Mirror Mirror on the wall - Where's the greatest cruise of them all? A TR!

[Barbaraann]

Well I am loving this report. Thanks for all your time and effort to bring us such a detailed report. Your photos and videos are just wonderful.

[flynnibus]

By the way, I love your voice. Somehow it fits the person who posts here at MiceChat.

hehe.. I'm not sure what to make of this Barbara! I always hated my voice on tape.. but I am that kind of deep loud voice.

The dolphin encounter looks fun! I am amazed they held it in the rain.

It was great visiting with you at dinner!

Yeah, it was great to get to know you guys better and give Mark a little sports break

On the rain, yeah it was pouring! Tour guides did say they go no matter what.. and the Blue Lagoon people didn't miss a beat over it. I do wish we had beach time there tho

The lagoon was far different then what I thought it would be, but the setup they had there looked like it would be a fun way to kill an afternoon.

Well I am loving this report. Thanks for all your time and effort to bring us such a detailed report. Your photos and videos are just wonderful.

Thx Barbaraann.. it's been rather silent and was debating if I was going to continue. I didn't take photos the whole trip like many do as they explore.. so its probably a bit dull to some.

But I will have comments on Universal as well too

[daffodilklown]

Thx Barbaraann.. it's been rather silent and was debating if I was going to continue. I didn't take photos the whole trip like many do as they explore.. so its probably a bit dull to some.

But I will have comments on Universal as well too

Please continue. I've been enjoying it as a lurker

[Barbaraann]

It's time like these that I miss the MiceChat feature that showed us how many views our threads were receiving. MiceChatters don't always reply to all the threads that they are interested in. Perhaps they are witholding a reply until they feel the OP is finished posting new material. The number of replys is not always the best measure of the interest in a thread. I wish they would bring back the views feature.

[Fairy Godmother Travel]

Please continue, as I was rushing about when I was packing and forgot my camera at home . I love reliving the trip through your report!

[lighttragic]

Dude, awesome report so far... I unfortunately missed the cruise due to a business trip! its great to see the trip ... Keep it up! I also miss the view feature!

[All4dISNEY]

Totally agree with Barbaraann, keep the pics and commentary coming!

[flynnibus]

sorry, I've been tardy traveling again tonight, so maybe will get some time in the hotel

[flynnibus]

After a long delay.. we continue the journey

Castaway Cay

On my previous cruise, the private island was my favorite part of the cruise. I had heard good things about Castaway Cay, but never real specifics of good or bad.. with only bad mentioned was the food (relative to the rest of the cruise).
Well, after dropping over $800 on a single thing, when it came to book the Castaway Cay features, the prices looked like pennies! We opt’d for the package that would allow you to do rafts, snorkeling, the ray encounter, and bikes. Basically everything except for private cabanas.

Being a beach ‘pro’ the first thing we did was stake out a place to camp that would be comfortable yet functional for the kids.. easy to find and easy to watch them if they were in the water. CC has three main beaches, two ‘public’ ones, and the third is on the far side of the island and intended to be adults only. Getting off the boat, there was your equivalent to a photopass guy ready to take your photo getting off the boat. While this seem annoying, my feedback is to take as many of these photo ops as you can.. you’ll miss them later if you don’t!

There is a tram service which makes a loop from the pier down the spine of the island to get you closer to your destination. It’s walkable (about a quarter mile to the leading edge of the first beach) but tram is certainly easier.. and a necessity if going to the adult beach.

Even though we weren’t ‘first wave’ off the boat, we still had prime choice of where we wanted to setup. We got two nice chairs under an umbrella on the front edge of the group of chairs and proceeded with the sunscreen ritual

The home away from home…


The layout on the beach is typical.. rows upon rows of beach chairs and loungers, with lots of fixed umbrellas over a percentage of them. The water was turquoise and very acceptable in temperature. Cool, but not chilling cold. I would estimate it in the high 70s.. a cool pool.

They do offer their kids clubs activities on the island as well.. including a large play area aimed at the under 10 crowd. The older kids were basically roving activities groups if they followed the clubs for the day. We negotiated a plan with the kids to do the family stuff first, then we would release them to find their new friends if they wanted.

With the rentals, you have all day, and no need to keep your rental stuff.. just return it and they can look you up to give you another set later. So no need to horde/protect that raft you got at 10am all day. That was with the booked reservation, unsure if that applies for on-demand rentals.

