped off our luggage at our room in the Dolphin Hotel and drove the rental car to Downtown Disney. We had been warned that DD was under construction and that parking was a mess. We had also been warned that even though the Disney resort bus would take us to DD for free, it could be quite a wait. The front desk gave us parking advice and the valet gave us directions, and we had no problem driving to DD or parking where they directed us.

Having never been to Disney World as adults, this was my husband's and my first taste of what it would be like to walk around "Disney." I wish the weather had been warmer (a common refrain from me) and that it hadn't been under construction. It was crowded, which was to be expected, and we got a little lost, but we eventually ended up at the Earl of Sandwich for dinner. The line was wrapped around the inside of the restaurant, but it was pretty efficient. We got 5 sandwiches and a few drinks to add to the bottled water we had brought with us, and it cost $30-40, which is not too bad to feed our family. We weren't exactly full after eating a dinner of just sandwiches, but everybody liked theirs, and so I guess that's a recommendation.

It was getting darker and colder, but we went into several shops and two of the three kids found something to buy with their souvenir money. There were plenty of photo op's, including these from the lego store:

They also took this picture with Beymax, whose movie we would later watch in the Buena Vista theatre on the Dream:

Daughter got her first princess picture of the trip:

And when we were all to the point of meltdown tired, we headed back to the car and "home" to the hotel. A brief reset in the room, bathroom breaks, locating our roll away bed and digging more warm layers out of suitcases, then we wandered out to explore the hotel property and surrounding areas.

I mentioned in a previous post how impressed we were with the pool and beach play area. I wish we had more time to explore and swim during the day, but I was also relieved to have one less day of hanging wet swimsuits over the bathtub and packing or wearing damp suits the next day.

It was a very short walk to the Boardwalk area. My husband took a neat panoramic, but its width is messing with this post. You can click this link to view in a separate window.

You can see a dueling piano bar in the picture, and we made a mental note to come back for a date on a future trip. Has anyone gone there? We could see Epcot in the distance and wished it was time for the fireworks already, but I think it was probably 8:30pm and fireworks wouldn't start until 10pm. It felt so much later because it was dark and had been a long day of travel.

By 10pm, the kids were in bed, we could hear the fireworks from our room, but couldn't see any from our ground floor window. All things being equal, I would do the same day the same way. If we had warmer weather, I would have skipped Downtown Disney for hanging out at the resort pool. If we did the same itinerary on our next cruise, I would try to get to a property on the monorail and ride that around the Magic Kingdom. I wanted to see the Polynesian, but we ran out of time that night.

Coming up: our trip to the ship! Would we be just as wow'ed as we were the first time? How did driving and parking ourselves compare with the car service, and what song was playing on the car radio when we pulled into the port?

 

[astronautmom]

I've got stories to tell about Day 1, but I wanted to get some more pictures up on the blog and there is a little bit of commentary there to go with it.
Port/Parking, our first Shutters pictures and pictures of the cabin.

http://kateges.blogspot.com/2014/12/pictures-day-1-embarkation.html

 

[iloverags2]

Enjoying your report!

 

[cnavarrete]

Love the report! Can't wait for the next installment!

 

[astronautmom]

Thanks for the encouragement, it's good to know people are reading!

On what I'm calling Day 1 (in order to match our cruise itinerary) we woke up in the Dolphin hotel and went downstairs to their Cafeteria, Picabo, for breakfast. It's part cafeteria, part grocery/sundries, because there are fridges in the rooms and I'm sure people stock for breakfast and snacks if they are staying longer than we were. The prices shouldn't have surprised me, but I was less than three hours away from unlimited prepaid food and it hurt to drop $50+ on fruit, cereal, and a few hot items to take back to our room.

As I mentioned, we stayed on the property with Starwood points, so our night was "free." Breakfast, resort fee, parking fee... I could have added those up and outright paid for a Hampton Inn with free breakfast for about the same cost, but we enjoyed staying at the World and it whet our appetite for a future visit. We left just in time to give ourselves 75 minutes to drive to the port for our Port Arrival Time of 10:15 a.m.

