[00:00:00] Speaker A: But I don't know if we got to. We were supposed to get to. Which was called Pigeon island.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: No, no, no. We did, but we weren't stopping at that. That was. You had. So what happened was they had some. I love this.
[00:00:08] Speaker C: Rachel's gonna correct you.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:00:10] Speaker C: She knows everything.
I love having a husband and wife on because it just reminds me of how Brian and I are, like. It's like. No, no, we just correct each other. Interrupt. I love it. All right, tell us, Rachel, what actually happened.
Welcome back to another episode of the DCLduo podcast, brought to you by my path unwinding travel. As you can tell from hearing my voice, I am hosting solo today, but I'm excited because I get to talk about a really awesome cruise itinerary with two of my favorite guests. They have been on the show before, several times. They have their own YouTube channel. I am so excited to welcome back to the show Alan and Rachel from Krause Mouse Adventures. Welcome back, you guys.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Hi, Sam. Good to see you.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Yeah, good to see you. Sorry we missed Brian, though.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Yes. Hello to future Brian.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: Future Brian. Well, he is. He'll be editing this episode, so it's good that you say hello to him. To future Brian. It's really nice to have you guys back. Of course, we have, you know, several episodes with you all. For those who. Who haven't listened, go back in our catalog to listen to our previous episodes together. And we did a live show with. With alan and Rachel as well. But before we dive into talking about the crew that we're going to talk about, which was the southern Caribbean itinerary, always a fantastic one. Why don't you remind folks about your Disney creds, tell them a little bit about your YouTube channel, and then how many cruises you've been on.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Sure. So we both grew up in southern California. I grew up in San Diego, Rachel, and Los Angeles. So Disneyland was right between us. I used to go as a kid each year because there was a dental convention in Anaheim that my dad would take us to. Then having kids, being so close to Disneyland. Now we live in Irvine, which is just right around the corner from Disneyland. We go there quite often. And we've been to Disney world several times, and Alani. And we did. We've done four Disney cruises now, three on the magic and one on the.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Fantasy that summarizes pretty much all of it.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:17] Speaker C: Nice. Well, so tell us, why this itinerary, Rachel, why don't you. I'll start with you. Why did you choose to sail on the southern Caribbean itinerary. Tell us what the itinerary was and which ship you sailed on.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Well, this year, our spring break was very late. Luckily, we never had it that late. It was the end of April, beginning of May, so it opened up a bunch of different opportunities. And I saw they were having the southern Caribbean, and I thought, it's hard to get on that one. We never did it. Heard wonderful things about it, so that's why we chose that one. We're really fortunate to actually get to do that. And actually, the cost is less. One downside, but it makes sense, is that you go out of San Juan, so it's a little more difficult to get to. It was five port stops, so people might get a little bit overwhelmed by that, but we'll talk about that. It actually worked out really well because we didn't do full day port avengers, any of them, but we made sure we got off at every port. And then we went to St. Kitts, Antigua, and then the next place was Dominica, or Dominica, I don't know. They said it two different ways. I'm not sure the correct pronunciation of that. And then St. Lucia and Barbados, and then a day at sea. And this was on the magic.
[00:03:31] Speaker C: That sounds like a great itinerary. How many nights was this cruise then?
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Total is seven.
[00:03:35] Speaker C: Okay, and where did you end? Did you end in Fort Lauderdale or Port Canaveral?
[00:03:39] Speaker B: No, it was San Juan to San Juan, so full.
[00:03:42] Speaker C: Oh, okay. So round trip out of San Juan. Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: They only did two southern caribbean ones. They did one that came from San Juan to. I mean, sorry, from. Was it New Orleans? I think New Orleans to San Juan. And then there was one before us, and then we were the other southern Caribbean, and then they were leaving San Juan to go back to Fort Lauderdale. Just kind of do a few cruises.
[00:04:03] Speaker C: Yeah. Awesome. Now tell us. So this is a seven night cruise. You're going out of San Juan. Did you plan time in advance in San Juan? I mean, you're coming all the way from southern California, so that's quite a long travel. And of course, then you're going to have a, you know, time zone change and all of that. Although I believe San Juan is on east coast time, if I'm correct. Me if I'm wrong. And most of your ports were probably. Most, if not all your ports were probably on east coast time, although, I don't know, you might have hit a central time for one of them.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Yeah. No time change difference once we were there, which was really nice.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: And you're right.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: It is eastern time zone and. Okay, so that was part of our dilemma when we were looking at flights initially, I'm usually in charge of all that. There were no direct flights from even LA to San Juan. So, okay, we have to stop. So then I said, they have lots of stops in Florida. So Alan's like, can we do a few days in Florida beforehand? So we did.
Since we had to do a stop.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: To do a stop anyway, why not adjust to east coast time first? Right. Of course.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So we stayed a couple days at the parks, tried at the Disney dining plan, and tried out some new restaurants there. So that was a good time to introduce us yet to the time zone, get us acclimated before going on the cruise.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And then we went. It's very easy to get actually from like, orlando to San Juan. It was like a two and a half hour flight. That was easy.
[00:05:25] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: That's awesome.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: So it made a lot of sense to actually do that. And then we did get in the day before to San Juan. So we left like the morning of the day before, and we had about a little less than or around 24 hours in San Juan before we went on the cruise.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: Awesome. Okay, well, I gotta back up and ask you about the Disney dining plan. I know we're not a park show, but it's been so many years since, like, people were able to do the Disney dining plan. Right. It went away for a while. Now it's back and it's been so many years since I used a Disney dining plan. I think the last time time I used it was, I don't know, like, it's probably ten plus years. I'm curious. Well, I don't want to spend too much time on this, but I'm curious whether or not you felt like there was value in the dining plan. You're a family of four. I do think it is better for families than maybe adults, but. Yeah. What did you think?
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Well, I was going to say it's the best if you're a family of four with two kids under nine or nine and under qualify for adult.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Right. Because one of the advantages is that you get alcohol, but they don't get that.
So it worked out for us. We came ahead, we kept track of all the expenses. And because we had planned three kind of big meals, and so it worked out well to use a Disney dining.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Place, we had already decided we wanted to do these big three meals. So then I looked at the cost of just those meals alone, and then it made sense. And then I thought oh, now I can get alcohol without feeling like, oh, I just spent $18 on a drink.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Right. So it was good for. We did a three day stay. So I think if it's more than that, it's going to be too much food because there's really a lot of food you're getting, and you have to look at the prices of the snacks. If the snacks are $6 or more, then it's worth it. So we went for the expensive snacks. So you have to kind of plan it out and plan on eating a lot of food and drinking a lot so that it worked out for us for a few days. If we did it for longer, I don't think we would have done it because we would have just been like, we would have had too much food. But, yeah, it worked out. They give you the refillable resort mugs, which for us weren't really useful, but they include that as part of the benefit. Those are like 20 something dollars, but.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: We used it like, I don't even think I used it for anything besides water.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's not that useful. But they say that that's one of the benefits. But, yeah, for us, for three days, because we planned two character meals and Ohana, it worked out really well.
[00:07:49] Speaker C: Yeah, that's smart. I think that is really where if you're going to do sit down meals for, you know, at least two of your meals a day, if you're going to do some character meals, that's, I think, where you can get quite a bit of value out of it. But that's. That's good to hear. It works out and good advice. I think on the shorter trip, it might be worth it. Longer trip, it's probably too many meals, too much food. Yeah. You'll end up, like, cashing out your meals with candy. That's what we, the last time we used the dining plan, we had all these, like, leftover meals. And so right before we left, we bought a bunch of candy at one of the stores in order to, like, cash out our meals, basically, which. All right, well, let's. Let's move on to talking about you arrive in, uh, in San Juan after a few days at Disney. Uh, where did you stay and what did you do in the, you know, day or so that you had in advance of the cruise?
[00:08:36] Speaker B: So we stayed at the Hyatt place, which I actually highly recommend. And we also have Hyatt points, and it qualifies as a free night, like, if you just have the credit card. So it was really nice and it was super convenient. Would you say you can walk to the port? We didn't do that because it was published and you.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Yeah, it wouldn't have been a comfortable walk. You have to kind of walk around a small private airport. So it's just a very short uber drive to the port from there. But you could walk to a mall. And the t mobile district, which was.
[00:09:05] Speaker C: Nice for dinner, is the area you were at and where the ship ported. Was that in the old town sort of area, or were they at the other port?
[00:09:16] Speaker B: The other port? The pan America, I think it's called. Yeah, there are two ports, but this was the Pan America. There is a Disney hotel. I don't see any advantages staying there. I guess there are some people who did do the prearranged travel, but it's super easy. Our uber was, like, $6 or something. The only funny thing is they can't find the port on the Uber, so we had to ask the person at the hotel, how do I get to this? It doesn't come up because it comes up as something, like, across the street.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: Oh, interesting.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:45] Speaker C: Okay, so what. How did your port check in go and getting through security and boarding? I know San Juan is a port that Disney goes to every year, but they only have a handful of sailings out of San Juan every year. So I'm curious as to whether or not port operations were smooth like they are at Port Canaveral. Was it more similar to San Diego, which can be smooth or bumpy depending on the day.