The ray encounter is a scheduled time slot, so we had a bit before our ray time, so we started with snorkeling. For snorkeling they make you wear an inflatable vest, and give you a mask, snorkel, and fins. After some teen drama with getting the masks and snorkels right.. we headed out. The kids had never tried this before. Turns out.. the youngest is a natural! She was moving right along, diving, clearing her snorkel, everything without any problems! The others were pretty typical, but the youngest, she just couldn’t get enough!

The snorkeling for the first beach is in a marked area that wraps around the swimming beach. So you start on the beach, make your way out in a big inverted J shape. While not totally free roaming, the area was quite sufficient to keep you entertained for hours. Don’t be deterred by the water in the shallows, as you got out further, it cleared up, got deeper, and the activity increased. There are fixed lifeguard stands around the perimeter of the snorkeling area to ensure everyone is ok.

The first time out, we went what seemed pretty far (maybe 100yards or so) before we headed back in to get ready for the rays. While it’s just a open sandy bottom, there are areas with items sunk for ocean creatures to make home and feed around. Some areas were shallow enough to touch (6ft or so) with the deepest areas I saw were probably 15+ft or so. We saw lots of smaller fish, but mostly singles or just a handful at a time.. most about 6” or so with the biggest being maybe a foot or so. The further you went out, the more variety of locations and creatures you’d find.

Snorkeling Area



Next was the ray encounter. You checked in at the counter where we were issued new masks and snorkels (you can’t use the rentals from the other area), and then waited for a presentation from a CM about the rays they keep there, some marine biology stuff, and then some what to expect, rules, etc. Very similar in nature to what we had at the dolphin encounter as well.. but now aimed at rays. The group was probably 50 people or so. After the talk, we were lead to the water area to meet the rays and broken up into groups of about 6-8 people.

The rays are kept in a netted area but in the same lagoon as the rest of the activities.

The ray area with the Dream in the background

When we first got out there, you could see the rays in a great school, just circling the lagoon area in unison. It was pretty freaky at first! I don’t know how many rays are in there, but it has to be on the order of 30+ . Most were about 2ft across or a bit bigger.

Then a large number of CMs got into the water with these unusually looking benches or ramps and took them out to about hip deep water.


What they are is feeding tables! The CM stands in the center, while you stand around the larger outside edge, while the platform floats in the water. The rays are trained to know to come in on the right side, swim across, and then back out the other side. As soon as you are in the water, the rays are looking to make their loops! They know.. this is feeding time! One at a time, each person holds their hand flat on the platform, palm down, and then holds this little wet tofu like finger of food between your knuckles. Then a ray will swim up the ramp, right over your hand and take the food! Everyone gets a turn, and time/food dependent, people can do it multiple times. It’s a pretty neat feeling. You can pet the rays as they go by, see them up close, etc. Sometimes the ray gets a little bit more then the food too! But it feels more like someone gnawing on you without their dentures in then teeth. Once everyone has gotten their turns, the CMs then take the ramps back to the beach, and then everyone is free to roam through the ray area, swim with the rays, pet them, etc. There must be a time limit, but I think everyone was able to get their fill and get out on their own accord before anyone was asked to clear out. We were out there probably 30-40mins with the rays swimming around I’d suppose.

Some photos of the rays after I got out of the water…




Here it doesn’t look like many, but they are out there…




Some scale here with the kid…




Overall it was a pretty cool experience. Much better then what you’d get in any aquarium demonstration because you get to feed them yourself, and swim freely at your leisure with them. It’s also a very family friendly activity, suitable for young and old. The ray area of the lagoon was never more than waist deep. No swimming skills needed.

So we headed back to the beach after the ray encounter…


A bit more crowded now… but still nothing even close to a busy summer day at most ocean resorts.

Here’s a few of what the theming looks like on the island.. this is where you rent your snorkel gear, etc


Crowd conditions…


Going into the trip, crowding was my main concern with CC and I must say, it was completely a non-issue. With the two beaches to break up the main crowd, AMPLE chairs and umbrellas… it is actually far less crowded then Disney’s Water Parks.
At this point, we let the older ones run free and find their friends, while I went to take the little one to find the recent playarea addition to CC… which was around the point on the other beach. The kids found their new friends, and actually went to get food.. as the food is only served during a fixed time window. The food serving area had plenty of serving stations making access a non-issue, and they had the self-serve drink and ice cream stations there as well. Seating was at long picnic tables under a large structure. Very much summer bbq style of setup. Food was ok, but not earth shattering. Service and setup was good, but not great. Nothing to complain about from us though…

So the youngest and I went on the hunt for the play area, and took note of the other areas of the island. The second main beach was essentially a clone of the other, with its own facilities, so there is no gain/loss on one vs the other (except being closer to the boat for the end of the day). When we found the new water play area they had added.. I was kind of underwhelmed. It basically equated to the same water dump, climbing set, plus slide structure you see at every water park in the country. Yes, there was certainly more theming details then you’d find at other parks.. but nothing of substance about it that made it really stand out and be something unique. Ryann got bored without even really playing much, so we headed back to do more snorkeling. There was another climbing set out in the water we passed, but I don’t have pictures and it seemed like it had been watered down in terms of activities that you could do on it vs what it had been built for. Either way, all Ryann had on her mind was snorkeling, so we headed back to venture back out.

