Western Fantasy Cruise – May 10-17, 2014

[tnshsms]

I want to start off by saying I’ve never written a trip report so bear with me if I’m not as eloquent as other writers just yet.  I mean, you can probably tell by my boring title!

This was our second DCL cruise but our first on the Fantasy. Cast of characters: Me, a thirty something accountant in the retirement world; the hubby, a thirty something accountant in the banking world and our 5 year old daughter who is all about princesses. I also want to point out that I enjoy food, but am not a food picture person. So if you are looking for some food pictures, you will be disappointed. Sorry!!

We always try to fly down the day before just to avoid any “I’m going to miss the ship” problems so once again, we flew down on Friday. Our flight was delayed 3 hours so that was a bummer. Our 4pm arrival time ended up being more like 7:10. We then took the hotel’s transfers which were outsourced to Cocoa Beach Shuttle. Worst shuttle experience ever. DO NOT USE THEM. We landed at 7:10, called them at baggage claim at 7:29, didn’t get picked up at the airport until 8:09, picked up another couple on the other side of the airport, he took a phone call and then we picked up a random person in a dark office building parking lot at 8:30 at night. After our drive to Cocoa Beach, the 10 min conversation he had with the other couple when dropping them off, then taking us to the Sheraton, it was 9:27 before we got to the hotel. It was awful. Once we got to the Sheraton 4 Points in Cocoa Beach, it was a nice hotel and we were able to stay on reward points. It was clean and our room was mostly quiet. We were in 401 right next to the entrance from the parking garage where you have to scan your key to get into the hallway and people let that door slam quite often throughout the night. We ate dinner at the restaurant on property with the huge fish tank. Food was good, cost us about $16 a pizza we shared with a tip. I did a little repacking that night to prepare for a few hours without our bags and went to bed.
The next morning we slept in a little since we were about 10 min from the port. Our breakfast at the shark pit the next morning was adequate but we didn’t get much. An egg for the girl, an eggs and potatoes for me and an actual meal for the hubby. $16 with tip again. The hotel has a shuttle that takes you to the port so we hopped on that and were to the port around 10:45. We got thru security quickly because we were fortunate enough to get pulled out of line to start a new security line in a different location. We hopped in line for Minnie and then checked in.
We were group #7 when we checked in at 11:20 and we were on the ship by noon. We headed to Cabana’s for lunch and as soon as we had some food in our belly, the hubby and kid were off to the aqua duck & pool. After a few rounds we headed to see our room. We were in 6080, midship which was very nice for me who is prone to seasickness. We had an aft balcony 3 years ago and although it didn’t ruin my cruise, it wasn’t as enjoyable as it could have been. I’m very prone to car sickness so it’s something I’m used to but in any event, never fun to feel queasy during vacation.

After checking out the room we headed down to the kids club to get the kid her bracelet and check it out with her. She’s a little on the shy side so I wasn’t sure how she was going to be in the kids club. We didn’t plan on her going into the kids club a lot because as two working parents we see vacation time as time to spend as a family but there were a few events in which some time in the kids club might be fun for her. More on that later……

At this point it was time for our Dis Meet and Greet. I had joined the facebook page several months prior to the cruise so it was fun to meet all those people who were counting down with me in person! We didn’t stick around for too long because the kid wanted to swim some more. We headed back to the room and our bags were already there at 3:30! I unpacked a little while the kid watched some Disney shorts on TV. We met Rapunzel and headed down for our muster drill. Our station was on deck 4 and it took about 30 min for everyone to check in and for us to be released. Then we headed up to the sail away party. We were able to get right in front and I took video.

We had early dining so after the sail away party we headed to our room to freshen up and then headed down to our first meal: Royal Court. The restaurant is decorated very nice and it’s a very pretty restaurant but its boring to a 5 year old. Through the dis meet we were able to find 2 other families with 5 year old girls and we all set together…so we had a table of 12! The girls had a great time playing during dinner and it was nice to have someone else to talk to at dinner since the hubby and I did the same thing all day. If it was just us the conversation would be “So what did you do today…oh, the same thing I did…ok” Annnnnd….crickets. So having tablemates was nice.
After dinner, the kid and hubby went up to ride the aquaduck and swim while no one was up there. I think they rode it about 7 or 8 times before I said its bedtime. I wanted her to be well rested for Bippidity Boppity and anything else fun we might do the next day.