But, yeah, I'm curious how everything went at the portland.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: So the check in was fast. Our port arrival time was 1130, and we got there just before, and they were already bringing people through.
The employees there, since they're not Disney, cast members, I think, weren't quite as familiar with the whole Disney procedure. For example, there was a castaway club line, but they just ushered everybody into the first time cruiser line. And Rachel even asked, can we go here? And they didn't know, but so we just went there anyway.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw the sign, and I was like, why are you putting me here? So I just moved ourselves out, and I realized everyone else kind of followed me after that, I think, too.
[00:10:48] Speaker C: Ah, yeah, yeah. Well, and that, I mean, it should be a benefit of, you know, being castaway club, although I will say sometimes the castaway club line is longer than the first time cruiser line, so you kind of have to.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: I actually think we had a lot of first time cruisers on our cruise because I think just the location. I think there were a lot of actually, some people from San Juan or in that area that just hadn't done it. So I think there were actually a huge chunk of first time cruiser.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Yeah. A lot of spanish speakers on the cruise. So probably just coming right out of Puerto Rico. And then. Yeah. Boarding was. Was smooth. There was a little bit of weight on the gangway, but we didn't have to wait for our boarding time to be called. They were just getting people in right away.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: It was fast through it, like maybe 15 minutes. But we did wait on the gangway, which was thought was weird. We had never had that actual wait. We didn't wait, like, in the actual port, but in the terminal.
[00:11:35] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I wonder if there was any kind of hold up with just the announcing people's names or what. But that's an interesting.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: You did ask us, too, what we did in San Juan, and I realized we never talked about that.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: We went and did the fort. The Fort St. Cristobal, which is actually very close to the. In the old San Juan. So if you actually dock in old San Juan, you can easily walk there. No reason to take any, like, transportation. And that was really neat. I thought we all enjoyed that.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's the oldest spanish fort in the Americas. It's really interesting history how it's kind of like the gateway to that whole ocean area in the Americas. They had some reenactors there and.
[00:12:14] Speaker C: Oh, cool.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty well preserved. It looks pretty neat.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And then just walked around to old San Juan and took a look at it.
[00:12:21] Speaker C: Awesome. Get some good mofongo or other.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: No, we didn't. I think when I looked at the description, I thought, I don't know, one. If you could eat that, Alan, we weren't 100% sure because he's gluten free and didn't want to risk that before, and I didn't think the kids were going to like it, so just for me. And then I thought about getting street food, and they all looked at me like, are you really want to get street food? So.
[00:12:44] Speaker C: The street food is really good. But I think they were just nervous.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: That I would get sick before the cruise.
[00:12:51] Speaker C: I mean, whenever you're going someplace, do. I mean, San Juan is the United States, but it's not. Their infrastructure is not as good as mainland USA. We know that, right? I mean, when they get hit with these hurricanes, it knocks out their power for, you know, sometimes weeks at a time. And, you know, it is nothing the same as mainland us. But it's still, I would say, relatively safe.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: We went to a restaurant and got regular mexican food that we all enjoyed.
[00:13:20] Speaker C: Nice.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: Our younger daughter, Caitlin, was a little bit worried about the water, if we could drink the water or not. It's like the United States, but it's not quite the same.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: Right. It's still the Caribbean. That's the other thing. Right. So I would say I think the water is generally safe. But remember, wherever you go, I mean, Rachel will probably. Rachel's a doctor. She can tell you wherever you go, if your body's not used to the bacteria in the water, you can have a bad reaction. Even if the water is perfectly fine for locals to drink, it just might be different than the water you're used to at home. And so, in general, recommended to drink bottled water if you're out of your normal, like, area. Basically, yeah. Anyway. All right, well, let's talk about boarding. You have been on, obviously, the Disney magic before. I'm trying to remember. Was your last cruise, your last cruise on the magic? Was it before the dry dock? Is this the first time you've been.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: It was after. So we did a short one out of San Diego after the dry dock.
[00:14:12] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: But, yeah, the entry, they didn't have us enter on the third floor. They had us enter on the fourth floor. So it wasn't quite the same majestic entry, but at least it was in.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: The atrium versus, like, a weird location.
[00:14:24] Speaker C: Yeah, that can happen. I think in certain ports, it's just. Or the water levels being what they are. Right. You might, depending upon how they have to set up the gangway, you might not enter into the third floor or the atrium. On the magic or the wonder. Yeah, but I guess that's still pretty good. If you entered into the fourth floor, you're just one level up. So you're still in the atrium.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: It still felt pretty good, just not as grand as coming in on the atrium level, the third floor level.
[00:14:50] Speaker C: Well, let's talk about the ports. I think that's where we should start today, because this is, as you mentioned, southern caribbean itinerary, which means unique ports, not ports that Disney never goes to, but unique in the sense that they only go there maybe once or twice or maybe three times a year. And it's usually only really the magic and the fantasy that at least in the last several years, they get to do these southern caribbean itineraries that, you know, either out of Florida or out of San Juan, Puerto Rico. So let's start with St. Kitts, and as we go through the ports, I definitely want to know, you know, did you book a port excursion? And, you know, if. Did you. If you did, did you book it through Disney or on your own? Or did you venture out on your own? Um, so, yeah, let's start with St. Kitts, your first port of call.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: So for that one, initially, I was looking at going to do, like, a beach day, but I'll just kind of back up to with the whole process of getting the port adventures. I think because it was a sold out cruise, and some of these ports are very, like, just not that many options. Yeah, some things went smaller really quickly. And then I think I learned, too. At first, I was just going down the list of, oh, I'll just book by alphabetical order or whatever. And then I'm like, shoot. When I got to Barbados, which actually had what I thought my most important one that I wanted to do, which I should first, it sold up, sold out. So then I thought, okay, we're going to refigure this out. And then I looked at, oh, what are. Because I didn't even look at the options of port adventures for St. Kitts. But then I thought, oh, they had the dolphin discovery. It seemed like it was a big thing to do there. So initially, we first booked it with Disney, and then I looked, I'm like, why don't I do this on my own? This is so silly. They're going to charge more money for us to just take a taxi over there, basically, and they all go to the same place. And then you're also not geared to, like, being locked down to their times.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: And waiting around and their bus tour of the island or whatever they might add on that takes you an extra 20 minutes that you might not want to see anyway. I feel like that's one of the, one of the disadvantages. I mean, Disney, we tend to go for Disney excursions because of the safety of being in the Disney bubble. Right? Like, the ship's going to wait for you, or they're going to make sure you get back to the ship, something's running late. And of course, they vetted the excursions and all of those types of things, but sometimes you end up with these, like, longer bus rides because they include some tour of the island. When I'm like, well, I booked a dolphin excursion. I just want to see the dolphins. Right? So, yeah, you have more control over those things if you just.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: And I also knew, too, like, I looked at the time, I'm like, there's no way we're not going to make it back. Like, something horrible would have to happen that we wouldn't make it back. So I knew we had a huge, like, safety net. And then also we have one daughter who's twelve, but on Disney, the port of venture. So I was looking at this cost. It was kind of crazy. So she would have been considered an adult, which was $145, but when I booked directly with them, she was $87. Wow. Yeah.
[00:17:49] Speaker C: That's a big difference. That's like 50 some dollars difference. That's huge for one person. So if there's, like. Even if there's only $20 difference for the rest of you, you probably saved more than $100, I would guess.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. For the rest of us, our savings was like 25 each, so it made total sense to do it that way. And then the getting the taxi was actually very easy. We just got off. They asked us where we're going, and then they took us directly on, and then he gave us his card to call us when we were ready to get picked up.
[00:18:19] Speaker C: That's awesome.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: Anyway, so it's basically like our own private, big taxi van that took us back and forth.
[00:18:26] Speaker C: That's great.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So it being in the Disney Bible does have a comfort to it, but because this was the same place they go to, it's not too far away from the porch and it saves money. It just made sense for us to do it separately and only took, like.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: A couple minutes of research to realize you're fine to do it on your own. And then now we should actually talk about that excursion, though.
[00:18:43] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly where I was going next. Rachel, how was this dolphin excursion?
[00:18:49] Speaker B: So we did this one. They have multiple ones, like encounter, swim, and then there might have been, like, the extreme one or something like that. And we did the one in the middle. And we did do one other dolphin encounter back in 2019 at the Atlantis hotel. And that was more of an encounter. And the kids really wanted to do an interactive one, and it was a lot of fun. We had a great time. We got a boogie board and they got it. The dolphins pushed us on the boogie board, and then our feet got pushed.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: And, yeah, it was pretty cool. So you're not just petting the dolphins, you're actually in the water and they push you around. You get to hold on to them. So it was a really cool experience.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: Plus, they broke us up into a very small group. We were just with one other family, so it wasn't like we were sitting waiting around for, like, 20 minutes to just do our one little thing.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I do wonder if we were with the Disney group, if we would have been with a larger crowd. But it was nice. Just a small group with us.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: No, it was the Disney group.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Oh, they joined us.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Yeah, they all came at the same time. Don't you remember? We were waiting around for the rest of the Disney group to come and join us, but also them were doing, I think, the more encounter versus the swim at that time. I think that's what happened.