The original plan was to wear our swimsuits under our clothes and go straight to the Aquaduck after guest services. Last year, only my husband and oldest son rode it, and they only did it once because of long lines. This year, the younger two were tall enough and brave enough and we wanted to get there before the crowds. When we realized the weather was still going to be cold and rainy in Florida that day, we opted to keep the swimsuits in the suitcases and reminded the kids that we had two Castaway Cay days and a day at sea, surely we would find another time to ride the slide. Poor things, didn't get to swim at the awesome resort pool and now the swimming was getting pushed back again. But try complaining about anything to your parents when they are taking you on a Disney cruise, and see how far you get. They got over it! (In case I forget later, we all rode it on Day 3!)

The drive to the port was uneventful, we had enough cash for tolls. Drivers take note, I don't know what they charge for the toll tag pass we automatically declined, but about $10-12 cash will get you from Airport to WDW to Port just fine. Last year, we used the FL Tours car service to get from hotel to port and the traffic getting across the last bridge was horrendous. It was so hard, being able to see the ship from our window and not moving towards it at all. We figured out it had to do with the timing that the queue to get into the port was just backed up that far and they weren't letting anyone in before 10 a.m. Either things changed or our timing was just better this year, but we sailed right through at 10:15 and as we pulled into the port parking gate "Celebrate Good Times" came on the car radio. It was such a fun moment.

We dropped our bags off curbside and remembered to tip the guy. This year I was prepared with plenty of tip cash, because last year I had thought of it as a prepaid vacation and brought very little with me. I'll try to note tips and other additional expenses when I gave them, for those planning their trip budget. Prior to this there had also been the parking shuttle driver at our home airport and the valet at the hotel for letting us "stand" for 30 minutes. We're all able to manage our own rolling suitcases and backpacks, so no porters or bell services, ymmv.

We parked in the garage attached to the terminal and walked across the skybridge to the third floor terminal entry. A quick trip through the metal detector and we were in the lobby. Lines for the repeat cruisers and first time cruisers were pretty equal, but we got in the repeat cruisers (Castaway Club) line anyway. We got our lanyards and KTTW cards with our boarding group, 2 or 3 I think. I loved that everyone could wear their own keycards and that we usually didn't have to take them out of the lanyard. We had to take one out to hand to Shutter's photographers, but otherwise we just held the lanyard up to scanners for everything.

We skipped the line for the kids' club wristbands, took a family picture in the terminal and then we were walking through tunnel to the ship. We took our welcome aboard photo, they welcomed our family onto the ship, and we were "home."

Ok, let's see what pictures I have of this day. I previously posted our terminal picture with Goofy, who was incidentally the same character we met in the terminal last year.

Mickey was our first on ship character:

Continued in next post...

 

[astronautmom]

We were on board well before noon. I should have made notes of these things, but I was sure I would remember and it wouldn't be a month before I was earnestly writing my report. I know we went directly to guest services and there were only a couple of people in line in front of us. The line immediately grew behind us though, so that was a good call to get it over with. Our goals for guest services:
- drop off two scrapbook pages to be autographed; one by all available characters and one for princesses only. (These did not travel well and sadly didn't turn out that well either. I was still glad to get our autographs this way instead of carrying books or pages with us to the characters.) Check.
- get mixology tickets for our day at sea. We thought we were successful at this, but there was a little bit of confusion about the printing of the tickets and that should have been a hint that trouble was brewing...
- get tickets for the family gingerbread house workshop. They didn't have the actual tickets, but they wrote down our name and cabin number and would have them sent to our room. This did happen later that day, but...
- get tickets for the Princess Gathering and the Disney Jr meet & greet. I had read that these tickets were available at the Port Adventures desk upstairs, but was hoping to one stop shop. No luck, so we headed up to the lines at Port Adventures. Actually, I send husband and two kids up ahead of us to Port Adventures while they were still trying to print our Mixology tickets.

I hope that doesn't read as a hassle, because it all moved pretty quickly, although at the time I was worried that they would run out of tickets upstairs. We kept our big Texas smiles and were just happy to be there. We got Princess Gathering tickets for 9 am Day 2 and our Disney Jr tickets for 9 am Day 3. Happy, happy, happy.