Day 2, up next………..

 

[MC0810]

looking forward to your report. we are on this cruise next may!

 

[tnshsms]

We woke up in a panic because it was later than we thought it should be. The clock in the room said 8:15 but we had a wake-up call for 7:45…what happened! We think we figured out that the clock was set to the wrong time and we never noticed it before that morning…so alas we woke up in a panic and it was only 7:15. Ooops! We headed up to eat at Cabana’s. I found the food selection to be ok for breakfast. I’m not a huge breakfast person so I usually had eggs and some kind of potato with a yogurt every day. The kid almost always had a pancake and the hubby had a variety of foods. It was all good and DH found it to be a good selection but he also likes breakfast more than I do.

We headed to the pool to try to beat the rush since it was our first sea day. The two of them swam and I went down to sign DH up for the 5K and I dropped off our future cruise paper in the box. I had never booked on board before and that was interesting…more on that later.

After a couple of hours in the pool, we headed back to the room to prepare for the princess gathering. Its really a nice setup for a kid who loves princesses because you get 6 princesses in one setting. DH headed down about 35 min before the gathering was to start to get a place in line. There were 9 people in front of him. I got the kid ready and headed down about 5 min to 11am. This worked out well since she hates waiting for the characters. She loves to meet them but doesn't want to wait. We met Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, Rapunzel, Belle & Tiana. Once it was our turn to start the line of princesses, DH ran upstairs to get in line for Sofia who was at 11:15. He was about 10th in line which worked out well. We got thru the princesses and headed upstairs to get there just in time to meet Sofia. They did this exact same timing on the second sea day but since we did it on the first sea day we didn't go again. After all that we headed back to Cabana’s for lunch. Lunch had a better variety and we always found good things to eat there. We headed back to the room for a little rest before our BBB appointment! We brought our Elsa dress from home so she changed into her dress. (We were very lucky to snag the last Elsa dress one afternoon at JcPenney’s…I was concealing my find because I was afraid someone might attack me for the dress…I can’t believe how hard they are to find! We had many questions on the cruise if BBB had the dresses and if that’s where we got it. But no, BBB did not have either Elsa or Anna on board to dress up as). She chose the fairy tale option and had her hair put into a bun, eye shadow, lip gloss, fingernail polish and a ton of pixie dust. I’m still finding pixie dust in her hair a week later. We chose the smaller package and this all cost 59.95. I felt like it was worth the money and she had a great time doing it. We didn't realize it but she got to keep all the makeup and fingernail polish when she was done. And they told us that if she wanted more pixie dust at any time during the trip, they would be happy to give us some.

After BBB, we headed down to the shops and the kid bought a Minnie souvenir. She headed to the kids club, somewhat under pressure from us, so we could do something adult like. It wasn’t until after she was in the kids club that we were like…now what? So we headed to Disney Tune Trivia…which was super hard for us….but it was fun. Then we had a mixology class scheduled through our disboards group so we headed over there. DH isn’t much of a drinker so he didn’t sign up but he was just gonna watch from the sidelines. About 15 min into the class the kid wanted to be picked up. The activity they were doing was over and she was done with the club. Mixology was fun. We had 5 drinks…well 4 drinks and a shot. Some were really good, some were just ok. But in any event, it was a fun time.

It was formal night so we got ready and headed down to meet formal night Minnie. The kid is Minnie obsessed so we met her a lot. Tonight we were in animator’s palate so we headed there for our talk with crush. We weren’t chosen to talk with him this time because our table was oddly positioned. We were between two “rooms” which made it kind of awkward. It was fun either way, but I was hoping the kid would get to talk to crush since last time she didn’t either. Oh well. Maybe next time! After dinner, we met Ariel again and then grabbed a seat for the show: Aladdin the musical. It was a super cute show and the kid loved it. The kid was in bed around 10:30 this night and we were in bed around 11:15.