[00:19:59] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a really good point. You mentioned, though, the encounter versus the swim. We, years ago in Cabo, did a dolphin encounter, and I'm glad we did the encounter at the time, because Nathan was not a swimmer back then, so he would not. He would not, like, he would wade in the water, and he really didn't even want to touch the dolphin. But that was really what it was. It was like. So you got to interact a little bit with the dolphin, and you could pet the dolphin. Dolphin might give you a kiss or splash you or something like that, but there was no swimming. You didn't get to, like. I don't say ride the dolphin because that's like a. Probably an accurate term, but you didn't get to swim and be pushed by the dolphin or something like that. So the usually speaking, the dolphin encounter is, like the pet and interact with the dolphin. It's the. Probably the least expensive one, and then a level above that is usually swim with the dolphin, and then if they have a higher one, it'll be called something else. So that. Yeah, so what you're describing is definitely described at most of the different places as swimming with dolphins. And did they try and upsell you on a video or pictures?
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:21:00] Speaker C: Because they don't let you take your own phone table.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: No, they were very strict about not bringing anything, phones or anything. Everything had to go in the locker.
Yeah. I was kind of surprised. And the price, I forgot what the price was, but it was outrageous.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Way more than actually what we paid for the actual.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And they had tons of photographers around. That was, like, their main thing. They just wanted people to buy pictures. There would have been some great pictures. We ended up not buying them because they were so expensive, and we had.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Had ones from our other dolphin encounter when the kids were younger. Anyway, so I thought, I don't really need to now reduplicate this for an absorbent amount of money.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: It looked like there were some non swimmers who had their phones kind of off to the side. So if you have someone in your group who's not in the water. Maybe they could have a phone there.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: The observer, I think, was secretly taking some of the family.
[00:21:47] Speaker C: Oh, interesting, interesting. Yeah. So, yeah, that is one thing to note for all of the dolphin excursions. I've never heard of one that lets you bring your phone or any kind of video camera in with you into the experience. They make you leave them in like, a locker area. So just that's something to note that the pictures and video are going to perhaps double the cost of the excursion. So if you want those, just know that going in, you know, sounds like a pretty good excursion. Then at St. Kitts. Pretty good day there. How long were you all at the dolphin center?
[00:22:20] Speaker B: I think the actual, probably about an hour and a half to 2 hours, maybe. The actual water experience was about 40 minutes. And then they're taller than they talk to you beforehand. Our time waiting and all that. So it was fairly fast that I think we went around 1030 is the time that we needed to be there. And then we were back on the ship a little around lunchtime, maybe 12 30, 01:00 or something.
[00:22:43] Speaker C: Oh, that's nice.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it was very nice morning off the ship, back on for lunchtime and activities.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: The one downside is we didn't really get to see much of the island. We just taxied right there, saw the dolphins and came back. So it would have been nice to kind of explore the island a little bit to see what was there.
[00:22:59] Speaker C: Yeah. There is a sugar plantation. It's not an active sugar plantation anymore, but they have a lot of excursions that take place on a. There's a sugar sugar plantation on the island. And when we went to St. Kitts in 2019 on our southern caribbean cruise, we did a zip line excursion at that plantation and that was fun. And they had, like I said, there were multiple excursions at that. What used to be a sugar plantation. All right, well, let's talk about Antigua. How or Antigua? Antigua. I don't know how to pronounce it, but we'll pretend we know how to pronounce it. What did you all get up to there? And did you book anything in advance?
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah, so that we did a zip line and it was in a rainforest and it was. It actually started pouring on us right when we got there. So we got the complete rainforest experience. And in fact, one of the guides said it normally doesn't rain this much, but we were totally drenched head to toe. Our shoes were soaked through. At least it was warm enough that it was, you know, it was okay. It wasn't cold, but it was quite an experience to, when you were zipping.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: You didn't feel the rain. It was just every time you stopped, you were like, oh, my gosh, this is getting harder and harder. But it was a lot of fun. And it was 13 zips.
[00:24:10] Speaker C: Oh, wow. That's a lot.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: It was a lot.
And then it also had like a little like kind of like bridge thing that you walked over.
So it was really. And it actually was fairly inexpensive. I thought for that price that one was through Disney. I mean, you could probably do it on your own, but I don't think there you would have gotten away with any cheaper because it's a decent drive. I could, what do you say, 35, 40 minutes?
[00:24:33] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe 40 minutes.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: 40 minutes because it's in the rainforest, so you're docking pretty far away from where you're going. So it was like, I think a little over $100 which to do that many zip lines. And the transportation was, I thought, a very good deal.
[00:24:47] Speaker C: How long of a day was that one were you away from? Because you have the. To add in, of course, the transportation. And it does take time for them to do orientation for zipline and all of that. About how much time would you say you were away from the ship that day?
[00:25:00] Speaker B: They said that was about a 4 hours, which I think it was even less. Or right around, they might have said four and a half hours. And we got back still right around. Every time we got back was basically close to lunchtime or a little after. But we just ate a late lunch and we were so soaked that we just stripped our clothes off when we got in because we still were. So. Just the riding back?
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Yeah, we're sitting in the water on the way back.
It was a great time. The whole family had fun. They didn't let me hold a camera, but I was able to strap a camera to my wrist because for that zip line they made us hold with both hands on the straps. But, yeah, that was a really fun experience.
[00:25:38] Speaker C: That's good to know. If you've got like a GoPro or something, you've got to make sure you've got one of those straps so that you can, if you want video across the zip line.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: Awesome, right?
[00:25:48] Speaker B: And I think what was interesting too, they had, instead of a weight requirement, I think they had a. Well, I think they probably had a weight limit, but they also had a height requirement. So I. I think you had to be, which I've not seen. I think you had to be 5ft. Right. I think Kaylin just made it or something like that our youngest. But there were definitely some kids that were at that height requirement, and they let them go through. So if your kid is probably close to it, you're probably fine.
[00:26:11] Speaker C: Yeah. Interesting. All right, well, those zip line excursions are often very fun, especially, as you mentioned, in the rainforest. And that's what I don't think people realize so much. Like, that's what the Caribbean is like, the natural, like, the forests in the Caribbean are all rainforests. And that's why they do these sort of cool canopy, rainforest canopy, zip line tours and things like that that are really, really awesome. All right, let's talk Dominica, or however, the other way to pronounce it is Dominica. I think Dominica because he sings the.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: Whole song on the bus ride.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:45] Speaker C: Oh, really? Well, what did you book and get up to or. And. Or get up to in Dominica?
[00:26:51] Speaker B: So. Also did a Disney excursion. And then that one we did. Well, I wanted to see the falls. They have, like, the Trafalgar falls, which looked like a good thing to look at. And then I saw it was booked. You could do multiple different, like, ones with that and something else, and I picked the one that was the champagne snorkel. Just. People should read that. It's not actually champagne that you're drinking, which I knew it wasn't.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: Some people thought you snorkel and get champagne with it.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: I think some people were highly disappointed on our excursion because they thought they were getting champagne to drink. It's actually champagne bubble like variants that you're seeing in the water.
Some old volcanic rocks. Right. That are down there.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Gas is coming up from the volcanic vents and with warm water, too. So it's very cool. It's like you're snorkeling through champagne. They had these tons of sponges there in the snorkel. I've never seen so many sponges. It's really cool to see that. And then the guide would go down and get some of the warm water and then pour it on us. And he said it had, like, some healing properties.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: No, that we would be two years younger. Do I look two years old?
[00:27:56] Speaker C: I love that.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So that was a really cool experience, seeing the bubbles come up and with the warm water.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah. It's very unique. And I think that's why I had to do it, because we've snorkeled many different places, but never seen anything like that.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Yeah. I would say the waterfall part, it was very pretty, but very short. We just kind of got there, took a picture and left. It would have been nice to kind of, like, explore the area a little bit more because that's also very kind.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: Of, like, in the jungle type, raid force type experience. Some people were taking those big. Why are they doing those, like, four by four?
[00:28:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Like an open air, big vehicle.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: I don't know where they were going, but somewhere they were off roading, I think, after that.
[00:28:32] Speaker C: Oh, that's cool. So, yeah. So yours was this champagne, bubbles, swim or snorkel versus with the falls, whereas other people had the falls and then ATV or some other kind of experience. Cool, exactly. Yeah. And what did you think about the value of this excursion? This one actually sounds. This one sounds like one I would love to do. We haven't been to Dominica that we didn't stop there on our southern.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: I think this one was really cheap, too. I don't remember. I think it was maybe, like $70 a person, something like that. So it was good value, especially because there's no way you could get to these things on your own because they're both were not close at all from the actual boat. I would say the one negative is that when you're with the group is that you're snuggling with this giant amount of people. There were probably, like, 40 or 50 of us in the water, but our guides were good. They knew what they were like. I wouldn't have known what I was looking at some of these things. Cause there were definitely some unique stuff, and I think it was overall really good for the price of what you got there. I was looking at a few non Disney ones, but there aren't a lot of non Disney options because. Oh, I didn't mention this on the other part. We were the only people, like, only cruise ship in all of these ports.
