[00:00:00] Speaker A: We did get a question. Are you not more excited for Destiny? I. I'll be honest, I started out more excited for Destiny than Treasure, and now I'm like, I. I don't know that the Destiny can beat the Treasure. This is like such an amazing ship.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Welcome back, everybody, to a very special live episode of the DCL Duo Podcast, brought to you by My Path Unwinding Travel and our friends over at the DCL Magazine coming soon to you. So if you want to get the first edition of the DCL magazine that we hear is really close to happening, then head over to dcl-magazine.com to sign up for the wait list. And while you're there, you can use code DCLDUO for 10 off anything in wdw magazine store. But we're not here to talk about magazines. We're here to talk about the real deal, Disney Treasure, because we just disembarked this morning off of its maiden voyage.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: And we're coming to you live from Cocoa Beach. We're at the Space Hotel and actually there's a launch tonight. So we're going to try and watch the launch at midnight tonight, assuming it doesn't get scrapped. It's a SpaceX launch and we'll hopefully be up at the Space Bar Hotel. That's what our plan is, but we'll see. But yeah, we're here live. We're in our hotel room. You've got a background, obviously, so you can't see the bed behind us.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: This is a photo I took from Fish Lips today that I'm sharing on social media of the Disney Treasure departing Port Canaveral for her New Year's Eve cruise. So that's our background today. I'm not going to give this is. We're going to call this the final verdict and our initial verdict on the wish, because we're both layers.
But I'm not going to give away the ending there.
We're just going to dive right in. I also just want to quickly say for all of you out there, if you start to lose us, if we start to cut in and out, if the audio starts to fail, we please, please, please comment and let us know because we are reliant on Hotel WI fi right now in Titusville, of all places. So I just don't know how long this stream will last, but we're going to give it a go. We're going to hope, because, yeah, we wanted to share our impressions with you real time as quickly as we possibly can. So thank you for everyone out there watching tonight. Thank you for everyone who will listen to this later. And we just hope that this holds out. So with that, let's, and thank you.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: To all the people who sent us questions ahead of time. We are going to try to weave in answers to the question as we go. But if questions come up during the show, please, please feel free to put them in the comments. And if we don't get to them, it's either because we just didn't have time or because we don't know the answer and we don't want to give you wrong information. You know, we are really, we really try and give you correct information. So we've got a couple of questions that I'm just. Sorry, I'm not going to be able to answer because there's a couple that I just don't know the answer.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Yes. All right. So with that, let's dive in. So we arrived into Orlando actually a few days early ahead of the maiden voyage. We decided that we wanted to spend a couple of days at the parks just for the quick and dirty. We stayed at the R. Riviera Hotel over at Walt Disney World, our home away from home. Yeah, we're DVC members. We stayed there. We did do a VIP tour at Walt Disney World, probably our first or what I'm labeling perhaps our only. Very, very expensive.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: It's expensive. And also we're only a family of three. So we obviously did it with a group. And so we were able to split the cost. But it's still one of those things where it is a heavy, hefty price tag. And so without doing it with friends that happen to be there at the same time, it's probably not something we would do on a regular basis. Then we did a group VIP tour at Universal Stud Studios in Florida, which.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: We'Ve done previously, we've talked about on the show.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Something we do recommend if you're really, if you've got a day to spend at Universal and you want to hear your, you want to hit up the thrill rides like we, we hit up like 12 or 13 attractions and all.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Of the Harry Potter rides.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Yeah. All the big ticket attractions there. So that's something great. But we, we did spend some time at the resort. We rented a car for, for the few days that we were in Orlando and then we drove it out to the port and returned it. So drove out to Port Canaveral on the morning of the cruise. Got there port around 9:30. I wanted to be early because I was concerned based on my experience with the last maiden voyage there Would be a long line of cars waiting to get into the port. Turned out I was wrong. I was very wrong. There was like no one there. We did manage to get into the port at 9:30 and drop off our luggage. And the friend that was with us drove a separate car with his family. Shout out to the Morrill family who sailed with us. And so Craig then took me, follow me over, follow me over to the Enterprise return location there at the port, which is about 5, 10 minutes away. If you haven't done it, it's only for cruise passengers. Dropped off the car and then we drove back to the port together. And had to circle the port many, many times because they did not open the garage even until 1032nd early. So circled till about 1030.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: They're already letting people inside the port terminal before they even opened the garage. So we were, we were hanging out outside. Myself and our friends and Nathan were hanging out outside the port terminal. But we did, we got let in probably like 10 minutes or so before or they started letting people in about 10 minutes or so before they were even able to park. So we were just waiting to go inside so that we could all enter together.
But they didn't let anybody on the ship early though. So everybody, I think, I think it was like 11:30 by the time we actually got onto the ship.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: The port was packed. I think group two, I think after we got on we figured out group two took like over an hour maybe because it was all Pearl, 90 minutes to board. So group two was massive. But we did, our group did get called. We did go through the big Mickey ears, stepped on board. Sam of course, had already been into the grand hall of the Disney Treasure. I had not, I will say it was stunning. I mean it was just beautiful. It had that fabulous new ship smell to it.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: We gotta mention there was a tree. There were Christmas decorations. For those who haven't seen our Instagram and looked at the pictures.
The grand hall was decked out for Christmas. So we were right. And those in the Facebook group that were saying, oh, there wasn't going to be a tree because it wasn't a maritime, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, we told you so.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Sam doesn't hold a grudge. Anyway, I thought the atrium was stunning. It was just gorgeous. I love the colors. I think there's been some photos of the grand hall that make it look a little darker and something it's like, I think all the color palette is very bright. They use light color woods, lots of jewel tones.
I can't say enough Nice things about the grand Hall. I can't say enough nice things about all the little touches. The lamp that's there, the atrium statue greenery, the mosaics, the tile work, all of the interesting stuff that's filling the curio cabinets that kind of sit outside of 1923. It's everywhere you like. Your head's on a swivel the entire time because there's just so much detail packed into the artwork. The carpet, the walls, the mosaics, like everything. So grand hall was just a 10 out of 10 for me.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: I will say in response to Elizabeth's comment. Elizabeth Carrera saying, I loved your shirts. We were bounding as gravity fall characters. I was Mabel, Brian was Dipper, Nathan was Seuss.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: And I think he's responding to your comments about the tree shirts and the.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Oh, our tree shirts maybe. But anyway. But our. We were bounding and only a couple of people knew who we were bounding. As if Elizabeth, if we're talking about our tree shirts, we had shirt. Brian had shirts made that said we told you there would be a tree DCL duo. Happy holidays. And so it was hilarious. Anyway, we didn't wear those until a couple days onto the cruise.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: So the Grant the grand hall was stunning. Got some photos taken and then because the ship had been dark the night before and they when they were putting up all of of the. The decorations, the rooms, our rooms are ready immediately upon boarding, which is not. Not typical, but very nice. So we immediately headed to our stateroom. We stayed on the Deck 9. We were doing an ocean view stateroom. So big porthole stateroom at the very front of the ship on the starboard side.