Day 3 in Cozumel is next…..

 

[tnshsms]

looking forward to your report. we are on this cruise next may!

You will love it!!

 

[FeliTomy2014]

Thanks for sharing your experience!! We have booked the Fantasy Western for Sept 2014, will be our first cruise!!!
Looking forward for your report to continue!!!

 

[Disgirl83]

Great start to your trip report! We leave on Saturday for the same cruise with our 3 year old princess obsessed daughter! Can't wait to read more!

 

[tnshsms]

We wake up early again…this time at 6:30…DH was up and ready to run! He ran around deck 4 to prepare a little for the 5k and the kid and I attempted to sleep a little more. (Does anyone else think he's crazy for exercising while on vacation!?) Once he was back we headed up to Cabanas to eat breakfast and then headed to the Mickey pool. We chose to not get off in Cozumel because we wanted to enjoy an empty ship and boy were we not disappointed! At 8:30 the pool was a little crowded before everyone went ashore but by 9am, the kid was the only one in the Mickey pool. That’s right, the only one! We rode the Aquaduck & Mickey slide with no line and swam for about 2 hours. We went back to the room for a quick shower and a little down time and then went back to cabanas for lunch. We never tried the dining rooms for lunch even though I thought about it frequently. I just wasn’t sure if the kid could handle that formal of a setting two times in one day. After lunch we looked for Hidden Mickeys(I went to the library, checked out the book, made copies of the pages and brought them with us). We got through about half of them when she started to get whiney so it was time for a nap. She doesn’t really nap at home but it had been quite a few late nights and early mornings recently so she ended up napping for about 2 hours while we sat on the balcony watching people as they hurried to the ship. I’m pretty sure we left a couple in Cozumel because they waited too long to get back to the ship. It was about 10 min after all aboard and these people come running…and then we see them walk away from the ship with their heads down. Not sure exactly what happened but I think it’s just a reminder to make sure to get back on time!

We became detectives after the nap and had a lot of fun playing midship detective. The kid loved it. Tonight’s dinner was Enchanted Garden and one of our families opted to skip so it was just 6 of us tonight. After dinner, we did another round of midship detective because now she loved it and then went to bed. We skipped the show this night because it was a hypnotist or something like that and it just wasn’t our thing. I wanted to make sure we were all well rested for our big day in Grand Cayman. We were going to swim with the dolphins!!

 

[tnshsms]