We were in the right area to visit the kids club, so we went on over to get the wristbands and walk through. You have to chose a secret password to give when you pick up your kids and I had chosen mine ahead of time online: Mrs. Crackenbutts. Last year, our youngest had an imaginary friend and I don't know where he got it from, but her name was Mrs. Crackenbutts. (He was four, it was cute.) He used to walk into a room and say, "Mrs. Crackenbutts is in the house!" and depending on audience, it was either charming or very embarrassing. Anyway, when we signed them in this year, the computer had shortened it to Mrs. Crackenb, and the joke was lost. I tried explaining it to the CM, but apparently it wasn't the funniest password she had ever heard. Oh well. We shortened it to Mrs. Cracken and just giggled among ourselves everytime we used it. You probably had to be there....

The oldest was glad to see that the audio studio in the lab was working this year, because it was out of service on our previous cruise. Although, as predicted, he spent most of his club/lab time on the Pirate Ship game, none of us can remember the name of it anymore.

We had lunch at Cabana's, toured the ship, toured our cabin... I can't remember the order from there, but the cabin was ready at 1:30 p.m. and the sail away party was at 4:30 p.m. We planned to wave to grandparents on the port web cam from our cabin verandah at 4:45 p.m. This kids did this, although we weren't sure exactly where the camera was. I was unpacking in the cabin and missed it, but it turned out they forgot about the time difference and missed us anyway! We had done the sail away party on Deck 10 last year, and it was crowded, windy and hard to see, so we planned to make it to the Pirate deck party later in the cruise and do sail away from our own room this time.

We also ordered room service in the late afternoon, because dinner wouldn't be until 8:15 p.m. (tipped $1/plate, for those keeping track.) I remembered the crackers and cheese plate were a dud last year, so we ordered a pepperoni pizza; I think someone got a burger, maybe chicken wings or salad. Everything was fine and nothing was for an extra charge. I ran up to the Soda machines on the pool deck for our drinks. We had brought travel mugs for the adults and used the provided cups and lids for the kids. If anyone saw me filling the travel mugs directly from the machines, it was the FIRST time only!

Here are the kids around Sail Away time. You can see the Disney terminal and parking garage. We loved our verandah so much, I would have a hard time sailing without one.

Here are some more pictures of the cabin:

Our show for the evening was the Golden Mickey's, and last year we had eaten dinner first and seen shows second. This year we tried second dinner seating and the Red Carpet for the Golden Mickey's was already at 6 or 6:15 p.m. My daughter was very excited about the Red Carpet. Last year we had been in the right place at the right time to be interviewed on the Red Carpet. We went on as a family, and had a great time. (The Red Carpet is the pre-show for the Golden Mickey's that they broadcast from outside to inside the Walt Disney theatre. It's live, so you don't get to see yourself.) The interviewer last year had asked us our favorite Disney movie and then she said, "can you sing a little of one of the songs?" My husband said, "the Lion King" (his is actually The Jungle Book...) and "no," and I immediately busted out with the swahili intro from Circle of Life. Hey- introverted is not the same thing as shy.

So this year, daughter was planning her own starring moment and it was very important to her to be in the right place again to get her red carpet time. She also made me promise not to hog the mic and let "the kids" do the answering. We were second in line behind the gentleman calling himself, "the King of Disney." We would continue to see him throughout the cruise. He had a platinum Castaway Club lanyard and sat in the same spot of the theatre every night. He totally won the audience participation award. While the King of Disney was being interviewed, we were being prepped with practice questions like, "who is your favorite character?" The kids were pumped.

When it was our turn, I did my part, standing in back, keeping my mouth shut and the host asked my oldest son, "what's been the best thing of your cruise so far?" Crickets. CRICKETS! I don't remember what answer he finally actually came up with, but we had only gotten on the ship that day. The interview was a dud and she hustled us off. Sorry kids, but it's harder than it looks. They would have another chance at fame in the D Lounge later.

That is a lot of reporting and we are only up to the Golden Mickeys. After the show, there was the Tree Lighting, which was prefaced with a video talking about Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and other holiday traditions. We sang carols with Mickey and Friends and one lucky family got to magically light the tree.
(Still unlit on the left side of this photo.)

