Recently I’ve been writing about my last trip with my parents but I’m going to switch it up this month and write about my first experience with the Disney Cruise Line! This past weekend I sailed along with 2 of my close friends on the Disney Dream on a three night Bahamian Extravaganza! I was more than a little nervous about the cruise be¬cause me and the sea have not gotten along in the past. Well I should say me and boats don’t get along very well, but I was equipped with my motion sickness bands and hoped for the best. I packed light for the most part but I also decided along with my friends to participate in a Fish Extender gift exchange! If you’re not familiar Fish Extenders is more of less secret Santa among a group of cabins. The idea came from the Disboards and through that site and face¬book has grown among cruisers.
My friends had done some re¬search and decided to participate and I hopped on board with the plan as well. My gifts took up half my suitcase and another bag which bumped up my luggage to two bags. With my gifts, clothes and camera ready we departed early Friday morning for Port Canaveral!When you are driving in you can see the ships and I can’t lie I was squealing with delight the first time I saw the Dream. It is beautiful from the outside. You can see the Mickey Mouse heads from a distance and the ship is colorful and fun to look at. All my nerves shot out the window and I was just purely excited to get there.
We dropped off our checked luggage and headed for check in. If you know me you know I’m a Mickey Mouse fan, so I literally squealed when I saw Captain Mickey was meeting right in front of the check in line. My friends know I’m a character stalker so we got in line to meet him. We hadn’t even boarded the ship yet and a dream came true. I got my Captain Mickey photo and hug. I couldn’t have been happier.We got all checked and waited for boarding. We got to meet a few of the people from our FE exchange group while we waited which was really cool. Finally they made the call for boarding, they called our group number and off we went. We got to take a few pictures before we got onto the ship and then they let us walk on.
When you arrive they announce your family name and welcome you on board. The lobby is literally the most amazing thing ever! The chandelier was breathtaking as were all the statues. I was in complete awe of everything. And because it was a Merrytime Christmas Cruise, the tree was up and they had this amazing gingerbread house erected. It took a couple hours before our rooms were ready but we didn’t mind. We headed off to have lunch at Cabanas the buffet. It was SOOOO GOOD! They had a variety of everything from chicken tenders to crab legs. And crazy enough that was just the buffet! By the time we finished lunch our rooms were ready and we headed up to our stateroom. We were lucky enough to get a balcony view so we could see the other ships at port. We had a stateroom host that brought us our luggage and took care of us for the entire voyage. His name was Danny and he was AMAZINNNNGGG! We headed down to entire a raffle for the spa. We didn’t win but it was really cool to see all the services offered. We also got to explore the ship some and went to see the night clubs along with get¬ting to explore the pool area and I got a good look at the Aquaduck slide.
At this point in the trip I was terrified of it but I’ll take about that more later on. We actually sailed around 4:45, but be¬fore we took off we had to do our emergency test. That was rather entertaining to be honest and it was a fun view of the theater. Once that was over we ran up to see the Sail Away show with Mickey and friends. The show it¬self is adorable (I have video – check our facebook page I’ll be posting there) and the best part is when the whistle blows! IT BLOWS DISNEY SONGS!! THE WHISTLE SINGS. I WAS AMAZED. That was one MAGI¬CAL state to the trip.That evening we went to see The Golden Mickey’s. Each night on board they do a broadway style show. It was an adorable show and afterwards we headed off for Christmas Tree lighting. They had an adorable little show with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto singing Christmas Carols. (There is a short video on Facebook already if you’re interested in seeing). They brought up a family to help with the countdown and after a few minutes the big ole tree was lit and sparkling! After tree lighting we went visit Mickey Mouse again! I had been previously SUPER disappointed that Mickey Mouse wasn’t meeting in festive attire at the Very Merry Christmas Party I attended, but the Merry Time Cruise didn’t fail me, he was dressed for Christ¬mas and I was happy as a clam!
Also this night the band playing in the lobby played Shake it Off by Taylor Swift—this doesn’t seem a big deal, but Pluto was meeting guests downstairs and he got so excited! He danced all through the lobby. It was the cut¬est thing I’d ever seen dance on pluto dance on! After spending some time with Mickey we head¬ed down to dinner at the Royal Palace. It was a beautiful restaurant that was princess themed. It had photos of all the princess all around.
On your first night you find out your table assignment and you meet your servers.
Your wait staff follows you through the whole trip. We had two AMAZING servers Coco and Ivana. They were both very sweet to us the first night and all through the trip. Dinner that night was amazing (I’ll have photos of my food on facebook soon I won’t spam you here :P). The only issue I had that night was that the boat was rocking a bit and I was exhausted and I wasn’t feeling 100% but dinner was amazing. We headed back to our cabin that night and we delivered the bulk of our Fish extender gifts that night before we finally crashed. The next day we were docked in Nassau. We got up early that morning to deliver the rest of our Fish extender presents and then it was off to meet the princesses.