Was awaken by the kid around 6:30 and then we laid in bed til about 7. After breakfast in cabanas, we played some more midship detective. The kid really loved it. Because we had an excursion today, we chose to order room service for an early lunch before we met our excursion group at 11:15. We ordered a couple of turkey sandwiches and some chicken fingers. We wanted to make sure we had full tummies. We met the group in the D Lounge and it was fairly well organized. We each got a flounder sticker and waited for our group to get called. We followed the herd downstairs to load onto the ferry boat. It was about 11:45 by the time we went downstairs, got on the ferry boat and reached land. We were then given wrist bands for our excursion and then we waited another 20 min or so. We were split up into buses that sat about 20 people at a time. The bus took us for a 20 min ride through a main street on Grand Cayman. We had been here 10 years ago for our honeymoon so it was neat to be back looking around at everything that had changed and seeing our honeymoon hotel. We enjoyed the scenery more than those around us since we had a different perspective on the whole thing. Most of the other passengers were commenting how we were on the “wrong” side of the street. We arrived at Dolphin Discovery and were told to go to the Turtle Farm again. Again, we had been here before 10 years ago but I didn’t remember much of our visit. It had changed a little but it still wasn’t all that exciting. We had 30 min to tour the Turtle farm and that was plenty. The kid and DH held a turtle, we watched a short video and then stopped for a potty break before walking over to Dolphin Discovery. We were ushered into an area that had lockers and life jackets. We were told to get one of each and then meet over near the life jackets. We got our locker, got fitted for a life jacket and then waited for about a group of 15 to form. Once we had our group, they took us to the water area where the Dolphins were hanging out with their trainers. We were asked to walked down about 5 stairs into very cold water onto a metal grate like floor. The tank was deeper than that but they had us standing in about 4 feet of water. Water shoes came in very handy here. We were then allowed to pet the dolphin as he swam by, shake “hands” with the dophin and give him a kiss. There wasn’t much swimming involved, more of a stand-here-while-the-dophin-swims-to-you. So if you are scared of the idea of swimming with dolphins, don’t be. Strong swimmers are not necessary. It was fun and the kid had a great time. Once we were done, we were told the bus would pick us at 3. It was 2pm. Ooookkkkk…now what? So we waited and watched another group go and about 2:40 we walked to the door where the bus was to see if it was possible to get on an early bus. A bus was there waiting to get filled up so we got on and left shortly after that. We were back on the ship by 3pm. Another Disney difference was the towel to wipe my face off and the water to drink before getting onto the ferry. The kid watched a movie while we both showered and got ready for princess night. The kid wore her Elsa dress and the other two little girls at our table had gone to BBB that day so they were all dressed in their princess dresses too. It was very cute to see them all together. Two of the girls went to the kids club right after we were done with the main course to decorate cupcakes in the kids club and then the two moms went back to the dining room to finish dessert. We did a little shopping before getting the kid again so we could go to the show “Wishes”. It was a cute show about 3 high school seniors. After the show we decided we were all tired and went to the room for bed.

 

[tnshsms]

Great start to your trip report! We leave on Saturday for the same cruise with our 3 year old princess obsessed daughter! Can't wait to read more!

I highly suggest sending the hubby down about 30 min early for the princess gathering and entertaining the little princess while he waits, it will pay off in the end, I promise!

 

[tnshsms]

Thanks for sharing your experience!! We have booked the Fantasy Western for Sept 2014, will be our first cruise!!!
Looking forward for your report to continue!!!

Thanks for reading!

 

[tnshsms]

We were up at 7. DH ran and the kid and I got ready for breakfast. This is another port that we decided not to get off the ship. There wasn't much as far as excursions went that appealed to us as well as the five-year-old so we chose to take advantage of an empty ship. I chose to do laundry on this cruise to save some space in the suitcases so I took the laundry to get washed. We brought detergent from home as well as a dryer sheet but it was $2 to wash and $2 to dry. We've been using the laundry bag in the closet to store our dirty laundry. We learned that a full DCL laundry bag equals 2 loads of wash. We were able to put most of that stuff into one dryer, however. We ended up hanging up some the stuff in our cabin. It took about an hour to wash but I was able to leave it, go to breakfast and come back down and then move it to the dryer which also took about an hour. The stateroom host told me that a port day is a perfect day to do laundry because otherwise the laundry room would be full on a sea day. After we moved the stuff from the washer to the dryer and played a little bit more midship Detective and then headed to the pool. We spent the remaining morning at the pool and then we had lunch. After that we headed to the room for a little bit of relaxation and to get ready for pirate night. We wanted to get ready early since we had the early dining rotation, because we had seen a couple of pirate activities that we want to take part in before dinner. One of those activities was a parrot craft for the kids. We had a great time with that. There was also some meet and greets in the lobby of the characters in the pirate outfits so we also wanted to participate in that. The kid was able to get a picture with Chip and dale, Daisy and Minnie. We were a little late for dinner that night because he wanted to see so many characters. I know they say that there is a pirate menu on pirate night but the menu didn't really feel piratey, it just felt like any other night. After dinner we went to deck 11 to watch the Mickey pirate show. It was cute and the kid liked it. We met a few more characters, shopped a little, ate some ice cream (choc, vanilla, strawberry & banana were the options). We got in position for fireworks about 30 min before the start. We like to stand by the aquaduck sign but a little past the top of the stairs on deck 12. It gets too crowded on 11 and I think it may be too hard for little ones to see the fireworks on 11. We just found that spot by dumb luck on the dream but this time we positioned ourselves there. I won't know where to go on the magic next year!