Day 1 dinner and nightlife will have to wait for another day. Coming up: Animator's Palace- will we have tablemates? Would we love the Dine & Play that second seating offered? D Lounge and our new best friends, and two doses of pixie dust (one of which was already waiting in our room the first time we went in, but I forgot to mention.)

 

[astronautmom]

As promised, I'll start this section with our pixie dust. The first actually happened as we entered our cabin for the first time. Last year our awesome TA had sent us a fruit basket and it was a very nice surprise! We enjoyed having fresh fruit in the room for snacks and first thing the next morning. We wondered if we would get the fruit again this year, but instead there were chocolate pirate themed lollipops for the kids and ... wait for it... Rainforest Spa Day Passes for me and DH. Thank you, thank you, dear travel agent! It was a thoughtful gesture, but more that that, something we really wanted to try. I had looked for day passes online ahead of time, but hadn't seen any available. We had briefly toured the spa last year on embarkation day, and I wasn't that interested in the showers, but I was very interested in the heated loungers and private hot tubs! We tucked the passes away for our At Sea Day and looked forward to it all week.

So maybe that doesn't count as pixie dust exactly, it was more of a gift, but it felt that way to us because we weren't expecting it and it was a definite experience upgrade. In order to introduce our next dose of dust, first I have to give the snafu that (may have) led up to it. At some point during day one, while the kids were in the club/lab, DH and I stopped at guest services. We had been looking for cold medicine in the gift shops and weren't seeing it. GS was right there, so we stopped to ask about it and met Nico. He was great, offering us free advil or tylenol out of little packets they had right behind their counter, but i was looking for more of a Theraflu situation. Since we were there, I asked about our gingerbread workshop tickets and he recognized our cabin number, telling us he had just delivered them to the room. Awesome, thank you, Nico, we will probably not cross paths again, but here is a warm Texas smile to let you know we appreciate you.

We were heading back to the room anyway and found that our Gingerbread tickets conflicted with our Princess Gathering tickets- both 9am the next morning. So back down to Nico we went. He was very apologetic, but all of the Gingerbreads were at 9am and we had the Disney Jr meet at 9am the next day. IIRC, They weren't offering one on our Sea Day. (C'mon Disney, think that through...) He went behind closed doors to call the Princess people and found out they were sold out. The best he could offer was that we could try to walk up at the later Princess Gathering and if they had room they would try to honor our earlier tickets. There were too many "try"s in that proposal for me, but we just thanked him and walked away to solve our own problem. We decided that one of us would take DD to the princesses and one would take the boys to the Gingerbread. Oh well, moving on...

At some subsequent point in the evening, we got the kids and returned to the cabin, which had been turned down for the night. Along with our blanket animal,

there was an envelope with a very special letter from Nico, saying he had chosen us as his Magical family for the cruise and included an Arrrcade card for each of the kids, along with a promise that there were more surprises to come! We liked the guy before, but now he was the BEST EVER!

So add that to the list of things we hadn't done last cruise that we would do this time, the Arrrcade. Tuck those away next to the Rainforest passes for Sea Day.

Back to the timeline of Day 1, which is all subject to mommy-brain-memory, I've told you about the Golden Mickey's and the Tree Lighting. We did a few poses with Shutters backdrops, not our best ones, but we had prepaid for the CD+ package, so what's the harm? (More on our Shutters experience in a future post.)

Next was dinner at Animator's Palace. Here were more opportunities to have a different experience from last year. This time we chose second seating and wanted to try the Dine & Play concept for the kids. Last year we sat at an 8-top with a mom, grandma and daughter who was between the age of my youngest two. We felt awkward at first, but as we got to know them, we enjoyed the conversation and our two girls hit it off. This year we were hoping for a kid that our oldest could relate to, thinking they could play together at the lab. We needn't have worried about him getting bored in the lab, and it was a good thing, because our tablemates never showed. The first night there were eight place settings and subsequently, it was only set for us. It was actually a let down, as we looked forward to some other adults to talk with, and had swapped some good info with our last tablemates. Outside of the Dis, the best way to learn cruise secrets is from other passengers.