And so we went straight to our stateroom. It. It looks like a stateroom on the Wish, but there's a few better touches too.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Ours was encanto themed. You got to tell them.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Well, that's what I was going to say. There was a few nicer touches. Ours was encanto themed. So we had a gorgeous mural behind our bed of the house from Encanto. Loved it. I will say that we got some questions about storage and I wanted to note kind of two things. One is. Well, a couple things actually. So one, the doors in the closets no longer slide open. They pull open. That did afford better access and some space. Overall, the closet is not different in size. It does seem like I don't know this for sure. I'd have to get up measuring tape, which I am not going to do. But it does seem like they raised the bed ever so slightly because we have some very tall trunk suitcases that we bring on the cruises with us. I forget the name of the company that makes them travel something.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: But on the Wish, we had to leave them.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: On the Wish, we have to leave the top open to slide it underneath. And on this cruise, I was able to leave the top closed and. And I just shove them, just get it underneath. So it was a tight fit, but it got underneath with the top closed. So it feels like we fit two trunks, two medium suitcases and two small rollerboard suitcases under. And we still had some room at the end of the bed. So you can fit a lot of luggage under there, which I think is great. Other addition is that. So in the. In some of the staterooms, if there's no Murphy bed, they give you kind of a second cabinet with shelving where a Murphy bed would normally go.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: So this is what I talked about actually on. About the preview cruise too. And we. I had the same scenarios. What we had basically the same stateroom setup. So we had like, there's the couch that turns into a bed. There is the pull down bunk bed. And then we did not have a Murphy bed. So we had exactly the cabinet that Brian is talking about. It's in the same location.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: I actually, I actually before the cruise, I ordered one of those, like, it's not quite a shoe organizer. It's a little bit more advanced than that because it doesn't just have pockets for shoes in it. I heard when I hung it up and I put a bunch of my stuff in there, thinking we wouldn't have enough storage in the stateroom. We had empty drawers in the stateroom. We didn't use plenty of space. Half of Sam's, she used the larger side of the closet. Half of it was empty. So like, I was.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: I used most of the cabinets.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: Yeah, but I was. Yeah, but. But you had room for headroom and stuff. So like. So like, I think they. I think they hit it out of the park on the storage in some of the staterooms. Now, some of the staterooms don't have that extra cabinet space because they have a Murphy bed in them. So it's kind of hit or miss over which ones have it and which ones don't. I did see someone post a picture of the Murphy bed with a little side cabinet next to the Murphy bed. So I think the storage kind of varies depending on your stateroom category. But just for those of you who've been concerned about the storage from the Wish as much as I have been, I thought that they really solved it nicely in at least some of the rooms on the ship, which was fantastic to see. Otherwise, the staterooms are identical to what you're going to find on the. On the Wish.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: We should talk about layout, too, because I think we've got a few questions about this, about the layout of the ship. And I want to be.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Really got a ton to cover, so I don't want to go down.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: I know. I just want to say, like, layout of the. No, not of stateroom layout. I'm going to lay out of the ship. Layout of the ship is the same as the Wish. So if you're wondering about the adult pool areas or the pool decks or the spaces, the layout is really the same. There's one change that has to do with Scat Cat Lounge. Scat Cat Lounge is where there's two.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: There's a couple of changes. So. So let's just. Let me just set up this way. Every space on the ship is exactly the same size as it is on the Wish. What they changed was theming. I think they added a ton more detail to these spaces than what you're going to find on the Wish. And when we get into some of the specific spaces, I'm going to tell you that there are places that, I mean, they killed it. They just. Home run. A home run. But we got some questions about is the theater bigger? No, the theater's the same size. The spa is the same size. Everything exactly where you think it would be. Nothing changed on the pool deck. There's no running track. Like, all the spaces are the same. It's really in the level of investment and detail and theming that they made on this ship that I think is going to set it apart from the Wish pretty significantly. So with that in mind, I think we need to talk about some of the things that we got up to. And I'll tell you, I've got notebook here that's just like full of notes of all the things that we did. And we have just a ton to cover. So in terms of what we did, first, I want to tell you that Haunted Mansion bar was packed from Jump street, right? Like that bar, we decided, well, let's just go down to Haunted Mansion. No, it was crowded. They did not have a reservation system on board. We did get that question. No reservations for Haunted Mansion. It was just first come, first serve. I think we peeked into that bar three or four times on day one, and it was always crowded. And so we didn't make it in on the first day other than for a Peak. Right. We did. Do we? So we ended up at Skipper Society and played a little trivia at Skipper Society and got some drinks there. I want to say that space is. Is really nice. I do think that they amped up the theming just, like, a bit over what you find at the Bayou.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: I think a lot over the Bayou. If you really look at the different things on the wall, like in those, particularly in those booths, you will see there' lot of detail and a lot of nods to the parks and to Jungle Cruise. The ride somebody asked about is there, you know, reference to Bruce Kimbrell, who was one of the original Skippers. I have no idea. I don't have that deep cut.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: This was. And this was like. I just want to say, like, this was a whirlwind. We caught some detail, not all of it. We're going to be back on the ship in April. I'm looking forward to seeing if some of the things that we will talk about later that were a little bit challenging, it resolved. But I'm also curious to, like, finally, like, there are spaces that we only got to spend a hot minute in that I'd like to go back and spend, you know, a little bit more time in. But we were bouncing. We're trying to get all the new activities in all the new spaces and see everything so we could talk about as much as we possibly could on the show. So just know that some of the stuff we did not, like, get to spend detailed time in some spaces. We did. Some spaces. We did. So we had a drink in Skipper Society. We played a little trivia. I thought the. I think the drink menu in Skipper Society is one of the strongest on the ship. You know, kind of that tiki bar vibe, and they've got tiki mugs, and at the same time, they can make you a heck of a, you know, espresso martini if that's what you want. It's a full bar. So I thought the drink menu in Skipper Society was really, really strong. I think the thing that Skipper Society suffers from, the same thing that Bayou suffers from. It's an open space, right. It's like hallways on either side. So nice bar to have a drink at. Definitely enjoyed it. Furniture, decor, greenery, decorations, it's all on point there. So, like, I. I thought Skipper side is a really great bar. It's not the bar that I loved the most, but it's not a bar that I would shy away from going to. Okay. So I thought Skipper Society was great. We ended up heading up to the Pool deck to have lunch at Mickey Mickey and Friends. And I can safely report Mickey and Friends is still the same.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: And we eat lunch there, I think every single day.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Well, it's the best. Well, it's the best pool deck food I've had on Disney Cruise Line. It's the best pool deck food I've had across all the cruise lines we've sailed. So it's, it's still there. You still get your Donald's Cantina, you still get the barbecue, you still got the grill. Everything's exactly where it would be. It's all the same offering. So just still a really good, strong, cool deck food offering. Quick service option on board. After lunch, we did decide to try and head down to Scat Cat for a drink because I was interested to see that space much like Nightingale, I think. Well, much like what I just said about Skipper Society in the Bayou I think applies to Scat Cat much like Nightingale. It's a very understated theming, but you can tell there's just a bit more detail going on in this bar. So Scat Cat Lounge, obviously themed after the Aristocats. There's photos of the cats or like artwork of the cats like all over the place.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: And then like the wallpaper, there's like kind of. They're not like hidden, but you might not notice them on a first glance.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: And this is the first place, by the way, that they made, I think what is a significant improvement to the layout of the Wish. So on the Wish, the bar in Nightingale's is kind of tucked back in a corner and so it's, it's all interior to the space. It's a pretty fairly hefty bar and it sort of takes out a good number of seats from the seating area. In Scap Cat, they pushed the bar into kind of the back wall and then opened up the wall so that there's an outdoor service bar, an outside service bar in the Grand Hall. So you can go to the grand hall service bar, kind of like a Sat la piazza. You know what it is on like the Fantasy of the Dream where they have the bar in the.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: I know what you're talking about.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: It's name doesn't matter. But they have an. Now they have a service bar off the grand hall that is also. They just kind of walk around and they're inside the restaurant at the other bar for.
So it opened up a ton of seating. So there's a lot more seating, which they need, by the way, because that bar was constantly packed with. When the music Was playing. That bar was full.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Bon voyage. That's what's Sarah.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: And Sarah's asking is Skipper Society all ages, all the time? The answer to that question is yes. Scat Cat on the other hand is only 18 and older all the time. So there's a couple of places the Rose is similar. So there's a couple of bar spaces that are always 18 and older.