The older kids decided to try out the bike riding for a bit.. which didn’t last long.. and then they went to snorkel as well. When we went out this time, we went all the way to the end.. and it was well worth it! In the last 10-15% of the snorkeling area was the deepest and by far most fish rich area. At one point we found this huge school that went on for probably 30 yards. It was like a huge WALL of fish.. you couldn’t even see through it. It reminded us of the fish in Finding Nemo that make all the shapes. You were able to basically swim almost in the wall of fish yourself. It was very cool. Out there we did see larger fish too.. ones more in the 50lbs+ type of fishes.. and a lot more variety. We were out there for probably another 2 hours plus this time and stayed out there until we basically tired out. But this second time out was well worth it… definitely go ALL THE WAY OUT when snorkeling at CC.

By this time, we just aimed to take it easy and relax on the beach a bit… floating with rafts, etc. After a bit, it was getting close to the last call for the boat.. so we gathered up and started heading up that way to explore and probably head towards the boat. We stopped to check out some shopping, but we found out that time was actually running closer then we thought! CMs were actually trying to tighten up the shops and displays to get ready to close! I think that’s the one complaint I had about CC, is I wish there were far more time on the island. I think last call was like 4pm. I wish it was more like 6pm. If you had done any large activity for the day, like boating/fishing, I’m sure you wouldn’t get much time to enjoy the rest of the island.

Overall we found Castaway Cay to be very enjoyable. The kids loved the snorkeling, the ray encounter was quite good, and the swimming beaches were nicely kept. I think compared to something like Typhoon Lagoon… TL certainly has more action things to do, but can be far more crowded, and certainly isn’t as ‘natural’ as CC is. I think something like CC is more relaxing – though I don’t know if I would spring for the cabanas, etc. Besides the drink service, I don’t think it would be necessary. For the activities, the package we bought was respectable I think. Maybe $10 cheaper and I think it would be a great deal… but it turns out raft rentals, etc on the island are respectable and not Disney rape-prices at all.. so if you were looking to skip the ray encounter, probably adhoc rentals are probably the way to go. The nice thing about the island was.. all on the same key as the boat, and really no reason to carry anything but you and your sunscreen to the beach. Towels were all handy right on the pier.

After wrapping up some shopping, trying to get through and find stuff before they kicked us out, we rode a pretty empty tram back to the boat and headed back on board for what would be our next to last night…

[Barbaraann]

Thanks for providing us all with more information about your cruise. Oh how I wish that we had been able to take this cruise when my grandson was younger. He would have loved all this stuff that you are describing about the fish, and the rays. I might have even been brave enough to get in the water with the rays. Although I am squeamish about such things, and I don't know how to swim.

Thanks again for taking the time to type all the commentary, and the pictures are wonderful.

[flynnibus]

Pirate Night
This night would be ‘Pirate Night’ for us, which would include a specific menu at dinner, the pirate deck party, and fireworks.

Well it’s been a bit since the cruise, so my memory isn’t as good here But dinner this night would be in the Royal Palace, where we would repeat for the final night as well. For Pirate Night, the servers were all in pirate style costumes and a minority of guests were dressed up as well.


Look out for villains in the background…

Overloaded dessert…


Happy about said dessert…


You may even find yourself in your server’s hat…


After dinner, we headed up to the deck for the pirate party. The pool deck is cool where the deck can actually slide out from under itself to create one large solid deck where normally two pools are. They setup a stage below the large ‘funnelvision’ board, and put on a musical dance show (similar to what you’d see in front of the castle at MK, etc). The show included some pretty heavily costumed ghost-type pirates that moved around in the crowd too that were pretty cool.

The stage show




Based on prior intel, we knew the best place to be for the fireworks was up on the upper deck, on the starboard side.. so we watched the show from there, and then stayed for the fireworks.