[00:29:45] Speaker C: Oh, nice. Yeah. I mean, these ports are really small, comparatively to, you know, Nassau, for example, or some of the other ports that Disney goes to sort of more regularly, like Cozumel or Costa Maya or, you know, some of those other ones. But, yeah, that's awesome to be the only ship in port because then you're not competing.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: And I think they said we were the last of the season, too, so it was pretty much wrapping up. So I think they were kind of excited, like, oh, we're the last boat. Last ship. And then you got a little bit more personal care, I think, too, because you weren't having a bunch of other tourists at the same time.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: As Rachel mentioned, our guide sang us a song, and on the snorkel, they would bring up some sea life to have us touch and look at. And they did a really good job. It was a good excursion.
[00:30:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: And actually he fixed my own private snorkel was not working. I was like, I cannot breathe anything out of this thing. And at the end, it was quite frustrating, but I just held my breath and at the end and he's like, oh, I'll fix it for you. So he got all the cleaning stuff, fixed it, and then my snorkel worked after that. So that was very nice.
[00:30:49] Speaker C: Yeah, that's awesome. Those sounds like. Sounds like you had really good tour guides. You know, that is always a hit or miss. But I will say I think Disney generally does a good job with finding, you know, good tour operators. This doesn't mean every tour guide is going to be great, but, you know, that's, as we mentioned at the beginning, that's one of the benefits, right, of booking through Disneyland is that, you know, they vetted them. If you can find the same tour operator that Disney uses and book it direct, even better to get it cheaper. But, yeah, these smaller ports, there's probably less of that available or Disney's booked it. All right. Like, they might otherwise operate independently, but Disney's already reserved every spot that they've had, that they have available, so that might be.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: Yes. Speaking of good tour guides, it reminds me that we should bring enough cash for the tips. We were, we were a little short on cash because of one of the people didn't take a credit card and so we had to go to. But that's one thing to keep in mind that have plenty of cash for all the tipping. You do tipping.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: And then if you're going to take taxis, any other taxis, do not take credit cards.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: Oh, good. Good point. Yeah, really good point. Because this is, I think most people now don't think about having cash just because we've become, like post Covid, right. We've become such a cashless society. I feel like I can't remember the last time I went somewhere that didn't take apple pay or, you know, or. Or at least a credit card if they don't have an. If they can't, if their machine doesn't take apple pay. Yeah, that is a good point. That is not the case in the Caribbean. In the Caribbean in general, regular stores will take credit cards, but individual vendors, taxicabs, even restaurants, sometimes, if it's a smaller restaurant, they might not take cards and tips, for sure. For tour guides, you need to have credit. You need to have cash for. Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: And they don't have an ATM on the ship. So we went to a casino and got some cash and loaded up again.
[00:32:38] Speaker C: Yeah, well, that's true. Disney ships, because it's funny. On Royal Caribbean, of course they have cash machines on the ship because they also have a casino.
Any place that has a casino is going to have a cash machine.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: That makes sense.
[00:32:53] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: They're all at all the ports, even. You're like, oh, just go to this spot. I'm like, where you see the little casino sign?
[00:32:59] Speaker C: That's where the ATM is always at the casino. I love it. Awesome. All right, well, let's talk about St. Lucia. They did mention this is a port heavy trip. Yeah. So St. Lucia before you even had a full sea day, right?
[00:33:13] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah, just portport. Port, St. Lucia. We took a catamaran tour. Tell us how long it took.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: Yeah, so we. This one also did through Disney. And I think I looked at doing it private, and there were some people taking private, like catamarans, which might have been the better option, because when we told us to arrive at the Walt Disney theater at 830, by the time we got through, it was already 930, I think, before we got on the catamaran. It was quite painful. And then I thought, oh, my gosh, how many people are they putting on each catamaran? Somehow we entered first into the Walt Disney theater, but got be the last ones out, which was actually an advantage because they didn't fill out on our last catamaran. I don't think so. Ours was had less people on it. So be in the back of the line to get on the catamaran is what I'm trying to say.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: Well, we were lucky in that sense, but unlucky in another sense. So along the route, I noticed a small boat coming up to us. This is odd. And they actually tied up to us, and people got off, and one of them had a toolbox. I was like, oh, this is odd. And one of the passengers said, oh, I saw some black smoke coming out. And so I was looking around, and then we stopped, and one of the engines had died. And we were sitting there for quite a while, and we were asking, like, what's the situation? Are we going to still go to where we're going? And like, oh, yes, everything's fine. Don't worry about it. Well, we're still on target to do everything. Okay. And, like, ask again here and there. And finally they got it started, but I don't know if we got to. We were supposed to get to, which was called Pigeon island.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: No, no, no. We did, but we weren't stopping at that. That was. You had. So what happened was they had some.
[00:34:54] Speaker C: I love this. Rachel's gonna correct you.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: Don't worry about it.
[00:34:58] Speaker C: I love having a husband and wife on because it just reminds me of how Brian and I are. Right? Like, it's like, no, no, we just correct each other. Interrupt. I love it. All right, tell us, Rachel, what actually happened?
[00:35:08] Speaker B: Well, we did the best of the west catamaran and it was supposed to go to Pigeon island, but because there was some festival, they were redirecting us. But what they did is they actually took us all the way down to look at Pigeon island, but then not stop. And that was in the opposite direction or anything else we wanted to go. So it was on our way back is when the boat wasn't or the cameraman was having the issue. So then we thought, oh, great, we're not going to get to where we wanted to go, which was the pitons or the pythons. I don't know if they say that.
[00:35:37] Speaker C: Pitons, pythons.
[00:35:38] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. So we did get to where we wanted to go, but it took a while and we were getting quite nervous. So that was 2 hours of like going completely out of our way to basically see nothing and get burned, I think, in the process.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that was.
Everyone on the boat was not so happy about that. 2 hours to nowhere and.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: But the next part after that was good.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: That was.
[00:36:01] Speaker C: Did they let you like, snorkel or anything while they fixed? No, no. So, because at least if you were someplace where you could snorkel, then you, you know, then it's kind of like, okay, well, they're dealing with that, but I'm actually snorkeling.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: We were actually quite almost back to where we started, I think at that point. Yeah, we could see the. Where the Disney ship was, where the magic was, but we were just in the middle of the ocean. It was like just some random spot because that's where we had the issue.
[00:36:27] Speaker C: Yeah. Did they? Well, we'll get back to how long was the excursion supposed to be and how long did you end up, like, on the excursion? Was it longer?
[00:36:36] Speaker B: That was supposed to be. Yeah, that was supposed to be the longest day, I believe. It was supposed to be maybe five and a half or 6 hours. But as I said, it started at 830 and we got back at 15 minutes before we were all aboard or something like that. So 430. It was like 8 hours. It was long.
[00:36:56] Speaker C: Yeah. At least they didn't cut it short in the sense of like you didn't get to. I mean, this is the trade off, right? Either you cut it short and you don't get to see the. Do all of the things, or they lengthen it so that you can get to see all of the things. But, yeah, what was. So how was the pitons? And, you know, what else did you get to do on the excursion?
[00:37:17] Speaker B: First, we stopped at Merrigo Bay. We didn't actually really stop. That was beautiful. But what they did is they just kind of, like, went along the harbor, and I kept thinking to myself, why didn't we go here first and stop here?
Because it was really, really pretty, was really nice. And then they did have a snorkel stop for us that, I don't know, some random area before we got to the pitons. And that snorkel was actually really good. Remember what you saw there?
[00:37:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Sponges, all kinds of things. Oh, yeah. We saw some eels. It was interesting. They told us ahead of time before we got off the boat. Just be aware that the locals will try to bring you out to a spot, and on a kayak, they'll say, rolled onto this rope, and we'll tow you out to where you want to go, and then they'll ask for a tip. So, yeah, several people, in fact. I was with my daughter Rebecca. He's like, hey, let me take you. I was like, no, we're all fine. But that's like, child. It's a child. I'll help your child. Like, no, no, we're fine. We're fine. So I had to tell him multiple times, like, go away.
[00:38:08] Speaker C: Please go away. Yeah, I don't need a tow. I'm okay.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: And then they come up to the boat also trying to sell, like, beer and different things. Like, actually, they would actually grab onto the boat we were on, and let's just, like, kind of reach over and try to sell us things. So that was interesting.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: It was probably an area that they don't get many tourists at. As I said, that was some. I think it was more like a local beach snorkel type spot. And it was really nice. I think we were there maybe 45 minutes or so at that stop, and then we went to. From there to the pitons, and that was what we were looking forward to because it's so unique to see basically these volcanoes that never fully formed or erupted out in the middle of the ocean. And we swam by them, which I don't think we normally would have done. So we actually swam by them because we didn't go to Pigeon island. So that was neat.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: Yeah. So we got to go in the water twice. The water was beautiful and warm. And essentially, when we were leaving, the locals would hold onto the lines of the boat as we were going away, like, get a little ride for a little bit, but yeah. So it's a long day. The second part was great, the first part, not so great. It was also frustrating how they didn't really tell us what was happening when they were just like, everything's fine, don't worry about it. We're still on track and we're stopped and you're fixing.
[00:39:20] Speaker C: We're not on track.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And we're just sitting there.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: But I think that's the caribbean attitude, though, that everything's going to be okay. You're good. You're getting to what you want.