And then a lot of the other bar spaces are become 18 and older at 9pm Skipper society, like the bayou because it's open. Is Ollie just all the time.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And so we had a really great time in Scat Cat. I think they did a really nice job with it. Unfortunately, what we didn't get to experience was sitting in Scat Cat while the piano was playing. And this is maybe one of the things that I would love to see them change or improve the next time we are on is that I'd like to see more live music in that bar. More often. It seemed like the piano player was being split among playing the piano on that bar, playing in a band at Skipper Society, playing in other places around the ship.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: And so on the grand hall stage.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: It was fairly limited in terms of when they were playing the piano in that bar. And it just sort of. It really hit me that like it's a piano bar and I want to hear the piano. And so we're kind of listening to the recorded music. That's it.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: There were two piano players. So Matt Grinke, who is fantastic, who we've seen on many of the other ships. I know Taryn, who's watch watching is a huge fan as well. I'm a huge fan. And then there was another woman by the name of Floor who was also playing. She even did like a Swifty, you know, Taylor Swift songs at one point. It was. That bar was packed that night. So we didn't get to go in during that. During that set.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: The last thing I want to say about Scat Cat because we're only on day one, so we gotta.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: I know, I know.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Last time was it had my favorite drink on board, like by far second, maybe only to the old fashions from hooks that I love so much. The grape jam, which was. They had a part of the menu called the jams and it was like a strawberry jam flavored drink, a grape jam, something else. This had like a peanut butter whiskey to it. And the topper was it came with half of an uncrustable on top of it. And I'll tell you what, sometimes having a drink in an Uncrustable is amazing. So I loved this drink. If you're. It's got. If you're at Scat Cat, highly, highly recommend the Grape Jam. It's one of my new favorite cocktails on Disney Cruise Line.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: And shout out to Kelvin, who's one of the best bartenders over there.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Yes. I also wanted to note that the stores on day one were quite the ordeal. Huge lines, lots of people limiting in. But for those of you looking at booking a future main voyage, I also want to say they were well stocked. There was not a single item that we wanted to get that we couldn't buy. There was not a single size of clothing that we wanted to get that we couldn't get in. P.S. that lasted all the way through the group. Like, on the last day, I bought this pullover because I finally tried the pullover that I bought and it was just not the right size. I got. I was able to exchange it, no problem.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Yeah. However, the stocking on the tiki mugs in the various bars, meaning Haunted Mansion and Skipper Society and one of the other ones.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: Yeah. This is one of my criticisms for the. For the Maiden, at least, is that. So there are a couple of items that you're going to be able to buy around the ship. I think all the time when you're sailing. There's tiki mugs in Skipper Society. There's some tiki mugs in Haunted Mansion. There's a special drink in Haunted Mansion called the Chilling Challenge, where you're supposed to get certificate. They ran out of the death certificates before the Maiden even left port. And like, I mean, and the Mariner cup. And the Mariner Cup. And I was like, you guys had a day off yesterday. It was a dark day. Like, you could have. Who couldn't bring that stuff in from Orlando? And we're talking about a piece of paper. This is not something we can print on board. So it was a little weird from a maiden voyage standpoint that there were things that people who had paid a very high price to be on board couldn't get.
So.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: But they weren't limiting people. We heard actually through the Facebook group that, like, on the first day in Haunted Mansion, like, some group brought. Bought like 30 mugs or something. Right. Of the. The. Either the Mariner or the mermaid ones or a combination of them. So they weren't limiting people, which is what they really should be doing. They were limiting people on the Nike merch like that Brian's wearing, but they were not limiting people on those tiki mugs. So that was, I think, a little bit of a letdown there.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Someone's asking, did we repurchase anything? We did do some. We did return some merchandise that we had pre ordered and that went an exchange. Yeah, very smoothly. We were told to buy the new thing that we wanted and then just return the stuff that we didn't, as opposed to trying to exchange things because they were a little concerned that things might run out. But I can tell you, even on the last night, everything seemed to be in stock and every size on board the ship, including Maiden merch, not just treasure merch. So I guess all of our friends out there might be cast members. Expect some things be coming to to cast connection soon, at least Maiden Voyage stuff. So. Yeah. All right, so after talking about the stores, we'll talk about COVID Cafe later. And I can mention the note there. I did want to compliment Disney. The guest services was so smooth. It was so well prepared. I mean, I saw a few lines here and there at Guest Services, but they had extra Guest Services staff on board that would kind of troll through the line and ask you what you were there for. And if it was something they could help you with, they would pull you out of line, take care of it, and shorten the line for the people who needed to go to a desk and see someone, like at a computer. Right, yeah. So they, unlike the maiden voyage of the Wish, they were really well prepared to handle guest issues. I did not see the problems that happened on the Wish. People, like, screaming at cast members and things like that, or lines that were like, so long you need more wait with them. I got in a Guest services line on the first day because I needed to take care of something and it was like a, you know, I had a drink in my hand, which helped, but it was like a 15 minute thing and it was done and they took care of it. So I have to super compliment the Guest Services staff and the preparation they put in there, because I thought that that was really amazing and that was running, I thought, really, really, really well. So that was a really great thing.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: One quick thing. A lot of people have asked questions about what days things were on. I don't know that we're gonna, like, answer those questions because these things change. Like, our itinerary was specific. We had a Christmas Day in the middle of our itinerary. And so I don't think ours is necessarily a good reflection of what days things will be on. For example, we had Seize the Adventure on day one, and then we had Beauty and the Beast on day Day six, and then we had Moana on day seven. As far as shows, I don't think that that's necessarily going to be the set show schedule for seven night cruises on the Treasure. I think that's just what we had because we had a Christmas Eve in the middle and a Christmas Day in the middle. And so I don't want to give you that information.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Ashley. We see your question about when they inflated the hero zone.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Like, there was one day, it was in the middle of the cruise, it was either Tortola or Saitama.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: But I don't know.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: I don't think that's going to be necessarily something. Something that is going to repeat. Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: All right. We did have dinner that night at Worlds of Marvel. It was the first show. Nothing remarkably new about that. It's the same show as on the Wish.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Same menu.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Same menu. I don't want to dwell on it. I want to focus on the stuff that's new. So we're going to skip over our dinner in Worlds of Marvel. I will say one area where we did experience some challenges throughout the cruise was the dining service. It was just slow. It was the first night it was a little slow and it just felt like it wasn't clicking well. Yeah, over the cruise, it did improve a little, but it did feel like the dining staff was not fully ready for a full ship, or at least our dining team might not have been. It was not bad. We did not give anyone reduced marks. It was just not kind of the service we've come to expect on Disney Cruise Line all the time. And so it was a little challenging for, for us. Now, part of that, the reason I said I didn't give anybody a big marks, part of that could have been because we were, we were sitting at a rather large group table.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: We had a party of 12.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, like, I don't want to, I don't want to fault anybody for, you know, that size group can be really challenging to serve. We're not the most demanding group to serve. So I didn't want to say, like, we were, we were asking for a bunch of stuff.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: There were no food allergies.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: I mean, There were some YouTubers on board behind us who ordered one of everything one night. And that's not us. Right. So like, like, we, we had our. We had what we wanted to eat and that was it. So. So, yeah, it was just. But I will say the service was a little challenging. And you know, this is coming from, by the way, the crew member we had was like A long tenured Disney serving staff. So I think that they're might also be some challenges going on behind the scenes because they have adjusted in the restaurants. We'll talk about this a little. Kind of where some of the serving stations are, I think to open up space and make the restaurants feel a little bit more open.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: In particular in Coco.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Well, but at Worlds of Marvel too, I didn't feel like I was right up against anybody. And I have felt that way a few times in Worlds of Marvel. So it seems like they did some things to help open up space in ways that is a little bit better. So anyway, Worlds of Marvel night one. We're going to end day one there because we're already lots of stuff 25 minutes in. All right, so day two was a sea day for us. The first full day on the cruise is a sea day. I did check out Cove Cafe and I just, I want to, on the coffee side of things, remind folks, I think what they've done with the Wish class ships in terms of being able to get coffee is amazing. There's. You can get coffee at Skipper Society. You can even coffee at Scat Cat if you want. They had a. They made espresso Martini, so they must have.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: I don't think they know they don't do regular coffees there.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: Okay. But they also have the Jade Cricket and the Heihei Cafe Cafe and then of course the COVID Cafe.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: And in Marceline Market they have a real full coffee bar as well towards the front.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: So lots of options if you want a specialty coffee drink. Cove Cafe. I'm sure the theming was different than what's on the Wish, but it's so.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: It's like Moana themed.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: It's so understated.