The kid loved the fireworks and we were to the captain steered us away from storms so we could get them...I'm not sure if it's true or not, it had been raining earlier in the day....we went back to the room and was in bed around midnight.

 

[Disgirl83]

I highly suggest sending the hubby down about 30 min early for the princess gathering and entertaining the little princess while he waits, it will pay off in the end, I promise!

Thanks for the tip! I may just have to put him to work!!!

 

[tnshsms]

We actually slept in finally! And by sleep in I mean 8:45. To us that’s huge! We ate breakfast and then played around the Oceaneer club during their open house. The kid then stayed for the Tinkerbell Talent show and we talked to shutters, the onboard booking agent briefly and then packed a little. About an hour after dropping her off in the kids club, she wanted to be picked up so DH went and brought her back to the room while I finished packing what I could. We went to meet Princess Minnie – as much as she is princess obsessed, we are pretty sure she is more Minnie obsessed. We had to see every time she was out. We ate lunch in Cabana’s and then went back to the atrium for the dance party. The main characters come out to dance with the kiddos for about 20 min and the kids all have a great time. But here is where I get somewhat annoyed. I despise autograph books on a cruise. I am totally fine with it in the park but why would you carry around an autograph book, waste the people in line’s time while the character signs all 3 autograph books for all 3 of your kids and then take 4 pictures…one of all of them and then one of each kid. Just take that book to guest services and have them signed and brought back to your room. Most of the time the kid doesn’t want to mess with the book, its you, the parent forcing it on them and if you ask any of the characters and their “friends”, they will tell you that the autograph books are extremely annoying. Take your items to guest services and let the rest of us meet the characters in a timely manner. I bring this up here because here we are at a dance party in which the cast member clearly says that no one is posing for pictures or doing autographs and here comes 3 or 4 parents with autograph books…really people?!! Ok..off my soap box now…..

After the dance party we went to the buckets and boards show which was very entertaining and cute. We headed back to the room for a nap at this point because I wanted to make sure the kid was well rested for tomorrow on castaway cay. DH and I hung out on the balcony and then we all went to dinner in animator’s palate. We soon realized the nap backfired because she was groggy through dinner and wide awake by the time the drawing show came on during dessert. The 3rd night in animator’s palate…or second night if you only go in there twice, you draw a picture and then the server takes it from you. Then, during dessert, you watch your drawing come to life on the screen. It’s really cool and the kid loved it.

After dinner we went back to the room so we could all sleep well the night before CC. Since she was so wide awake it took a while for her to settle down to go back to sleep again but luckily she did and wasn’t cranky the next day.

 

[carolbeech]

Such a good tip! Thank you - I'll remember that. I'm not getting off the boat in Jamaica, so I'll make that my laundry day.

 

[MC0810]

following along. Looks like I need to make sure we do the midship detective game with our boys!!

 

[tnshsms]

Such a good tip! Thank you - I'll remember that. I'm not getting off the boat in Jamaica, so I'll make that my laundry day.

Yes! I was the only one doing laundry that morning so I had my pick of washers and dryers. It was $2 to wash and $2 to dry. You just use your KTTW card so no need for real money or quarters and I brought travel size detergent from home and a couple of dryer sheets from home. Worked out great for us and to have a whole carry on luggage piece full of clean laundry when I got home was excellent.

 

[tnshsms]

following along. Looks like I need to make sure we do the midship detective game with our boys!!

Yes you should! The kid loved it. Just a suggestion....look at the map you get with your detective badge before you take off to the next painting. You will notice that on all the even floors the midship paintings are aft and all the odd floors are forward. So we would choose to do all the aft ones first or all the forward ones first so that you aren't constantly going from the back to the front of the ship. All the paintings are near the elevators and stairs so we would just take the stairs and that worked out great. The first time we didn't do that and we were all worn out. once you see the map, you'll get what I mean.