[00:39:29] Speaker C: But they're on island time.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: They made up for it. They did have their rum punch. They said to be careful with, especially in the.
[00:39:38] Speaker C: In the hot caribbean sun. Right. You mentioned about getting sunburned. But also, if you're having rum punch, like, you need to stay, like, extra hydrated because that's between the sun and the alcohol. That will. That will get to you. No question. Now, I assume that this included, you know, like a lunch on board and punches, as is typical the case of a long catamaran visit.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it was a pretty good lunch. They had chicken and rice and fish and salad.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: And our pickier eater, who would normally not eat a lot of that stuff, actually really enjoyed the chicken. Didn't you even get her seconds?
[00:40:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good lunch.
[00:40:12] Speaker C: And they were able to accommodate you being gluten free, Alan, I assume. I mean, rice obviously was.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: That was a little questionable. I didn't feel good after this, and I think I know why.
[00:40:22] Speaker C: Okay. It's usually a cross contamination issue. Right. It's not like, because rice doesn't have gluten in it, but whatever, like, they're putting on the fish or whatever they're putting on the chicken might have, you know, the seasoning that they use might have gluten in it or something.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: Right. I think that's what happened. Yeah.
[00:40:36] Speaker C: Yeah. That's a bummer. Yeah. So this is. I would say this must be hard, though, in general. Like, it makes sense that you would, for most of your excursions, go back to the ship to eat because let's face it, like, most places is outside of. Well, outside of the US and maybe certain parts of Europe are not great with the whole gluten free or other food allergies as well. But the ship tends to be really good. Is that consistent with your experience?
[00:41:02] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I mean, the ship is amazing with pre ordering stuff and getting anything I want and making it special. Yeah. Outside the ship, it's a question mark.
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[00:42:14] Speaker C: Now. Okay, before we get to your last port, stop, I gotta ask with this St. Lucia catamaran kerfuffle. I'm gonna call it kerfuffle because it wasn't like a ruined, you know, it wasn't a ruined day. It sounds like it still was a good day, but it was a longer day and obviously a little bit of a miss with Pigeon island. But did, did they give you any kind of compensation, any kind of discount or anything on board after the fact to compensate or. No, because you still got the code.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: I don't think we had a right to fully complain because we got to where we were supposed to go and they did tell us what was going to happen with Pigeon island. So I don't think anyone complained that.
[00:42:51] Speaker A: You right while it was happening, we were like, oh, this is terrible. We're going to definitely say something about this. But then once we finished, we did the rest of stuff. It seems like we did check off the things that we wanted to do. So I don't know if other people went to guest services or not, but we didn't.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: But we were all saying that if we're not going. Making it to the pitons. We're going there right away. We made some really nice friends on the catamaran. We all bonded over this.
[00:43:16] Speaker C: That's actually a really good point. Catamarans are an excellent place to make cruise friends. I know that sounds like a weird thing, but you're all kind of stuck on this, like, boat, right. And you're in relatively close quarters in the sense that, like, you're all. It's not like on the ship where you can be more spread out. You're, like, all on the same smaller boat. And so you do tend to interact with other guests more. And when something like this happens in particular.
Yeah. But I guess it's also a good reminder, bring extra sunscreen and lather yourself with sunscreen multiple times.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: Definitely.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: And then you talked to someone who did the shorter catamaran that I think had a much better experience.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So if we ever do this again, we'll go for the shorter excursion.
[00:43:58] Speaker C: The hard thing is with the shorter catamarans is that you, if you want to do snorkeling, you get, like, ten minutes of snorkeling. Right. So that's like, it's a, it's a trade off. Cause I tend to like a shorter excursion in general, too. But then if you pick a short excursion for a catamaran. Yeah. You usually just don't get a lot of snorkeling in, and that's usually the main draw for, for these catamaran excursions. All right, well, let's talk about Barbados before we talk about your, your onboard stuff, because as I mentioned, I think the, the most unique thing about this southern caribbean itinerary is the port stops because they're places that Disney just doesn't go to all that often. What did you get up to on Barbados?
[00:44:39] Speaker B: So as I had mentioned earlier, for Barbados, I wanted to do the swim with turtles. Like, to me, I love turtles. That's what I wanted to do. And that sold out. So I thought, let me do some research. So I looked at, I thought, okay, maybe we'll just do the beach day. And I looked at where they do. Disney does their beach day, which is called harbor life. And directly on their website, they also do a swim with the turtles tour. So it was super easy and super cheap because $35 gave you a beach chair and umbrella. And the swim with the turtles, which was two snorkel spots, right?
[00:45:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: Yeah. One snorkel and then one with the turtles. And it was amazing. Like, I couldn't have asked for better versus I could have booked the same thing separately and only have gotten half of that for a lot of money.
[00:45:31] Speaker C: Yeah, because you would have just had the swim with the turtles and not the beach and the extra snorkel. Wow.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: Right? It was great. I think it was all of our favorite spots. It was amazing. The sand was soft and white. The water was just amazing. Clear and warm. And the snorkeling was amazing. They took us to a shipwreck, but it was very close to shore, so very, very fast boat ride. Got to see a shipwreck, tons of fish, and then a very short ride to the turtle area. And they had food out for the turtles. And they said that we could touch the turtles, which I always have been told never touch turtles, but maybe these were different turtles or they just didn't care there.
[00:46:09] Speaker B: We didn't touch it, but our kids did. Because I think when kids are told they can touch the animal they're going to touch.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. They came right up to us and it was just amazing. And then we had the lounge chairs afterwards, a food and drink area, but it was just a really nice spot.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: Bathroom, showers. Like, it's a beach club, basically. It was really, if you just wanted a beach day, it was a perfect day just for a beach day. And then we got to add on the snorkel with the turtles. Like, we couldn't have asked for anything better.
[00:46:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Now it did rain for a little bit, but just a random rainstorm came.
[00:46:43] Speaker C: But, yeah, the beach club can't control the weather. Neither cruise line, right? No. Did you taxi there from the port then? Okay. Yeah, because obviously the Disney excursion would have included, like, transportation, but you all were ended up doing this on your own, so, yeah, I was looking.
[00:46:59] Speaker B: The beach day just on its own was $44, and then we were 35 for, but that included our snorkel. And then it was $5 per person for the taxi, so.
[00:47:11] Speaker C: So dollar 20 each way. Yeah, yeah. Not too bad, not too bad. Did you have the same situation where the taxi driver gave you their card to come back to get you later?
[00:47:20] Speaker B: One, they filled it up completely and multiple beach clubs. And then they were waiting, though, at the beach club.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: Yeah. To go back to the ship. I think they were just there waiting because they knew people would go back to the ship. So it was really easy to go back.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: Yeah, easier than I anticipated. We just walked out, got the taxi, and we were by ourselves on that one our way back.
[00:47:41] Speaker C: That's nice. Yeah. Well, awesome. I'm super jealous. I've always wanted to swim with the. With sea turtles have. It has not been something I've been able to check off my bucket list quite yet, but hopefully, I guess I have to make it down to Barbados because, I don't know. We haven't been able to make it happen in Hawaii. I know that that's the thing you can do, like, not far from Milwaukee, but I just. It just hasn't.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: You have to go to Hawaii and go to Makena.
[00:48:06] Speaker A: We did a maui, right? Yeah, McKenna's on Maui.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: Right, right, sorry, wrong island. Maui. And go to McKenna that there, because that we did a kayak and then kayak to swim with the turtles, and that was amazing.
[00:48:21] Speaker C: I got to do that. All right. Okay, well, we got to talk about some on board stuff. What did you all get up to on board? What were some highlights from, you know, this itinerary? We don't, obviously, we're not going to go day by day and talk everything you did, but, yeah. Tell me, you know, what. What did the girls like to do? What did you guys get up to on board? And what kinds of things did you do as a family?
[00:48:42] Speaker A: So the girls saw all the shows, including the variety of shows. We saw almost all the shows. The one Rachel didn't go to, the ventriloquist. And I actually left the ventriloquist early because I thought it was really bad, but the girls told me later that it got better.
[00:48:56] Speaker C: We're not gonna name the name. Let's not name the name of the ventriloquist, son.
[00:48:59] Speaker B: I just don't like ventriloquist. It's not for me. And I told you you wanted to go for a few. A little bit. But he even left earlier. Cause he thought the person was bad and just met me at the bar.
[00:49:10] Speaker A: I think it was more geared toward kids, and they really enjoyed it. And especially at the end, they said it was great at the end because they had some of the passengers come up and she would be the ventriloquist for the passengers.
[00:49:20] Speaker C: The passengers were the dummies, and the ventriloquist would mouth for the. Would voice the passengers. I love that. I love that they do that.
[00:49:28] Speaker A: Yeah. We all enjoyed the juggler, and we saw him later at an adult only thing, juggling and comedy.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: Yeah, he was funny. His name is Marcus Monroe, and he was just really good.
[00:49:39] Speaker C: We've seen him. He's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. He's a really.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: There was a magician, which we thought was okay. And then the Broadway style shows were awesome. We always loved those. So we saw tangled, we saw twice. Charmed and dreams.