And so I will say that they did have a coffee menu in terms of getting just black brewed coffee, where they had like six different ways they could brew you black coffee if you wanted. And all of it was like none of it was out of that urn in the corner. It was all like, we're going to use a centrifuge to make you black coffee.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: So it's still very far away because it's in that adult pool area. So if you're going to get coffee and then going to get breakfast, I actually recommend going on to Hei Hei or to Jade Cricket on the way to Marceline or to wherever you're going to get if you're going to go to the dining room to get breakfast rather than going all the way back to Cove Cafe. But if you're going to hang out and read a book or do some work or whatever than Cove Cafe is for you.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: We the dull pool area was interestingly enough for the first several days of the cruise pretty light. Light uncrowded. And we did learn that it wasn't because the cruise was heavy on kids. In fact, the cruise was light on kids. So I'm not sure what was going on there.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: I think people were just like trying to explore all the different bar spaces.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: But weren't really taking advantage of that pool area.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Well, we should say the weather on our cruise was a little cooler than one might expect for a Caribbean cruise. So I'm not sure if that was part of it. I'm also not sure if like the adult pool space has gotten such a bad rap over time on the Wish that people are not going to try it out on the Treasure. But like I we had no problems most day going back most days. But going back there and finding like seating by the adult pool area. The pool was not super crowded like we tend to find it on the Wish. They had a great bartender back there. So it was just interesting to see that that pool area was not filling up in the way that I might expect. It might also be the seven night sailings are kind of opening up space a little bit because people do more things. Speaking of which, Sam, do you want to talk about your massage? Do you want to skip to the Jungle Cruise?
[00:28:01] Speaker A: I'll had a great massage. That's all I need to say about it. Spa is the same as the Wish, but I had a great massage.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: So we did check out a new so one thing I want to emphasize, they're doing a lot more with the grand hall on this ship and the stage in the grand hall than I've seen them do on the Wish over time. I think that is a great, great thing because it's a space I think can really be used. So one of the new shows that they're doing. So. So actually we step back and say one of the. It's not a new thing. They have this on the Wish, but it's just really I don't think understood or used as much. But on the Treasure they have these two characters who kind of are called the Storyteller. So it's Coriander and Sage. And they were everywhere on this ship.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: And they do a bunch of different shows, game shows. They did this Jungle Cruise themed one. I talked about it on the earlier on one of the preview shows where they take people and they participate and it's like this competition between two boats and there it's Jungle Cruise themed. It's really wacky. You doing some crazy stuff like throwing beanbags into hula hoops on the ground.
It's like, it's like whose line is in any way where the points don't matter and there. But there are points at the end and one team wins and it's just bragging rights. But it's really fun. It's wacky. You can participate or you can just watch. The best place to watch from is on Deck 4 or 5 up above looking down on the grand hall because you can really see what they're doing. It's harder if you're down in the middle, middle of the grand hall on deck three. So just a really fun activity and.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: Just, just again a great use of the space. As you think about it, on a seven night sailing they got to add a lot more entertainment in to keep people entertained and just like doing trivia constantly isn't going to do it. So they've added some new entertainment of which this is one and we'll talk about some more in just a second.
Yeah, so we did finally I did make it into the Rainforest Room. So I did buy a full length of cruise pass for the Rainforest Room. I thought on a seven night sailing I will certainly use it enough for it to make seven sense. I still did not.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: I'm gonna say I told you so.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: I still think that that in part is because we're running everywhere trying to like see everything and do everything.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: So much to do and well the.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Next cruise we're on and where I've done stuff and like know what it is, I may or may not go to it. So yeah, the reinforcer was also really, really crowded between like 10 and 4. Like impossible to get a heated lounger. You know, a lot of the outdoor space filled up. So I'll just caution that on this ship it seems like they sold a lot of those full day passes, the Rainforest Room and they were getting used very heavily. So I think it's a great space. It's the exact same space.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: I want to answer Bridget's question. Did they do the Jungle Cruise game multiple times? No, they did that one once. The other sage and coriander shows they did two or three times depending upon what it was. But we also cruise one was only once.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: But again back to your comment earlier. We don't know if that's just because of the uniqueness of the sailing and like they have to fit in like Santa Claus in the atrium and some other stuff. It's possible they could repeat heat some of this stuff on just kind of a regular. Yeah.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: And we'll know probably by like the second week of January because the cruise they're doing right now is a New Year's Eve crew. So again, that might need to be adjusted for those kinds of things.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: All right, so we got some unique things coming up I want to make sure we hit. So one is we did make it into Haunted Mansion Parlor.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: There is zero comparison between Haunted Mansion Parlor and Hyperspace Lounge in my opinion. Zero. And if they don't rip out Hyperspace Lounge and either put in a Haunted Mansion parlor or improve it, like, like it's opportunity. One of the worst bars in the fleet in my opinion. When it comes to. To bars talking about hyperspace being hyperspace, Haunted mansion is a 10 out of 10. The theming is amazing. Like the show aspect of it is a 45 minute kind of looping show and like you could watch it two or three times and still not see everything that's going on.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: There's stuff, different stuff in different parts.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: Stuff going on in the mirror. There's stuff going on with all of the paintings in the bar. There's stuff going on with the fish tank. Like there's just stuff happening everywhere while the show is going on. And it's not so loud that you can't have a car seat. You can't just sit in the bar and use it as ambiance. Like, it is just a really, it's a really well done bar from a theming perspective. It's a really cool bar from that perspective. And it's just, it's just a fun all around bar. The furniture is like really great and all that stuff.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: It's well staffed too. Like, they seem to have a lot of wait staff and bartenders in there. It's more, it's more heavily staffed than the other bars. It's also busier than the other bars. Although during times where people were doing magic shots in the atrium, that I think seemed to be like the best time to be in Hong Kong Parlor.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: After people got to go to dinner for first seating. And the show's kind of still running. Like that was a sweet spot to get into that bar and it was completely empty. We got to sit in a prime location twice across the sailing and we weren't run out.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: And there was plenty of seating other times. So just to be clear, on a seven night sailing, even without reservations, you are going to find time to Be in Haunted Mansion parlor. You just need to make sure you don't go at like, like the prime, you know, evening hour time. And on day one, it is going to be packed on every sailing. So. But if you wait till day two or three or four, it's going to be a lot better.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: The one criticism I will give for Haunted Mansion bar, I think it has the weakest drink menu on board. I'm just gonna say that there are probably people who will disagree with me. I just didn't find a drink that really I enjoyed. I found them either too sweet or too tart. Like they were just. It didn't feel like they had really good balance drink offerings. Now a friend of ours, they ran.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: Out of the sodas.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, they ran out of all of the pre bottled sodas. Which again is just kind of like boggles my mind considering they had a night off the day before. They couldn't restock the ship fully for the main. But you know, a friend of mine who. A friend of ours who was there. Alan. Shout out to Alan. Thank you, Alan, for spending some time with us on this cruise. He mentioned he had a drink he really enjoyed. I didn't get a chance to try it. I will definitely be back in this bar. Hyperspace for me is like a. Sometimes I'm on the Wish. I might peek in there. Maybe I'll have a drink. But like, Haunted Mansion is a fun thing to do, I think on every sailing. I just think it's a really, really well done bar. All right, so after Haunted Mansion, we had dinner at Coco. We should say the shows all happened the last two nights of the cruise.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: Well, we miss Seize the Adventure because we've seen it and I saw it on the preview. It's great.
We've seen it on the Wish.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: It's the same until we get to the end. You're not going to hear about shows, not because we didn't go, but just because they didn't happen until the end of the cruise. All right, so we had dinner at Coco Night 1. I just got to say chips and salsa is finally here. Now. The problem is salsa is served in a tiny bowl. And so as Sam quickly told us, as soon as they set down the salsa, ask for more salsa because it's going to run out.
I mentioned the challenges we had the dining staff. It was hard for us to get like refills of chips and salsa at our table. But we did have chips and salsa. So they are here.
