November was a busy month for our family, bringing a milestone birthday for my father in law and the 10 year anniversary for my hubby and me. To celebrate we booked a 4 night Disney cruise leaving from Port Canaveral during the first week of December, right after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Our first stop on the Disney Dream cruise was Nassau, Bahamas. As this was my 7nth cruise I was familiar with what the island had to offer but hadn’t done a real sightseeing tour in many years. We planned to take a private tour to see many of the highlights of the island.
So we’ve been back from our Disney cruise about 72 hours now and we’re still recovering from our vacation, LOL! We had a phenomenal time and our trip couldn’t have been any more perfect. I know many of my friends have questions about the Disney cruise experience so I decided to do my best to chronicle, daily, our experience and include some tips along the way…. I hope you enjoy these posts!
I’ll be honest: I usually avoid the Downtown Disney area like the plague. Since we moved to Florida two years ago we have been deeply immersed in everything Disney. As annual passholders we frequented Walt Disney World often during our first year here, taking quick family dates to the parks on random weekday afternoons and and relaxing afternoons at the Downtown Disney shops. In the last year though we’ve avoided the area in general due to the headache inducing traffic surrounding the area.
Now I finally understand why: Downtown Disney is being reborn as Disney Springs with new areas to shop and dine and a transformed look. My husband and I are real foodies and the first thing I researched when I heard about the construction and renovations was the new dining options that were planned. Morimoto Asia has been on my radar for months now.
Key West was the first stop on our Disney Magic cruise, the next day after embarkation, and we planned to take it easy. We wanted to visit the small aquarium located downtown and considered hopping aboard one of the sight seeing trolley/buses. Upon leaving the ship there are complementary open-air trolley buses to take you from port to the city center, which is a short 7 minute ride. This particular day was beautiful and sunny but was very hot.
In general girls enjoyed the kids club immensely on our Disney Magic cruise. The Oceaneer club and Oceaneer Lab are spectacular areas for the children to socialize and have fun. There is a insulated hallway between the two areas so children are able to travel back and forth to activities. The kids club is included and is open all day from 9am-12midnight! One difference I noted, in comparison to other cruise lines, was that the staff served lunch and dinner to children who were in the club during designated meal times; they served these meals inside the kids club, instead of taking the kids to the buffet. On our last cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Enchantment the club closed for 2 hours during mealtimes. Since we homeschool and get more than enough of each other on a daily basis (LOL), on certain days our kids enjoyed staying at the club for lunch or dinner (on the days Hubby and I went to Palo, the adults only restaurant).
Hubby and I are real fans of the the annual Food and Wine Festival at EPCOT. Each year we look forward to spending lazy fall evenings strolling around the World Showcase and sampling tastes from around the world. We’ve taken our girls a few times but honestly, there wasn’t much to hold their attention on the culinary journey around the world until this year…..
Since we took our first family cruise in December 2014 we had a feeling we were on our way to becoming cruise lovers. The 4-night Bahamas trip on the Enchantment of the Seas was a perfect “intro” cruise and it totally whet our appetites for more interesting itineraries and ships. Pretty much as soon as we returned I started researching cruise lines, specifically Disney Cruise Line as we kept hearing rave reviews about it, not only online but from friends. I just happened to be doing a search in February of this year when I noted a markedly reduced rate listed for the last week of April. We discussed it and realized that combined with the currently available Florida Resident Rates this was almost too good to be true. Sure enough, within 36 hours of our booking the cruise the listed online rates sprang back up to normal market rates!