[00:49:52] Speaker B: And then because we had like half days, we definitely did full time. And that was actually to our advantage because we haven't done talked about the sea day, but on the sea day, someone apparently had an accident in the pool. So that was closed for many hours on sea day, which I'm glad we did. Had done it all before then.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: Yeah. They drained the pool, had the sanitation staff come out and do their thing.
[00:50:17] Speaker C: I will say that's one of the big negatives of the wonder and the magic. The pool deck. There's really the one pool right in front of funnel vision, and that's the main pool. And so if a kid who should be potty trained, because you're not supposed to be, there's no potty trained, un potty trained people allowed in the pools on cruise ships in general. Right. Not, this is not a Disney thing, this is a cruise ship thing because it literally. Well, one, they don't use the same, I think, chemicals as you do in your chlorinated pool at home or at your swim club. And two, it literally shuts down the pool for hours and hours for them to do the sanitation. So, yeah, don't do that, people. Don't let your kid who's not potty trained in the pool, let them go to the baby splash pad, let them hang out. That's the only place other people, I.
[00:51:09] Speaker B: Think for us, we just at that point were like, well, we're just not doing the pool. And we had already done the pool and we had left the girls multiple times. They just stayed in there like the kids zone. And then we are the family zone. And we went to the adult, but the adult zone was really crowded because it was more adult heavy on this trip.
[00:51:24] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Since timing. Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:27] Speaker B: Because, I mean, people would have, everyone else had to take their kids out of school basically beyond it.
[00:51:32] Speaker C: Right. Yeah. Late April, early May is not typically a time that most schools have their spring break. They usually have their spring break either in late March or an early or mid April like we do. We have usually earlier mid April for our school, but, yeah, so it's mostly the southern caribbean itineraries do tend to. Well, particularly ones during the school year, not during the summer, tend to be heavy adult only type cruises. Yeah. So that makes sense.
[00:52:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Speaking of adult stuff, we did match your mate, which that was our first time seeing. That was a lot of fun.
[00:52:05] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: That was a little bit of a bummer that they had an older couple on the there. And when they were asking the wife questions, she said, well, I don't think my husband's going to know because he has dementia. I was like, oh, that kind of brought down the.
Yeah. But, um, one of the more entertaining moments is that there's a question of.
[00:52:23] Speaker C: Um, why did they volunteer? Why did they volunteer? That makes me so sad.
[00:52:29] Speaker B: Yeah, my wife really wanted to be on it. I think that was right.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. But they did have a good answer. They had, um, the question was, where's the most unique way or unique place you discovered the magic, so to speak? And their answer, which they both got, was in the caves of Tomsara island at Magic Kingdom. So the whole. The audience went wild.
[00:52:54] Speaker C: It's probably a long time ago because.
[00:52:57] Speaker B: That was not expected.
[00:52:59] Speaker C: That is not expected. That's hilarious. I love it. Yeah, that's your mate is. Is generally very, very fun. I wish we made it to the show more often. It's one of those things, you know, it happens late at night and when you have to put kiddo to bed at a decent hour because you're waking up early for a port excursion, that doesn't always happen. Your girls are a little bit older, I think, than Nathan. Remind me of their ages and twelve and 14. Okay, so they're in edge and vibe. The 14 year old can go to either. Right, right.
[00:53:31] Speaker B: And so this time she, we went actually in, toured the open house because we had not seen vibe. And then once she saw vibe compared to edge was like, I am not going to edge because vibe is just so much. It was, it's much nicer. It's in the funnel. It's bigger. There's like, more to do. And so then our twelve year old kind of just didn't go to the club at all because I don't think there were that many kids really her age. And I think without her sister, she just didn't care to. But our 14 year old went to the club with. There was another girl on the cruise ship who had a birthday the exact same day that we figured out beforehand on the Facebook group. So they met up and they were the only ones when they met up in the, in vibe. And they were with the counselors just playing games with them and stuff. So they said it was a lot of fun. They would just hang out on, mostly just hang out their own and go to different things on their own. Like, they went to a trivia on their own and they would go and. And they're fine just doing whatever they wanted without us. We had things planned.
[00:54:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Then we did do a lot of family things on the ship. We did several trivias, which we actually tied for first place, but they gave us the medal, so that was nice.
[00:54:35] Speaker B: We lost the tiebreaker question.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. We lost the tiebreaker. Which was it?
[00:54:40] Speaker B: The length of the running time of Sleeping Beauty. The original one.
[00:54:46] Speaker C: Oh, my God.
[00:54:47] Speaker B: We were going back and forth on that. I think I said the right time at first, but you told me no, that's crazy.
And then the people that Wondez had been. They were platinum. Cause I saw their lanyard, and then they had. They kind of left when they were announcing. And the guy's like. He's like, oh, he just gave it to us. The medals.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: I think they've probably done it so.
[00:55:07] Speaker C: Many times, they probably didn't need the medals. They're like, we have so many medals, we don't need them.
[00:55:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And then we won a family game that was like, know your family inside out.
[00:55:17] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:55:18] Speaker B: We just walked in at the time when they were asking for volunteers or only one family there, and we're like, well, do you want to just volunteer? So we just went up and did that. It was fun.
[00:55:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:27] Speaker B: We hadn't done any of those, like, little family games shows before. Cause I think we just never made that a priority. And then we also finally made it to the Jack Jack diaper dash race, which.
[00:55:38] Speaker C: That was fun. Yeah. What did you think?
[00:55:39] Speaker B: Yeah, that was cute. I felt bad for the one baby that didn't move at all. Like, they kept trying to. I think she was too little. She was, like, eight months old or something. And you had the. I knew that the 16 or 18 month old one was gonna win. I mean, come on. Like, really?
[00:55:54] Speaker C: Yeah, that one probably there. Probably already able to walk, but they were willing to crawl.
[00:55:59] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. That's what I was thinking. I'm like, that's just not fair. You're pairing up this, like, little, tiny nugget who probably just started crawling to this one, who's been crawling for, like, six months.
[00:56:10] Speaker C: But it was fun. For those who don't know, Jack. Jack's diaper dash is a baby race. And so, depending upon how many babies are on the ship and willing and their parents are willing to put them in the race, you might actually have multiple heats. So they'll usually race. Like, it's. I don't know if it's four or five babies at once, and then if. But if there are, you know, ten babies or 15 babies, they'll have, like, three different heats, and then they'll have the winner of each of those heats race for the, you know, the championship, and they give you, like, usually a bib or a onesie or something like that. But it's a really, really cute, fun thing to watch. On most of the ships, it's held in the atrium so that people can watch from above because the best views are from above. Unless you're up front, it would be difficult to see if you're on the third floor. The other place is held on the Disney wishes in the hero zone, which is really fun because that also has that balcony space. But super fun event to watch. I really, really, really love it. So I highly, highly, highly recommend it.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: Another family thing we did was the encanto celebration in the D League.
[00:57:12] Speaker C: How did you like it?
[00:57:13] Speaker A: It was really well done. They very well decorated. They had Bruno come out at the end, but I think it was geared to more younger kids, so it didn't really hit us the same way. It was just kind of.
[00:57:24] Speaker B: It was not quite our thing. Pretty, but we wouldn't, like, do it again.
[00:57:27] Speaker A: Yeah. The other girls enjoyed making the butterflies. They had, like, a little mariposa making thing, but, yeah, it just is more for little kids.
[00:57:34] Speaker C: I agree. It's a little bit of a sing along and dance along, and it's. Yeah, it's more. It's definitely more geared towards younger kids. The one thing is, if you didn't get a chance to do, like, a Bruno and Marisol picture and meet and greet at a different moment, because they sometimes will have a meet and greet at a different time during your cruise, at the end of that, they typically will allow you to do a picture and a meet and greet the end of the Encanto celebration. So it is a good way to get that in, although it's a longer event, and then you'll, of course, wait for your picture and whatnot. So if you didn't get that, if you want to get that unique character and you didn't have another chance to do it, that's one opportunity. But I agree. I would say it's very much geared towards even preschool kids, I think would enjoy it. But younger elementary, I think Nathan's at ten, kind of too old for it as well.
[00:58:27] Speaker A: Another thing we did that we'd probably skip in the future is the anyone can cook. So we didn't know ahead of time that it was just watching somebody do something. We thought we'd actually participate and heard you say on royal, you actually participated, but on Disney, you're just kind of watching somebody and the person they chose to present. It was probably a great chef, but not a very good presenter. So he's kind of hard to understand. It's like, what is he doing? What is he saying?
[00:58:52] Speaker B: We actually left.
[00:58:54] Speaker A: Yeah, we left early. They brought out the food for us to try, but that was not quite what we were expecting.
[00:59:01] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a bummer. Yeah. Anyone can cook are always demonstrations. They're not, they're not food classes, they're food demonstrations or cooking demonstrations. And sometimes you get a really good presenter and other times not so good presenter. So, yeah, that's kind of, uh, I'm not surprised that that was maybe did not fulfill, uh, expectations.
Anything we missed? Um, obviously, you had food, you know, you ate, so we haven't talked about food. Did you do any adult dining and overall, how was, you know, food quality and whatnot on the ship?