Well, the fireworks were… ok. Don’t expect anything like you get in the parks. I think its more about the novelty of doing it out on the boat while at sea vs actual impressive shows. But it was a nice little show probably what you expect from your county fair, etc. After the firewroks, the deck remains in this party atmosphere to be a big dance party. The lighting is going, DJ blaring, etc. At night though you can see some pretty cool lighting effects they have on the pools.

The aquaduck has lit rings that cycle


And check out the hottub lighting




Getting the Caribbean bead thing…


Micechatters taking photos of fireworks


Mood lighting during fireworks


A firework!


Watch out.. MC dance party


The duck part of the aquaduck


Look who we found hanging around in our room when we got back…


Overall my conclusion on Pirate Night? A cute themed evening.. but nothing I would base my vacation choices on.

---------- Post added 12-30-2011 at 10:55 PM ----------

Thanks for providing us all with more information about your cruise. Oh how I wish that we had been able to take this cruise when my grandson was younger. He would have loved all this stuff that you are describing about the fish, and the rays. I might have even been brave enough to get in the water with the rays. Although I am squeamish about such things, and I don't know how to swim.

Thanks again for taking the time to type all the commentary, and the pictures are wonderful.

Thx Barbara - I think you could still do it with your kids grown up. While there obviously is a lot of kid activities, I think what DCL does well is allow the kid stuff without requiring the parents be dragged into it as well. We met all types of families or couples on the cruise, not just pre-teen focused groups. It's not as adult focused as say a Royal Carb. or higher cruise lines.. DCL certainly doesn't alienate adults or drag them down to the kid level. If one likes the theme parks, they'd like the main target of DCL as well.

---------- Post added 12-30-2011 at 11:50 PM ----------

Day at Sea
The last day was our day at sea.. which would conclude with our formal night at dinner. Today we would let the kids be free on the boat, and we just chose to lounge around on the pool deck, take our turn on the aquaduck, and ended up watching some movies a bit on funnelvision.

On this night we encountered a bit of a catch-22 with the photo system on the boat. If your photos, there is a 3hr turnaround, but the photo place doesn’t stay open too late, so if you want pictures of your formal dinner stuff.. and you’re the late seating.. you can’t wait until dinner time to get your photos. You have to dress up early! This meant missing the show time slot again.. but we didn’t really care, the earlier stuff hadn’t been all that inspiring anyways.

So another thing is.. the atrium where they do all the group photo stuff can get PACKED with lines. They would setup for photos on the staircase, with characters around, and also just portrait stuff. So we got dressed early, and actually got there before the photo people, so we basically beat the rush. I don’t have any of the photos the boat people took scanned in yet.. so these are just photos taken with my camera randomly.









Moral of the story… don’t wait until the last day to get photos taken by the boat photographers and seek them out.. to get lots of photos! The photo area has a nice book option that seemed reasonable.. until you find out you can’t change the pages, nor remove any. So unless you have enough photos to fill the book, you end up with a book of too many stock photos and you can’t emphasize the areas you wish to emphasize. Second, the size of the photos you can buy is PREDETERMINED unless you ask for a specific size when they are taken. =/ My last beef with the photo place, it’s annoying placed so you must walk through it all the time (not by it.. THROUGH it) when moving from midships to forward – which you will do a ton if you have young ones in the clubs.

After photos, we had some time to kill before dinner, so we went into the shopping area for the first time. The shops here are nice and spacious, and have lots of DCL specific merchandise to pick from. Prices are basically what you would expect to see in the parks. We hunted for souvenirs for us and our friends, and found out when looking at pins, at a set time, the officers of the boat would be in the atrium for pin trading. My oldest has gotten bitten by the pin thing, but the others had not really been exposed to it.. so we bought them some pins, and they set off for the pin trading meet.

They got hooked fast.. they spent probably an hour looking, trading, etc








Some of the pin trading crowd…


What picture time in the lobby looks like..


Eagle eye’d observers will spot something in this photo. See all that lighting gear up along the sides??? You don’t see that during normal hours.. Disney magic at work…

The middle deck there is the photo shop area…


The pretty…


Finally, it was time for dinner.. so we were off to the Royal Palace again.

Thoughts on Royal Palace? Nice, but surprisingly subdued. I mean, it’s a very nice dining room, but I didn’t find it to be opulent or extremely high-end. Just what one used to expect out of formal dining rooms before chain restaurants and commodization really lowered dining standards. I found it very nice, but don’t expect to be Disney WoW’d in this room with Disney characters or specifics.

Sitting down for dinner..


He who must not be named…




Waiter’s outfit.. (check out the ceiling..)