We had a bunch of different stuff.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: This was the night I had. Did not have in my preview cruise. So this was night one of Cocoa. So it is the regular story with his family and not the Dia de los Muertas, which is the second night in Coco. We had some really good food. Brian had some chorizo croquettes. There was hablo lita shrimp diablo.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: Actually, hold on, hold on, hold on. The chorizo croquettes I tried. They were not great. And we had a family sitting at our table shout out to Jennifer Swart and Violet and Garrett, who sat with us at dinner.
He immediately tried them. And they're from Texas. They were, like, not having it. That's not it. So I would say the croquet poquettes I tried, they were recommended. Not great, in my opinion. But the shrimp diablo was fantastic. I really enjoyed that.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: The tortilla soup was really good.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: I had. That soup was really good. Although I will say this, the tortilla soup did taste suspiciously like they heated up the salsa and pureed it a little bit and added chicken. But it was good. It was. It was really, really good. Yeah. I had Enrique's port wine braised short rib with, like, it had, like, a smashed potato thing going on. It was. It was good. It was really good.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: I had the roast pork tenderloin, which was okay. It was a little bit dry, but I actually preferred. I basically preferred the shrimp diablo and the tortilla soup to my entree. So I'd say this night in cocoa was the weaker on the entrees than the second night of cocoa. But everything was good. But the star.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: Well, yeah, hold one second. I'm going to get to the star, but I just want to say one second. I had a friend comment that, like, these menus just feel like they're trying a little too hard. And I will agree. I think they really could have hit it out of the park. And we'll talk about this on night too. Just a little bit. Just simple Mexican food. And they were really trying to lean into something a little fancier. And I just.
I think that's probably part of, like, for me, this was a good meal. It was not a great meal. Except for my new favorite dessert anywhere on Disney cruise line, which is the Trace leches cake. It is amazing. It is really, really good. It's almost like a giant macaroon moisture. And then it has, like a moist coconut cake. Coconut cake. But it's like, super moist, really delicious, and a great little. I think it was a caramel or a tres leches ice cream with it.
[00:36:42] Speaker A: Yeah, Tres Lich.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: Just everyone was raving about this dolce de leche. It was just so good. So highly recommend the tres leches cake ice cream.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: I had the Mama Coco's coffee crema, which was the no sugar added dessert. It was kind of like a tiramisu creme type dish. Okay, not great. But I'm not a big dessert person. I'm going to answer Sarah's question. Are they doing variety acts for nights when there aren't stage shows? The answer is yes. Not every night, but yes. Several nights.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: One night it was a movie. One night there was a movie in the theater. They did have a magician on board who played.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: I also had an acrobatic act thing. We didn't go see those.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: We're not typically people who go see the variety acts unless it's something that.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Like they also have the Color Spin Deck party, which we did not get a chance to do because we were trying to do some other stuff. So unfortunately, I still haven't seen the Color Spin Deck party. Hopefully I'll get to do that in April. And of course, they had a pirate with the pirate deck part, something we.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: Did on this day that is brand new and that you will see on the ship schedule when you board. Is. Is they have something. It's two events that get kind of paired together. One is called the Sarabi Supper Club and the other one is Indiana Jones choose wisely. Now, this is a place where again, sage and coriander are being used. It's held in Sarabi. The Sarabi Supper Club is billed as like, you know, get excited and hear a singer and special food and beverage.
It was really like the half hour that they wanted to get everyone into the theater before the Indiana Jones show started.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: Minutes of singing. Really good singer who is in the main stage. Ca and is it fantastic.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: What they're trying to do is evoke the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Kind of the opening scene where there's like the supper club and they have a singer, a lounge singer come out and everyone's drinking fancy drinks and that sort of thing. So they're trying to get you into the. Into the Sarabi space, get everyone seated, get everyone a drink. And then yes, at the last five minutes, a singer comes out and sings some songs and the whole thing gets set up for this. Indiana Jones choose wisely. I don't want to give away what it is. I just want to tell you, go see it. It is a lot of fun and it is basically a retelling of every Indiana Jones movie through the eyes of basically a two man. Basically. And with really funny props and moments. If you are at all someone who enjoys Indiana Jones movies, you must see it, even if you don't enjoy them.
It is just a blast.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: And there's a choose your own adventure element to it. That's why it's called Choose Wise. So with that we'll say, you should go see that. They're fantastic. As Brian said, sage and coriander. That ended our night, Day two. The next day was our another sea day. We did coffee and Coke, breakfast at Marceline, and then.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: And then we had a special maiden voyage thing. There's a couple things that we're going to talk about here because they were so great. They were special for the maiden voyage. So we don't want to get your hopes up. One of them is that Don Ducky Williams gave a talk on the maiden voyage and he was actually talking about his career and he had given a talk about how he came to the Walt Disney Studios and you know, how.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: He became a Walt Disney artist, basically.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: Illustrator. Calls himself an illustrator.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Yes, and he does. For those of you who have sailed on Disney Cruise Line, if you have any prints from Disney Cruise Line meaning lithographs, they are likely. Well, they have been. They were drawn by Ducky Williams, basically. So look at them. You'll see they say that I don't insert.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: So was. Was the Indiana Jones thing an adult? Only thing? I don't.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: They had both.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: They had both. I don't know that the content really changed much between the two shows.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: It was more a wink and a nod kind of content.
[00:40:15] Speaker B: I would say it had some material in it that a few people were like. I'm a little shocked that Disney's letting them do that. So I don't know that I would necessarily take young kids to the show.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: Yeah, not like a three year old. But I would take Nathan particularly to the earlier one. There was one at like 7:30 and then there's one at like 10:30 or 11. The earlier one you can definitely bring a kid to, but I wouldn't bring like a three year old. They're not going to get any of it. They won't even enjoy it.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: So let me get us back to. We have this show with Don Ducky Williams. At the end of the show he had drawn like 13 different pieces of art on a pad on an easel, sketches of characters and they. They raffled those off for members of the audience. They were signed. So it was a great thing. It Was really fun event to hear from. From him. He offered. They offered it twice.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: We did not win.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: Not win? No. No, we did not win.
See what else we did. They did have some. Sam, I want you to talk about some of the magic shots because this cuts across multiple. Multiple days. So in the atrium, they're now offering. And I'm sure they're doing this elsewhere on the fleet, but they were offering some really kind of very cool action or magic shots on board.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: So, yeah, there are magic shots that are encanto. There are magic shots that are Moana. There are magic shots that are Haunted Mansion. There are Aladdin, there are Marvel, there are Star Wars. There's a bunch. I'm probably missing some. Some of our magic shots, and some of them are just cool backgrounds with props. We also had, of course, some Christmas photos and whatnot. So there was a ton more magic shots and photo opportunities, like, every night. And I will say these were packed. And I don't know if that was because it was a maiden or because they were just like new. But they were given two or three times a night, so usually 5:15.
And then if they did it a third time, it was like 9:30 at night. So there were a lot of opportunities to get them. However, the lines were super long for some of them. The Moana ones, I had gotten those on the preview, but we did not get them because the line was forever long. So there was no time to be able to do that and do other things.
But there are a lot more magic shots now available on the Treasure. I'm hopeful that they will port some of those other over to the other ships. We'll know maybe after this coming week on the Fantasy. We'll see if there's more, but there's tons of photo opportunities. And so our Pearl, you know, photo package, meaning we get the photos for free, really comes in handy because there's a ton more photo opportunities.
[00:42:38] Speaker B: It doesn't seem. I would say this. It doesn't seem difficult to port these across because it's all done in software. It's not about anything on the ship, exactly.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: They're all. They're all backdrops. I did go to who's behind the curtain, which is on the Wish, which is sort of this fun little interactive game show where you're. You're asking like. It's like 20 questions, but it's 10 questions to try and figure out what character is hiding behind the curtain. This was a Pirate night once. It was a pirate night. Pirate themed once. All of the characters were Pirate or pirate themed.
Brian had his shave.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: I had my favorite spa treatment, which the word is out because that thing was booked and booked heavy all throughout the cruise. But I had my shave and men's facial treatment.