[00:59:34] Speaker B: So we did Paulo dinner this time. We had done palo brunch that time. Well, two times before. We hadn't done the dinner in a while. And that was especially since there was only one sea day. It was impossible to get the brunch and I didn't actually want to take it up at that point. So we did enjoy the dinner a lot. That was very tasty. And I did like our server. She was from Italy and she was fabulous. She just convinced us to go not do the prefix and then just pick what we wanted, which I think was the right choice, because then you weren't stuck into these courses and what you wanted.
[01:00:07] Speaker A: And, yeah, she was amazing. I just happened to make a comment in passing that, oh, we did Paulo dinner for our 10th anniversary, and now it's our 15th anniversary. And so at the end, she came over with a plate saying, happy anniversary of Rachel and Alan. And that was nice. So that was just a great experience. We had the wine sommelier come over and help us pair the wines with what we were eating, and it was just really, really, really nice experience.
[01:00:31] Speaker C: Yeah, great. Tough, not tough. Yeah. I feel like the service at Palo is always fantastic. Food is almost always with. I would say that we have had, like, one or two exceptions where one of our dishes was sort of a miss. But in general of food, I would say quality is always quite good. I like to do the price fixed menu and Brian does the ala carte and then we get a pasta course that we share. But I think you can't go wrong, really, either way. I think both are great options. It's really, to me, it always ends up being the decider is, what do you want for your online? If what you want for your entree is not on the price fixed menu. You go a la carte. If what you want for your entree is on the price fixed menu, go price fix.
[01:01:10] Speaker B: I think that's exactly. I think we both were looking at ones that were not on the price fix menu. Like, I got the seared scallops, which were delicious, and then you got the short ribs, right? No.
[01:01:22] Speaker A: Osso boco. Yeah, osso buco.
[01:01:24] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. That's one of Brian's favorites, that I will say. That's been the one, though. There were a couple of times he's had the Oso buco, and it wasn't as good. So in general, that was always a hit. And then more recently, he had a couple of misses, so he kind of been switching it up and going back to the Dover soul a little bit, because he loves that dish as well. But, yeah, I'm always about the beef tenderloin, unless we're doing that. What is it? Like, the shared porterhouse for two or whatever? Otherwise, I'm going always for the beef tenderloin. That's my favorite thing. At least at regular Palo. Not Palo Steakhouse. The wish. All right, well, how was. Yeah, how was overall food? We, you know, you obviously, you know, ate on the ship most days, at least. Well, probably most of your meals. How was, you know, food quality overall?
[01:02:11] Speaker A: I thought it was excellent. I think. Yeah, there were no misses. I think we all enjoyed all of our meals. Embarkation day, we ate at cabanas, and then we had. We had pool deck food, and the kids went to the pool deck on their own once, and so we kind of tried it all. We had all the rotational dining and pool deck.
[01:02:27] Speaker B: Oh, one thing with the pool deck, you gotta be careful on the times on when those things closed, because I think they wanted to get pizza, but then it was closed during the time they wanted, so then they had to do the daisies or one of those, which they were fine with, but they kind of wanted to get the pizza for dinner at that point, but it had some weird closure hours. So just double check the hours before you go up there.
[01:02:49] Speaker C: Yeah, it is. I think it might be because of, like, the staffing the way that they do it, but I think during the dinner hours, like, prime dinner hours, they usually close the pizza, but the burgers and stuff are open, and then, like, the burgers close, like, immediately thereafter, and the pizza reopens, and then the pizza is the only thing that's open till sort of late, later in the night. But, yeah, you're right. That's a good point to check those hours. If you're gonna be. If you think you're gonna be eating dinner on the pool deck, that's one thing. Not everything is gonna be open during the dinner hours. Yeah.
[01:03:18] Speaker B: And then what you're saying, too, is that the last time I was on, I got in the sea bass at Rapunzel's, and I thought it was sort of. Just sort of bland, didn't have a lot of flavor, but thought, I love sea bass. I'll try it one more time. And this time, it was much better. So I think sometimes you get a miss, as you're saying. So it's worthwhile to try again and just see. I think everything was flavored a little bit better. And I don't know. I think overall, our dining experience was we really liked our dining team. They were very good. And our server actually had her birthday on our trip on the.
[01:03:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So we got her a present from one of the islands.
[01:03:52] Speaker C: Oh, that's so sweet. I love that.
And I love when you have a good serving team, because that really can make all the difference. But also an excellent point, Rachel, though, about, you know, sometimes something will be, you know, under seasoned or not hot or, you know, and then you might have the exact same dish another time, and it could be awesome. So, yeah, sometimes worth giving something a second chance.
[01:04:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And regarding the pool deck, there's no issue with gluten free offerings. You know, they'll bring you gluten free hamburger buns and the ice cream, gluten free ice cream cones and.
[01:04:25] Speaker C: Oh, nice.
[01:04:26] Speaker A: Chicken strips and anything you want.
[01:04:28] Speaker B: Just allow a little extra time for that.
[01:04:30] Speaker C: Yeah, good point. Okay, and you. And you said pre ordering too, right, for the rotational dining.
[01:04:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd always pre order the night before.
[01:04:37] Speaker B: And you would order breakfast.
[01:04:38] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Breakfast also. Yeah. Especially on the day when they had the Mickey churro waffles. Wanted to make sure those were ordered.
[01:04:44] Speaker C: So you have to. You have to have Mickey churro waffles, and if you want them gluten free, you have to pre order. Absolutely. That's a really good point. For anyone, anyone with food allergies, it is highly recommended to pre order. It's not required. Your dining staff will typically ask you for it for dinner, but for, like, other meals, it's not. Certainly not required. But for breakfast in particular, I think you'll wait. You might wait quite a bit, you know, where, while the rest of your family's eating, whether that be at cabanas or at, or at the main dining. If they're not ready for you, it's not like they're going to have your food cooked and it's going to be sitting there getting cold. It's just a matter of them sort of knowing you're coming and what you're going to want and making sure they have it ready and available for you. All right. Well, I think we've covered pretty much everything, but before I subject you to, I'm going to give you a shortened rapid fire because we've done rapid fire with you guys a couple times and it's not that long ago that we had you on last. But I do want to ask you a couple of favorites. But before I do that, you know, is there anything that I've missed that we haven't talked about notable on this cruise? A hit, a miss, or just activity that we didn't talk about?
[01:05:48] Speaker B: We also did the couples massage and the time before we had done it on the fantasy, I do have to say I like the fantasies. What do they call it, the whole area?
[01:05:57] Speaker A: The senses spa.
[01:05:59] Speaker B: Senses spa is nicer on the fantasy, I think, because it has more space and you have a nicer room to wait beforehand. And the room, this one was, it doesn't really matter because you're lying down anyways. But it was more in an enclosed room. We didn't get the ocean room, but it still was a very nice experience. Although I do think they're like products and told me I have a lot of tension and things like that.
[01:06:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Did she want to meet with the acupuncturist or the specialist?
[01:06:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. She was trying to sell the acupuncturist.
[01:06:27] Speaker C: Acupuncturist. Yeah.
[01:06:28] Speaker B: Not doing that.
[01:06:29] Speaker C: Yeah. I will tell you, I think that is not ship specific, but it's just individual, you know, treatment specialist specific. Like some, some individuals I've had have pushed products and things like that and others have not. And I can't think of a rhyme or reason why it got pushed one time and didn't get pushed another time. So.
[01:06:48] Speaker A: Yeah, we also really enjoy the COVID cafe. We had multiple ticket books from multiple cruises, but they join them together for us, so we got a free coffee.
[01:06:57] Speaker C: I love that. All right, well, I'm going to subject you to some rapid fire. So we're just, I'm not even going to intro it. You know what we're doing. You tell me your favorites. We're going to talk favorites on the Disney magic and on this cruise in particular. So I would love to know. So we're going to. We're not going to do general favorites because we've done that before with you all. What was your favorite show on board? The Disney magic. In particular, favorite stage show. Rachel, let's start with you.
[01:07:25] Speaker B: Well, I don't think there's a wrong. You know the answer. It's Rapunzels for sure.
[01:07:30] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:07:30] Speaker B: That's the answer. And I actually think that might even be my. Well, I. Compared to frozen, I would put it up there. Compared to frozen. I like Rapunzels more. And our lead person, and was the one who.
[01:07:43] Speaker A: For Mother Gothel.
[01:07:44] Speaker C: Mother Gothel, she was amazing.
[01:07:47] Speaker B: And always, we've seen her before.
[01:07:48] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. The same actress. Awesome.
[01:07:51] Speaker B: She's really good.
[01:07:52] Speaker A: Yeah. In fact, they had a separate event for her where she was gonna sing, but then something happened with her voice, so she had to cancel. But, yeah, she was incredible. And I agree with Rachel Tangle. The musical is the best one on the ship. And Mother Gothel was amazing.
[01:08:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:08:05] Speaker B: She also did Lady Tremaine, too.
[01:08:07] Speaker C: Lady Tremaine in twice. Charmed, right?