For the princess meet and greet you get a ticket at guest services and then you meet five in a row. If you know me you know Princess Tiana is my favorite and I was pleasantly surprised that she was meeting on the ship…so of course I got my picture with her. The meet and greet was lovely and every princess we met was so sweet to us. After meeting with them we went to sign up for Mickey’s Midship Detective Agency. Through the ship they have these portals and when you sign up you pick a mystery to solve. It’s a bit like the Sorcerer’s card game at the Magic Kingdom, but on the ship. We decided to play and solve the case of the missing puppies. We went round the trip trying to solve the puzzle before we headed off for our Palo Brunch.
The Palo dining experience is an adults only opportunity in one of the fancier restaurants on board. You do pay an extra fee for it but its 1000% worth it. Palo is Italian themed dining with a variety of different pastries, entrees and fire¬ desserts. We tried a bunch of things, my favorite being the grape and gorgonzola cheese pizza. I had a very nice frittata as well, while my friends both tried the chicken parmesean which they said was to die for. We each tried like 5 desserts each and by the end of the meal we were in the most intense food coma ever, but we were full and happy! We headed into Nassau for a little bit of shopping afterwards. I have to be honest it was a little over¬whelming to be there because there were a lot of people trying to give us taxi rides and there were horses and traffic was a little intense.
We did a little bit of shopping before we headed back to the ship for the day to get ready for the show that evening. That night was villians night for the show. Hades hosted and it was HILARIOUS!!! Once again the musical numbers and the comedy was glorious. I’m not a huge villians fan, but I loved the show. It was also pirate night that night so after the show we headed off to meet Captain Jack Sparrow. I had a special pirate medallion made just for that evening, but he said it was bad bad bad, had me take it off and proceeded to do a good luck ritual on me. It. Was. AWESOME. After hanging out with Jack we rushed off to find pirate Donald Duck. He was so funny. While we were waiting in line out of nowhere Peter Pan showed up and was taking pictures with guests that night as well. Donald was very kind and let me take a photo of just him in his swashbuckling gear, and I got to take selfie with him. Is it a Delfie if its with a Duck? We rushed up to the top deck to get our spots for the fire¬works. That’s right I said FIREWORKS. They shoot fireworks off the ship.
There is a really cute show before the fireworks go off with Captain Jack Sparrow and “friends”. (I’ll be posting video on facebook as well if you’re interested). The show was awesome the fireworks were amazing! I have to think the people on the ship in the distance that we could see from the deck were thinking they’d booked the wrong cruise haha.
Day three we docked at Disney’s private island castaway cay. The island is beautiful. The beach is really nice and they have areas for the family and for adults only and cute little shops throughout. My friends went snorkeling, but fish are not my friends so opted to be lazy and hang out in a hammock. Can I say hammocks are the greatest things ever. It was so relaxing to layout in the sun and just listen to the ocean. It was peaceful…until captain jack showed up. He was meeting not far from where we had set up camp and every now and then we’d see him wander out and toss sand at people, hug trees, and other weird piratey things. We also accidentally crashed a wedding…well not really but there was a wedding on the opposite side of the beach happening. It was a beautiful ceremony. I’m not sure who the couple was but if you read this CONGRATULATIONS!!!
We headed the bbq lunch they’d prepared on the island and after we ate we headed back to the a decidedly empty ship. Soooo we decided to go ride the Aquaduck. Previously I’d side I was scared to ride it which was true. I’m a pansy about rides and this water slide made me a little nervous. I was nervous for no reason it was AMAZING!! Because the ship was so quiet we were able to ride it three times in a row without any waits. We headed to the adults only pool for a dip afterwards. The pool was heated but still a bit cold, so we went to the hot tub to relax a bit. It was glorious. We got a little snack before we headed to our room to dry off and get ready for formal night.
That evening we headed to see Believe. The show is just perfection and particularly special to me because it has an entire section dedicated to the Princess and the Frog. I laughed, I cried, it was amazing. It was by far my favorite show of the trip but not one of the shows was bad. This has turned into a beast of an article and I didn’t even cover everything. I loved every minute of my cruise. The service was amazing. The ship itself is gorgeous and filled with fun things to do and the ports of call are a blast. I loved it so much… .I’m gifting my parents 7 nights on the Fantasy next year…and of course I’ll be going with them. They’ll need someone to show them the ropes. So until next year Disney Cruise line, its been fun but see you real soon!