It was fantastic. Nothing different in hooks, except it's one thing I want to talk about. My favorite beverage on the ship is the Old Fashioned they make at hooks. And they have really spruced it up, I would say, on the Treasure, because they've got.
They seem to have more higher end liquors. Not that I need the higher end liquors. They've got more of the bases that they use than what they were using on the Wish when I first had it. They had four chocolate cherry and a couple of other coconut, something else. So they've really kind of tried to amp up the offering a little bit. And they've added one new way to part you from your money, which is a challenge coin.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: They're really nice.
[00:43:57] Speaker B: And so for any of the liquors, I think that were $180 or up, you would get a challenge coin that had the name of the liquor on it that you had used for your Old Fashioned or just as a whiskey drink, which if you're paying $180 for an ounce and a half or ounce of liquor, I would encourage you not to add a bunch of stuff to it and just drink the bourbon or the whis. And then on the back of the coin, it says Disney treasure. It says Disney treasure and it's like the logo. So it's a challenge coin. To answer the question. Yes, I did get one.
And so the three of us on board. Three of us on board. Yeah. I mean, I returned a bunch of souvenirs and then I spent it on this. So anyway, it's a cool little offering they have if you're into the higher end whiskeys. They had it on the Treasure. I'm gonna suspect that they may be bringing that to the Wish as well. So, you know, you can head to hooks if you want a really kind of unique and interesting souvenir to take off with you. So that was a fun new thing they've added.
[00:44:50] Speaker A: We did Paulo dinner that night. It was pirate night. We did not have a pirate menu on our cruise. This was actually. We missed night one of 1923, which is the same. It has the filet. Unfortunately, we missed the the best menu at 1923, which is the same menu as what's on the Wish, with one exception. They have a donut hole dessert instead of the churros, because the churros they have in Coco.
So we had a lovely dinner at Palo. We ended up in the private room. I had requested that when I was on for the pre view because we had a group of seven and they were able to accommodate us. Shout out to Luca, fantastic server, who's from Posano.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: The food, the menu, everything's the same as.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: So we don't really need to talk about it.
[00:45:27] Speaker B: Well, and we had a. We had a fantastic, fantastic meal. Was in the private room which is also identical to the one on the Wish. One thing I want to talk about is we did get a chance to see the Prima. The. The new pin for Prima Note on the Treasure. And it is really nice. It's a different pin than the one we got when. When we were on the magic. And so is a really stunning pin. We didn't do Prima notice, so we didn't get one. But it was a really, really cool pin. And so if you're doing Prima Note on the Treasure, it's a fun little addition. You know, it's a reason to do it there as opposed to just doing it on one of the other ships.
[00:46:01] Speaker A: And Pirate Night is the exact same as on the Wish. They have the earlier Mickey and Minnie deck party thing at like 7:30. And then they have the rock and parlay party or whatever it's called at like 10:30 with the fireworks and everything. So I won't talk about that. I just want to tell you it exists. Exists. It's the same one question before we.
[00:46:18] Speaker B: Transition to day four that I wanted to answer. Uncharted Adventures is on the ship. It is not working. Right?
[00:46:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And it was working on the preview. So something happened in between the preview I was on and the Maiden. It was not working. It was not up. The entire maiden voyage. We don't know when it will be up. Another thing people were asking us about was the. The tea, like Olaf's picnic did not happen. It has not happened yet. I have heard there is a tea coming.
I don't know when, but there is a tea planned. They just haven't. It's not in place yet.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Are you listening to our show? Because you want to make the most out of your next vacation. Great news. The fabulous team over at MyPath Unwinding Travel can help guide you so you don't miss a thing. Their team of professional travel advisors are caring, knowledgeable and experienced. It's why we use them to book our own travel. My path Unwinding Travel is an authority authorized Disney Vacation Planner. Which means they are recognized by Disney for their expertise and service. They have sailed on all the Disney ships, including in concierge, visited the theme parks, adventured with Disney, relaxed at Aulani, and so much more. Whether it's a Disney cruise, a theme park vacation, or adventures by Disney, or if you are looking to expand beyond the mouse, My Path Unwinding travel will elevate your next vacation planning experience. Even if you have already booked, reach out for a complimentary consultation to make your vacation even more more magical. Ready to talk to the experts? Head over to mypathunwinding.com DCLDUO or email DCLDUOYpathunwinding.com so they know we sent you their way. Thanks my Path Unwinding for sponsoring today's show. Now back to the episode.
All right, so day four for us was in Tortola. This was Christmas Eve on the ship.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: We lucked out on weather.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: Yeah, we lucked out on weather. The weather was not looking great and it turned out to be be perfect. So I just want to say that I want to spend a few minutes talking about what we did in Tortola. I know it's not about the treasure, but I really want to highlight this because I thought it was a really, really great way to spend the day. So we did not book a Disney excursion. Gasp. This was our first time not booking a Disney excursion. Maybe nervous, but we booked a private group excursion with a company called Chill Out Charters. And we booked their boat called the Uber Chill, which is their largest one. It's a speedboat, not a catamaran.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: Up to 13 guests to cruise crew.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And the two crew we had. I want to give a shout out to Rowan and Alicia. They were fabulous.
[00:48:39] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: But we got to design a day going from a. We had to walk to a different pier, which is like a 10 minute walk from where the treasure docked. We got on the boat. The boat was very comfortable. They had.
[00:48:52] Speaker A: It's like a speedboat, not a cabin.
[00:48:53] Speaker B: They had a full bar on board. Well, not a full. They had. They had a bar on board to make like, you know, rum punches and things like that. I think they had vodka, rum and a couple other whiskey. They had soft drinks and juices and stuff for the kids. And they had beer and seltzers and another cooler.
[00:49:06] Speaker A: Yeah, like truly seltzers and whatnot.
[00:49:08] Speaker B: They had snorkel equipment on board. They did not have towels. We had to bring our own towels. But we did with the speedboat is we went to basically several places. Several places. Our primary place we wanted to go was Joe Stand dyke. And so the speedboat took us across the island. First we went to a place called Sandy Spit.
[00:49:27] Speaker A: Oh, Sandy Spit.
[00:49:28] Speaker B: Sandy Spit, which looked like an island out of Castaway, like with Tom Hanks. And what the boat can do is pull up and you can swim onto the island. It's all sand except for like a couple palm trees.
[00:49:39] Speaker A: Yeah, there's nothing there.
[00:49:40] Speaker B: The currents were a little rough for us this cruise. It was. It was a little rocky, I will say, getting down to the St. Thomas Tortola area. And so the seas were a little rough, but the weather was good. And we were. We were. We were having a good day. We opted not to get onto Sandy Spit just because the.
[00:49:56] Speaker A: It would have been tough getting back.
[00:49:57] Speaker B: It would have been tough getting back to the boat. So they took us over.
[00:49:59] Speaker A: Not a good idea.
[00:50:00] Speaker B: To a dock, you know, that we. It was very short boat ride over to a dock and then a hike. And we went to something called the Bubbly Pool, which I had not heard of, but apparently several people have. It's a. It's a. It's a little bit of a hike. I'm just gonna say that it was a little bit of a hike, but we all made it. Flip flops, especially in flip flops and with kids. But we all made it just fine. But it's a pool where there's a rock outcropping and as the waves hit, the rocks really break the waves and they force through a small area. And what ends up happening is a bunch of just sea foam comes in and so it looks like a hot tub. Basically. It's. It's. It's a small pool, so it's not huge. You know, there's like maybe 12 of. 12 to 15 of us total or two groups. Yeah, there's some other in there. It was a fun little spot. I would not spend all day there by any means, but it's a really cool spot to see. You could get some really cool photos as these huge waves like crash into the rocks and you're just standing there. So that was really cool. Then we went over to Joe's Van Dyke. We went to White beach, which is.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Where the Soggy Dollar, Soggy Dollar Bar and Hendo's are, where Soggy Dollar Bar is known for its pain, the painkillers.