[01:08:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:08:10] Speaker C: So the Broadway visiting guest artist on the Disney magic, that's the roles that she plays. It's always a female, and she's always going to play mother Gothel and Lady Tremaine in those two shows, respectively. And it's. She's always. I mean, I've seen a couple of different ones or a couple different actresses, and all phenomenal because we're talking Broadway or national tour or west end quality performer. Right. That's what the. That's the requirement for somebody to be a Broadway visiting artist on a Disney cruise line. Line. Ship. So amazing. Love that. Okay, let's talk your favorite rotational dining on the Disney magic. You guys got to go, of course, to all three. Which one is your favorite? Alan, we'll start with you.
[01:08:52] Speaker A: I'm going to say animators. I just love the unique show with that fantasmic music, and then it's fun. The animation one where you're drawing your own animation magic, they call it. Yeah. So that's a fun show. And then we were there on Pirate Night also, which is great for pirate night because they have all the pirate themed imagery around. So I just love that it's so Disney in there with all the animation and the show and going from the black and white to the color, it's just very clever.
[01:09:21] Speaker C: That's the best. And when you're on a seven night on the magic, you get both. As you mentioned, the fantasmic where you get, basically sorcerer Mickey comes out, and then you also have animation magic. And you don't get both of those on the shorter cruises on the magic. You just get the Mickey sorcerer Mickey thing. You usually don't get animation magic. And that's. I think getting both of those on the Disney magic is just fantastic. Rachel, what about you? Which one was your favorite? Rotate.
[01:09:46] Speaker B: I think I actually like the Rapunzel's royal table a little bit more because I just love the whole decor. If you're going by what it looks like, I just think it transforms you. And I like how it has the show and the characters come and interact with you, which is really nice. But I do think the food is probably a little bit better in animators. That would be my overall. So it's tough, but I think the edge is for rapunzels.
[01:10:08] Speaker C: Awesome. And, yeah, you gotta love the interactions with hook hand and Rapunzel, and maybe even Flynn Rider. Love it. Yeah. Awesome. Or as I like to call him, Eugene, of course.
All right, well, tell me, what's your favorite adult bar space on the Disney magic? Rachel, we'll start with you for this one.
[01:10:27] Speaker B: So that's kind of a tricky one. I think we probably both liked the soul cat lounge, although we didn't really go there for adults, and we went into keys, but then, one, there really weren't nothing happening then. And two, I didn't really think the drink menu was for me, so it was a little tricky.
[01:10:43] Speaker A: And then we also did. Oh, I say it wrong.
[01:10:46] Speaker B: Oh, Gills.
[01:10:46] Speaker A: Oh, Gills. That's right.
[01:10:47] Speaker B: We saw live musician there. That was nice. I mean, I don't think that that hub is my favorite style, though.
[01:10:53] Speaker C: What about you, Alan? Would you agree soul cat, or you have a different favorite?
[01:10:56] Speaker A: No, I like soul cat. Also, as Rachel said, we didn't go there for a drink. We went there for trivia multiple times. Times. But it's just a nice place. Yeah, the other two, yeah, we didn't spend too much time in there and weren't quite our vibe.
[01:11:08] Speaker C: Nice. All right, well, we have to talk aqua dunk versus aqua duck. Because you were on the Disney magic. Did you ride the aqua duck on the sailing? And which one do you prefer? Aqua duck. Aqua dunk.
[01:11:22] Speaker A: So, yeah, I went on the dunk twice. I love it. It is very nerve wracking at first when you're getting enclosed and you're anticipating it, but then you hear Mickey's voice and you're like, oh, okay, it's not so bad. But then once you get dropped it's just so thrilling and exciting. I love it. But that anticipation is hard to get through. I would give it to the duck because it's just fun. It's just kind of fun and pretty and great view. Even though the dunk is quite thrilling.
[01:11:49] Speaker C: I thought you were going to say dunk, alan, the way you described it. Yeah. What about you, Rachel?
[01:11:54] Speaker B: So I did not do the dunk this time. I did it on the last time because I thought I would repeat. Now I've done it more than one time, and that's not my cup of tea, so I definitely give it to the duck. The duck is much better.
[01:12:09] Speaker C: Favorite port stop on this southern caribbean itinerary. Rachel, we'll start with you.
[01:12:14] Speaker B: Well, hands down, Barbados, it was gorgeous. I do think St. Lucia's is very nice. If we didn't have the whole debacle, it would have been better, but Barbados had it all for us.
[01:12:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And I agree, just that the beach area, the snorkeling was out of this world. It was just so pretty and warm and clear, and it was a wonderful place.
[01:12:36] Speaker C: Awesome. Love it. All right, well, bucket list cruise. I mean, this bucket list cruise changes all the time. So I always have to ask this question because you know, what you want to. What you wanted to do last week, you might have already done, right?
Or it might just change because something else pops up higher on that list. Because, of course, I would say for most of us, we have multiple bucket list cruises. So, yeah. Alan, where would you go if you could go anywhere in the world on a Disney cruise line ship? And it doesn't have to be someplace that Disney cruise line currently goes.
[01:13:06] Speaker A: Okay, well, soon we're actually going to cross off one on our bucket list, which is Alaska. So we're doing that later this summer. But, yeah, it's tough. Maybe somewhere in Europe. I don't have a specific destination, but going through Europe, maybe even a transatlantic to Europe would be cool.
[01:13:23] Speaker C: I would love that. That's transatlantic. All the sea days. All the sea. Give me all the sea days, Rachel.
[01:13:30] Speaker B: So, yeah, I agree. We were doing Alaska, I think, before I was going to say Fiji, and I said that last time, but the transatlantic is very appealing. And then I was looking for this next summer for 2025 for Europe, but I don't know. I had to say Disney needs to up its game on the ports and where it goes to and when they're available because. Because I couldn't find the one that worked for us. So some one where you do a bunch of, like, the northern european or even just a mixture or. I kind of wanted to do one of those where you go from one to the other, like Barcelona to go to England. But those times are very restricted, like at the very beginning. And I mean, it makes sense because they're a single loop, but yeah, one.
[01:14:13] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, it sounds like there's a lot on that bucket list. I'm sure you'll cross off some more stuff. As you mentioned, the thing you have next on your on tap is Alaska. That's going to be fantastic. Sailing on which. On the Disney wonder.
[01:14:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:14:28] Speaker C: Awesome. So out of Vancouver? Well, you'll have to come back and tell us all about that. But before I say thank you and end our show, I want you guys to tell folks about Krause mass adventures, where they can find you, where they can follow you and watch your awesome family vacation videos. Cause I love you. I love your site because it is really family vacation videos that you're sharing with the world and it's just really fun to watch.
[01:14:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Thanks. So we're on cross Mouse adventures and YouTube and other social media as well. But yeah, it's fun to share our enjoyment of Disney and you get to hear the kids perspectives on different things. So we show our adventures in Disney World or on the cruises or Disneyland. Alani and some other things as well.
[01:15:09] Speaker C: Awesome. Well, thanks you guys for coming. Thank you for joining me. Sorry Brian couldn't join us as well. But you know what? I got two of you. I don't need Brian.
Just kidding. Brian, we love you. We need you. Please don't edit me badly on this show.
But thanks so much, Alan and Rachel. I hope that you'll come back and talk with us soon and I'll just say thank you for joining me.
[01:15:32] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having us.
[01:15:33] Speaker B: Bye, Sam.
[01:15:34] Speaker A: Bye.
[01:15:39] Speaker D: Well, thanks to everyone out there for listening this week. We really, really appreciate it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. You can keep getting great content from us every week. In fact, twice a week we publish shows. So be sure to hit the subscribe button to get all of those great episodes. And if you want to watch us live, we have a live show now every week, Monday nights, 05:30 p.m. pacific 08:30 p.m. eastern over on YouTube.com dclduo. So be sure to head over and check that out if you want to help support the show, be sure to hit those five stars on Apple podcasts. And if you leave us a written review, a five star written review, we will read it at the top of one of our main episodes, so please head over there and hit those five stars. Of course, you can also help support the show by supporting our fabulous show sponsor, mypath Unwinding travel. You want to book your next Disney vacation? Head over to mypathunwinding.com dclduo or email
[email protected] so they know we sent you their way. If you've got questions or you'd like to connect with us, the best way to do that is to head over to dclduo.com dot. It's got links to all of our things. Full catalog of the podcast episodes, including a searchable catalog for the podcast. Links off to our vlog, a link to our Etsy store where we sell some fun, fan inspired magnets. Link to our Patreon if you'd like to help directly support the show each and every month, just head over to the website or patreon.com. dCLduo also has a way for you to sign up for our substack newsletter that we're hoping to start really pumping out monthly here, at least on a few blog articles that we've written. So dcLduo.com is the best way to connect with us. You can also, of course, email us at info duo.com or reach out to us on our voicemail line at 402-413-5590 that's 40 241-355-5590 the DCL duo podcast is not affiliated with Disney Cruise Line, the Disney Company, or the Disney family of theme parks. The views expressed on the show are solely those of the individuals on the podcast and in no way reflect the views that Disney company working Disney Cruise line. If you have questions about a Disney Cruise or Disney vacation, please contact the great folks over at mypath unwinding travel or Disney directly or your own travel agent. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time for another fabulous adventure with the DCL duo. Good night.