Awesome Bertrum…


Kid heaven… Shirley temple.. choc milk.. and water (or soda?? Hrmm)


At dinner, we even talked the kids into trying escargot. By this time, people didn’t feel guilty about ordering multiple plates, so
this night everyone got a bit more adventurous in what they would order.

After dinner…

Who let the dog out?


The ladies stopped by…


There were almost no lines.. so we made some pit stops..










What was waiting in the room this night..


Well, we were late putting our bags out in the hallway for pickup due to all the formal stuff, but apparently we weren’t the only ones.. they said just to leave it out, and they would make another round of pickups later which they did.
Disney also makes it pretty easy to do the cruise tipping thing. They let you put it on your room bill, and will print out coupons for you to put in each position’s envelope. I had taken care of that earlier in the day, and it was pretty painless.. and great to still avoid needing cash or checks.

Other stuff…
I didn’t talk about it much in the day to day, but each night I typically stopped in the ‘club’ area for some drinks before bedtime.. and seek out any MC’ers I could find to chat with. Now the literature would tell you about all the clubs the boat has. It’s a bit of a stretch.. each of these ‘clubs’ is really not much more than a distinct bar-area with it’s own seating. Each is set for a different style. There is a piano bar style area which had live acts each night singing, a ‘sports bar’ which was a bar with some TVs, and seating for about 30, some 18+ place themed pink, the skyline bar which was a bar in a nice paneled room with the changing scenery behind the bar which had seating for about 25 or so, and then the ‘dance club’ which I never made it back to. Ask Monorail Man for details of that place… hehe

Last Day…
Without the blow by blow.. I think DCL does a good job on disembarkation. They try to stage people in waves to prevent a crush by setting people a breakfast time and a disembarkation time, but I think those are not really enforced.. just a way to even out the crowd. We got breakfast in cabanas.. which while more crowded then normal, was still ok… and then headed off ship 30mins earlier then our time. Getting our bags was easy, as was clearing customs. We made it off the boat plenty earlier then we thought, and were quickly on our way to Universal for the end of our trip.

Conclusions
Is DCL only for kids? No, I think they hit the family demographic well. Probably the hardest thing to do is to convince adults to forget their kids for those periods.

How are DCL kid activities? For the short cruise, my kids were estastic in the beginning, but I think they kind of got a bit more bored towards the end. But don’t let your kids ‘not do the clubs’, because just for meeting other people it’s worth it for them. The family we met on the dolphin encounter hadn’t gone the first two days, and had a totally different cruise experience once they tried it. The facilities for the teen crowd are by far the best.. the pre-teens kind of get the shaft compared to the other age groups.

Is DCL ok for adults only? I think if you are the type of adult that enjoys going to the parks, you’d enjoy DCL. If you’d prefer Vegas over ECPOT.. then DCL probably isn’t your cup of tea

How does DCL compared to the parks? The service on the boat is what WDW USED to be, and what set Disney apart. Honestly, if the parks would simply look back at what they left behind, they could learn so much. The facilities were basically flawless, but I’m not sure that’s such a fair comparison considering the Dream is still in it’s maiden year of cruising. DCL needs to be the beacon that the rest of TWDC should be following right now. The whole thing is never 'over the top vegas', so don't expect to be blown away with scale or excess. Its all just about catering to you and trying to make it easy and a good vacation.

Is it too expensive? While not cheap, I went into this thinking ‘this is your blowout vacation… do it once’ type of thing. I think for the cruise itself, the money vs return is there and good. Excursions?? Tough to say, but overall I found the cost meter to be high, but not absurd and I didn’t feel like I was getting ripped off… except for the photo shop. Castaway Cay I would say is actually cheap.

Would I do it again? I liked it more than my previous cruise.. and I tried to surprise my wife with booking another cruise for 2013, but the keeping it a secret didn’t work out because it took soo long to get through the line at the reservation counter to put a reservation in. =/ But I have a reservation in.. so that probably answers that question.

Hope you enjoyed reading!

[All4dISNEY]

Loved it! thnx again for sharing -- thoroughly enjoyed myself.

[mikeland]

Very good TR! Thanks for posting.

[knittingknerd]

Thank you got posting this! It was great reading about your trip. This makes me more excited!

[SpcMtn77]

I just came across your trip report...Thanks for posting this! My husband and I have been considering a Disney cruise for our family at some point, but haven't really known what to expect as neither of us has even been on a cruise before. This was really thorough and helpful. And you have such a sweet family, I might add! Good for you for being the kind of dad who isn't afraid to invest in making memories