We spent some time. The beach there is really beautiful. We had lunch at the. At Hendo's next door to Soggy Dollar. Food was good. We then took the boat, then took us over to wait.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: I just. I just want to give the same tip that the crew did on the boat.
[00:51:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: Hindo's has the better painkiller, not the original and food. And Soggy Dollar has a better margarita.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: So just. Yeah, FYI, it turned out to be true.
[00:51:30] Speaker B: And the better merch. Soggy Dollar has a better merch.
[00:51:32] Speaker A: Soggy Dollar has great merch. We went, then we went over to Peter island, which is where there are sea turtles. It was awesome. It's like a grassy bottom area. We swam, we snorkeled and saw tons of sea turtles and really hardly any other fish. So it was great for me because I don't like fish. I don't want fish to touch me, but I like to. I love sea turtles. That was awesome. I did get stung by some sea lice. And we had actually ran into a family who was on a different boat, was also on our cruise, but on a different excursion. And actually a few of them got stung by jellyfish. So there were jellyfish out. Lucky is where we went.
[00:52:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that's also season dependent.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: Season dependent. Just a warning.
[00:52:09] Speaker B: I want to answer this question from Brian. Who's asking. We're looking at the same charter. My wife has one question. That's if the boat had a bathroom.
[00:52:15] Speaker A: It did not.
[00:52:16] Speaker B: Well, no, technically it had a toilet, but they were using that space for a bunch of storage. I don't know that all of their boats have that space. And so functionally, the boat did not have a bathroom. And so it was either in the woods. In the woods or in the ocean or at the bars.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. So at White beach, we all made bathroom stops. But yeah, there was. There was some pee in the ocean.
[00:52:36] Speaker B: So just some details here. Just some details here. This is the Chill Out Charters. We booked a seven hour tour again on their largest boat, which held up to 13 people. And it was like $2,300 for the day. That included a $200 peak price. And it was, afterwards, it was. They said there's kind of a range of 15 to 25% for the tip. So build that in. But spread across, you know, 10, 12, 13 people.
I think it's a really reasonable way to get all over the place at Just Van Dyke. And so it was a great way to spend the day.
[00:53:08] Speaker A: Okay, we get back on the boat, we get all showered, we get all dressed. We did some haunted mansion parlor. We did some more pictures, we saw Donald. Then we went to Marvel for night two, which is the new show at Marvel. We had the chicken satay. Brian had the ahi bowl.
[00:53:24] Speaker B: Wait a second. I Want to talk about the show.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: I know, but I want to talk about the food. The food's really good. I think the food on Night Night two Marvel is really good.
[00:53:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:32] Speaker A: I mean, that's what I'm gonna say.
[00:53:33] Speaker B: I'm gonna say some of it's recycled. The satay you can find on the other ship. The tuna bowl is basically the tuna ahi tower. It's a little bit different. Beef Wellington is definitely on another menu. The same. The salmon soba was unique, and it was. I thought it was really, really good. The sand was a little overcooked, so it might be better in the early dining than the late dining.
There was a shrimp linguine nero that was very good. Good. And then the celebration cake makes its return on this menu, which is, I think, another good dessert. But a lot of it you will look at and be like, I've seen these dishes before. Yes, you have.
[00:54:05] Speaker A: And this is Christmas Eve.
[00:54:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I want to talk about the show for a second. So the show is all about Groot wanting to help celebrate Rocket as a hero. And so the show's little vignettes with Groot and Rocket and Groot trying to.
[00:54:19] Speaker A: Build something and don't really know what he's building.
[00:54:21] Speaker B: The two things they got really right in the show that I. I like. The music is fantastic. It's everything you'd come to expect from a Guardians of the Galaxy music.
[00:54:28] Speaker A: It's like a lot of the music from the ride.
[00:54:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's not. It's not loud. So you can sit there and just enjoy the music and have dinner at the same time. They're using the quantum cores on the table, which have buttons on them to do trivia. So our table, like, shout out to Violet again. She was killing it. She had every question. But the kids were playing a lot with the trivia on the quantum core. Watching the screen, they got four different choices. You had to pick a color answer, and it would immediately light up green or red. And so if you're right or wrong, there's no scoring. You're not competing with anyone. It's just.
[00:55:00] Speaker A: Yeah. There's no. No tracking of the.
[00:55:02] Speaker B: They were doing that. We were listening to the music and having a conversation and having dinner. I think it's a great. That was great. It did not. The show did not interrupt dinner.
[00:55:10] Speaker A: This show is less intrusive than the show, than the night One show, for sure. There were.
[00:55:15] Speaker B: Ashley to say this. Some of the Marvel questions were deep cuts.
[00:55:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Some were deep cuts.
[00:55:21] Speaker B: And comic book questions.
[00:55:23] Speaker A: She's asking if she needs to watch the Marvel movies and if you want to get the trivia. Yeah, but you don't otherwise need to watch the Marvel movies. When we left the dining room, we were able to get milk and cookies for Santa or for ourselves, depending upon whether or not you want to eat Santa's cookies for him.
But as we left the dining room, because that was Christmas Eve, that's not something done regularly, but it is something that's regularly done on Christmas Eve. So the next day we woke up. It was Christmas morning. The weather again was beautiful. We were in doubt.
[00:55:53] Speaker B: We were in St. Thomas.
[00:55:54] Speaker A: Yes, St. Thomas, the U.S. virgin. So we went British Virgin Islands, Tortola, U.S. virgin Islands, St. Thomas. You can see them from one another. There were five ships in port that day. On other hands, we were only one ship in port in Tortola. In the morning, Santa was out for pictures and there were some magic shots with like. Like a present that you could do. We have great pictures from Christmas morning. Hot cocoa and cookies out in the lobby when Santa is doing his pictures. There were gifts for kids, which were the. They did a jigsaw puzzle. They've done it before.
[00:56:27] Speaker B: They've done it before.
[00:56:28] Speaker A: We forgot to mention we had gifts in our room every single night.
[00:56:31] Speaker B: Actually, I was going to pause there and say, like, I was surprised. So on the main voyage for the wish, we. Gifts every night. But I was thinking, like, are they really going to give us seven nights.
[00:56:39] Speaker A: Worth of gifts and a holiday sale?
[00:56:40] Speaker B: They gave us seven nights worth worth of gifts, so.
[00:56:43] Speaker A: And an extra gift because we got two different lithographs. We got one holiday lithograph and one maiden voyage lithograph.
[00:56:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's just. Just real quickly, I want to run through some of the gifts that we got. So I'm trying to remember what the Night One gift was.
[00:56:55] Speaker A: We had pins. One night. We had a. We had a journal.
[00:56:59] Speaker B: One night. One night. One night we came back. There was a box. It's a Disney treasure. We opened it up. There was a journal and a magnifying glass.
[00:57:05] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:57:05] Speaker B: I think that might have been the Night One gift. Actually.
[00:57:07] Speaker A: I can't remember which ones.
[00:57:09] Speaker B: One. One night they gave us us a print. And was it. They gave us a coin. They gave us a Christmas print, but they gave us a kill coin sealed in Lucite with a base that you can.
[00:57:19] Speaker A: You can send that on the wish.
[00:57:20] Speaker B: List, which on the wish we had to buy. And they gave it to us for free on this.
[00:57:23] Speaker A: No, no, it was a It was the same one was. It was a stateroom gift. You're forgetting. But it was a stateroom.
[00:57:28] Speaker B: I had to see him. I had to purchase the one.
[00:57:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:57:30] Speaker B: So I had to pre purchase that. It was a pre purchase item. So anyway, they gave it to us as a stateroom gift on the treasure for free, which was amazing.
They also gave us on the last night they gave us a little treasure chest filled with gold chocolate chocolate coins. They gave us a maiden voyage print one night. They gave us the Christmas print one night in addition to. So there was so much stuff. We were free.
[00:57:54] Speaker A: There's a lot of stuff.
[00:57:56] Speaker B: It was really impressive. I got to give kudos to Disney Cruise Line for handing out what were really nice gifts every night.