We were hoping that Crush would talk to us, but he didn't directly. We still enjoyed the show and participated in the "wave." When we met our server, Linval, he asked about our cruise history and I was embarrassed to answer his question that yes, we had just sailed on the Dream last year and no, I had no idea who our servers had been. I had already resolved to be more outgoing with the CM's this time around, but that sealed the deal. We realized that last year's servers were probably still on the ship, and DH thought he recognized one. We had fun with Linval and our assistant server, Soumitra, taking their suggestions for our meal. I don't remember what we had except that I had steak every night (more on that later,) oldest son ordered off the adult menu and younger two ate a lot of mac & cheese over the course of the cruise. We did make them experiment with other things, but probably not the first night. There is a story there for night 4 though.

The kids were done eating well before 9 p.m. (which was only 8 p.m. our time,) and even we were done by 9:15. I got up to take the littlest one to the restroom and we met the Oceaneers CM's on our way back. Now I was thinking that this Dine & Play schedule probably wasn't going to benefit us, but we had already promised the kids they were going straight from dinner to the Club, so I checked that one in and went and got the other two from the table.

With the kids in good hands, DH and I wrapped up our desserts and said our goodbyes to the servers. I think we wandered the ship a little, just to give the kids time to play. Eventually we got the kids and made it to the D Lounge. We caught the end of a game show, and the kids were disappointed because last year they had gotten to be in the Pirate's life game show and wanted to be contestants at more. Next up was Club New Years Eve and karaoke would be coming after that. It was getting late and we stayed because we were the only family that didn't exit after the game show. There were three D Lounge CM's and we didn't want to walk out on them. They got the two older kids up on stage, while the youngest one did this:

in the middle of the dance floor. The CMs even got DH and me dancing and we had a "dance off" competition which lasted for about three songs past the exhaustion of my dance move repertoire.

Finally, it was karaoke time, which had been a favorite of ours last year too. In the beginning, we were still the only family in there, so DD got first crack at all the Frozen songs. Smart DJ had a rule that every song could only be sung one time per karaoke session. I would not want that job. Can you just imagine how many times he has to hear "Let it Go?" Twice a night, every night.

That was the three of them butchering "Love is an Open Door." DD did a beautiful job on "Do You Want to Build a Snowman," which had me in tears and we made her repeat the performance on the last night so we could video. As you can see from the photo above, the youngest caught a second wind, which is just [not] what you want your kindergartner to catch at 11:30 p.m, but oh well. They didn't have the song listed that I wanted (lesson learned last year, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" is harder to sing than you think, and I vowed never again,) so I did "Wind Beneath My Wings" with a wink, dedicated to DH. I had totally forgotten that it was featured in *spoiler* upcoming Walt Disney Theatre show and the kids were astonished in a subsequent evening when they heard that *spoiler* character singing "my" karaoke song. Yeah kids, I knew it was a Disney song, that's why I chose it.

That's the end of Day 1. We had met our two favorite CM's that day, one of them was obviously Nico, the other we continued to get to know over the course of the cruise. We enjoyed meeting all of them- our servers, stateroom host and the D Lounge cast. So far this friendly Texan attitude was working for us!

 

[cudazmuda]

I agree even when you are going on the same cruise it still feels very different, but I think that is all because of the Disney difference.

 

[astronautmom]

I agree even when you are going on the same cruise it still feels very different, but I think that is all because of the Disney difference.

Yes! And because there is so much offered, you can't do it all in one trip. (At least not a 4 night!)

 

[AmyLyn]

I'm enjoying reading your review. My family of 4 just booked our first Disney cruise (and first cruise ever). I'm taking as much in from other's trip reports so thank you!

 

[astronautmom]

I've got some of our Day 2 (Castaway Cay) up on the blog. I'll expand with details here on the Dis, but if anyone is looking for a preview:
http://kateges.blogspot.com/2014/12/pictures-of-day-2-princess-gathering.html

 

[PiperGirlInWondrland]

Love your report so far! Can't wait to read more!