 

[MouseMomx2]

Yes you should! The kid loved it. Just a suggestion....look at the map you get with your detective badge before you take off to the next painting. You will notice that on all the even floors the midship paintings are aft and all the odd floors are forward. So we would choose to do all the aft ones first or all the forward ones first so that you aren't constantly going from the back to the front of the ship. All the paintings are near the elevators and stairs so we would just take the stairs and that worked out great. The first time we didn't do that and we were all worn out. once you see the map, you'll get what I mean.

This is what we did also. You do not have to visit the pictures in any specific order so this worked out great and saved us a lot of running around.

 

[tnshsms]

Onboard booking

So I mentioned earlier how strange the whole on board booking experience was for me. I kept saying it was like I had my own DCL pen pal. Before I left for the cruise, my travel agent sent me a sheet that I could use to drop off in the onboard booking box with what we want to do in the future. It had our TA's info on it and then had a place for us to choose a couple of different sailings. So I filled it out on the plane. The very first day I dropped it off in the box. No one was at the desk at the time. A couple of days later we received an envelope of the prices of the two sailings we chose. We took a day to decide between another fantasy cruise or one on the magic. We chose the magic sailing so we could try a new ship and it was going to save us about 1300.
We circled the option we wanted and then I wrote a note saying I wanted a quote for my mom as well on the same sailing. We decided on a whim that we might get this cruise as a gift to her for retirement next year. I picked out the category I wanted and told them I only wanted transfer from the port to MCO on both reservations. This would require a change to mine because they have given me round trip transfers. I dropped it off in the box again while no one was at the desk and a day later I received an envelope. They had given me a confirmation for mine cabin, with RT transfers and a quote for my mom in a higher category than I asked for. I figured I would just have my TA remove the transfer later so I didn't worry about that. I again wrote a note about what we wanted and this time I attempted to go when someone would be at the desk. I got there and there were about 3 families waiting and 2 at the desk. I again dropped my note off in the box. Total pen pal! The next day I received another envelope and they confirmed my mom in the wrong category in a forward room on deck 5 and me in an aft room on deck 5. 1. I specifically asked for midship in both cases
2. We are on opposite sides of the ship!

At this point it was time to get off the ship so my TA was able to fix it all but I learned that the onboard booking agents don't really read the notes section. They might be better if I would have talked to them but I wasn't going to waste my vacation waiting on them. It got us our discount and OBC and the TA got us rooms midship across the hall for each other.


Sent from my iPhone

 

[tnshsms]

Up and early for CC around 6:30 with room service delivered at 7. DH had to meet his 5k excursion at 8 am. The kid and I ate and leisurely got ready while we waited for the ship to be ready to for us to go ashore. I could see the 5k runners disembark from the veranda so I knew it was time to get in gear and get the kid and all our stuff together. We were off the ship around 9 or so. DH says they weren't running until about 8:50. After taking the tram to Pelican Point, we grabbed a couple of chairs in the second row and then waited for DH to cross the finish line. He did pretty well and he said he enjoyed it. We went straight to the ocean and played for about 2 hours before we had lunch at cookies too. It started to sprinkle a little while we ate. It wasn't done raining when we were done with lunch so we went into a few shops first. It blew over in about 15 min so we went back to the ocean and played some more. It was an overcast day for the most part which was nice in that the sun wasn't beating down on us but the water was cold because of it as well. We went back to the ship around 2:30 and took a shower and relaxed for a little while. We were ready for dinner early so we could go the sail away party with the characters. The kid got to meet a bunch of them before meeting Pluto. Our last dinner was at Enchanted Garden. We all had a great last night together and then we went to the show. It was a tribute to Walt Disney but it was really just a show that said “Please come back, you love Disney and you want to come back, right?” It was fine but I felt like it was an hour long commercial. We were in bed and all packed up to leave the ship the next day. We were so sad to get off the ship but at least we knew that we’d have a cruise waiting for us next year.