This is my first attempt at using the disboards so bear with me please. We were on the 2/1 Western Cruise and would like to give you our feedback. MacGyver did a great job but we did different excursions . Here goes:
2/1 Saturday - Left Port Canaveral - ate at Palo's the first night. Were not disappointed - the food is just fantastic ! I had steak and my DH had fish. We couldn't make up our minds for dessert so the server (Erica) brought us 2 - the tiramisu and the chocolate souffle - both were fantastic!
2/2 Sunday - Arrived Key West - took the Schooner for a sail around Key West. Would not do it again - very uneventful and we missed a lot of time we could have spent walking around Key West. Next time we would just stay in the town and see the sights. Definitely go back to the ship to see the sunset - best view!! I got some very good shots.
2/3 Monday - At Sea - We did the High Tea that day - that was also great!
2/4 Tuesday - Arrived Grand Cayman - we did the Island Tour and it was a great tour. We did the early morning tour. When we came back to the ship we went to the Tropical Rainforest . We bought the week pass and used it almost every day. It was one of the highlights of the cruise for us.
2/5 Wednesday - Arrived Cozumel - We did the Ruins/Beach Tour and it was a great tour. We arrived at Playa del Sol and got to spend some time there. Next time we would probably rent a car and tour the island on our own - we saw from the tour bus some wonderful places to stop and go on the beach. We did see a lot of cars and people just pulling over and going to the beach.
Playa del Sol was wonderful but crowded when we go there in the afternoon but we would definitely go there again.
2/6 Thursday - At Sea - We did the brunch and it was very good - the pizza oven was not working when we arrived at 11:00 and we were a little disappointed, but there is so much to choose from that we quickly forgot about the pizza! We had the same server (Erica) that we had when we went to Palo's Saturday night. She is truly the best representative of Disney and ask for her if you can. We found out that the pizza oven was fixed and available.
2/7 Friday - Castaway Cay - Absolutely the best day weatherwise! We went to the Adult beach since we have no children and enjoyed the day there. The barbeque was good and we didn't want to leave Castaway Cay. When we pulled away we felt really sad because we knew that our cruise was almost over.
Overall we enjoyed the Western itinerary better than the Eastern cruise which we did in 2001. We will definitely be back on the Western sometime next year.
This is our second cruise - we did the Eastern in Dec. 2001.
The only negative we had on this cruise was our next door neighbors - they smoked all the time and we could not enjoy our verandah. We tried to change rooms but the ship was booked so we were "stuck". We couldn't even go out and sit on the verandah or leaave our door open at night because the smell from the smoking was that bad! Very disappointing since you pay extra for the verandah - next time we will not book a verandah. Don't know what Disney can do about this but I think that there should be no smoking in the rooms INCLUDING on the verandahs.
One tip I would like to pass along - make sure you know when your character breakfast is. Ask your Head Waiter to be sure. We almost missed ours - in fact we did because no one told us about it - but one of the couples at our table (were were all DVC members!) mentioned it to Guest Services and it was rectified.
Sorry this is so long and so late - but we spent the next 3 weeks in Florida and just go back last week.
PS - Judy and Bob - you did a great trip report and we only added our feedback.