[00:58:02] Speaker A: Okay. So this day was St. Thomas. We did actually a Megan's Bay beach break excursion through Disney Cruise Line. This is the one where basically they. You meet in, you know a location on board. Then you go out, you're taken out to buses and they load up buses. You're taken to Megans Bay Beach. You get a chair with umbrella. It doesn't include any drinks or food but there is a quick service food place and there's also a bar where you can get drinks. It was packed because there were lots of ships in port. For the three of us, we grabbed just two beach chairs. There's no way that everybody can grab a beach chair. So just be.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: I think it's Bay is still a stunning beach. It's less stunning the busier it gets.
[00:58:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:58:42] Speaker B: I still think it's a great beach to go visit. This is the Megans Bay beach break which is $89 a person. Essentially came with your chair. Came with umbrella which is new. Used to be that you had to pay extra for the umbrella.
[00:58:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:58:53] Speaker B: Food and beverage are not included. You have to buy it. Bus transportation there and back.
It's a good beach day. Like that's. That's what is. Is it the best beach day? No. But I think Megan's Bay beaches are really, really nice.
[00:59:05] Speaker A: And it is easier to do it through Disney than you can get a taxi. But there's, you know, some issues with traffic and whatnot. Okay. So that night was the first night of Hanukkah. So this was Christmas Day, first night of Hanukkah. And every night of Hanukkah that we were on, they had a Hanukkah service. Guest led. What that means was there was a space in. In Marceline Market. We went to a location where they had an electric manure. They had little programs, and we were able to do the Hanukkah prayers and sing as a group. And they also had latkes and sour cream, so they also had wine and grape juice, so very like traditional Hanukkah sort of get together.
[00:59:47] Speaker B: But this gets us to the point in the cruise that is like this.
[00:59:49] Speaker A: Where your mind is blown.
[00:59:51] Speaker B: My mind was blown. We did post about this a little bit on social media, and I want to very upfront tell you this is not going to happen on every sailing. In fact, I think the maiden voyage was the only sailing it's going to happen on.
[01:00:01] Speaker A: But they had in the theater names Eric and Matt. I don't remember their last names, but I have it written down.
[01:00:09] Speaker B: Yeah, they are two. Two Muppet performers. I like to call them Muppeteers, but that's not what they call themselves.
And they performed basically, a show called Two Men and Some Muppets. And so they came out and basically it started a show with Kermit and Fozzie Bear on screens, and they introduced the show and they introduced us. This isn't going to be a full Muppet show. This is just going to be a little bit of Muppets and behind the scenes. And what they were really doing was talking about what it's like, how they became Muppeteers, how you know, what it's like to be a Muppeteer. But it's the show when it was an hour and 15. It was supposed to be 45 minutes. An hour and 15 minutes. They brought more and more of the Muppet friends on stage. And so the two Muppeters we had were the voices of characters like Kermit and Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy and, like, many other Muppets. Right. And so they brought all the Muppets that they voiced on stage and, like, did little skits with them. And. And we had special guests. We had Joey Fatone from NSYNC on board the ship, which Sam and Tracy are spotted.
[01:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah, we had gotten a selfie, but.
[01:01:18] Speaker B: He turned out to be on board to participate in the show as, like, the special musical guest. And so he came on playing, like, an assistant cruise director, not Joey Fatone initially.
[01:01:27] Speaker A: He came on, like, three times, and.
[01:01:29] Speaker B: They did little skits with the Muppets. And so if you're looking at the stage, you're seeing the actual Muppeteers and the Muppets, and if you're looking at the screens, you're basically watching a Muppet.
[01:01:37] Speaker A: Show, just the Muppets.
[01:01:38] Speaker B: And so they came out and performed skits they Had a big musical number, big number at the end. And brought up Miss Piggy as the surprise guest. It was.
[01:01:48] Speaker A: They did bring a connection with Joey Fatone on stage as a sing along. It was Kermit, Miss Piggy, Joey Fatone and the rest of us singing along. It was incredible. They didn't allow photography. I did get a picture right at the introduction and I got a picture in the bows, but of course, not in between, because that's when they were not allowing photography. It was an incredible show. It's not the only time that the Muppets were. And if you watch our Instagram. But there was there. It's not the only time the Muppets were featured on board.
[01:02:16] Speaker B: Yeah, they did the show. The Muppets were also featured. They did a Muppets on the Bridge like, segment on the TV where Kermit's driving the boat and Animal comes out and he's like, the captain told Kermit.
[01:02:27] Speaker A: Don'T press any buttons.
[01:02:27] Speaker B: Don't press any buttons. And Animal wants to hit this button. And it turns out Animal's gonna hit the button to.
[01:02:31] Speaker A: That's the horn.
[01:02:32] Speaker B: They also did a. The Muppets appeared on one of the morning shows. We didn't get a chance to see that, but several folks could sort of told us about it.
And then they also did a skit one night in the atrium, in the.
[01:02:45] Speaker A: Balcony, the character balcony, where you see, like, Tiana and all the other princesses.
[01:02:49] Speaker B: And Kermit did a little skit up.
[01:02:51] Speaker A: There and they sang a song. It was.
[01:02:53] Speaker B: I. I will say I posted that.
[01:02:55] Speaker A: Video on Instagram, if you want to see. I posted that. That video that's on Instagram is the entire balcony skit.
[01:03:00] Speaker B: I will say that. Like, I know a few shows ago now, about a couple months ago, I started. We were doing our Ship Pick show. I was like, oh, wouldn't it be interesting if they did Muppet? I don't know if maybe someone was watching that show because they are leaning. I mean, the two guys and some Muppets can't happen because those are Muppeteers. They've got other things to do.
[01:03:18] Speaker A: They do like Sesame street too, but they leaned hard.
[01:03:21] Speaker B: Well, Sesame street needs to find a new home. So it's unfortunate, but. But they leaned hard. Like they had all these recorded segments with the Muppets. They had a little skit up on the balcony. Like, it just makes me wonder if something more permanent might be coming to either the Treasure Treasure or another ship that will fix it. Yeah, it was.
[01:03:39] Speaker A: Who knows? But it's not. We don't think it's a permanent fixture. It's not going to be a permanent fixture on the Treasure. Let's be clear on that. But it's just a really. It was a really cool maiden voyage.
[01:03:47] Speaker B: Not yet. We don't know what's going to be fair.
[01:03:49] Speaker A: But people are saying, I'm going to book this just for the Muppets. I would say, hold off. There's other reasons to book this ship. But, yes, this is. This was incredible. We did have Christmas dinner at Marvel. This was the. This was Christmas Day. So they did the Christmas. Christmas dinner menu on Christmas Day. So they had things like the turkey dinner and the rib roast. We. We had some good appetizer.
[01:04:11] Speaker B: Thanksgiving menu.
[01:04:11] Speaker A: It's the same menu.
[01:04:12] Speaker B: It's the same New Year's Eve menu. They add ham, right?
[01:04:15] Speaker A: Yeah, they actually had ham on this one also. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. We did go watch the Kiss Good Night that night, and. Which is the. The way that, you know, the lamp does, like, kind of a special show at night. I think it was at 10. And so we watched that. But that's pretty much it for day five. Day six was our last C day. Hung out at Cove Cafe in the adult pool. Did my run. Got to see Jack. Jack's Diaper Dash, which was held in the grand hall, not in the hero zone, because in the hero zone at the same time was something called Tink's Neverland Challenge, which was, I'll call it a wacky game show.
I only got to watch a few minutes of it because I was running back and forth across to do different things. But it was a.
I don't even know how to describe it. It was like you had to throw beanbags through these holes, and then you had to do a puzzle, and then you had to put planks on the ground and move them and go across, like, the river. And so it was this wacky kind of a thing, competition game. Then I went to a Q and A with Joey Fatone. Darren, the cruise director, was asking Joey questions in Sarabi Lounge. This was open. This was during the day, so it was open to the young, young guests as well as the older guests. And then he took questions from the audience. I, of course, asked him one of my favorite rapid fire questions. If you want to see that video, it's on our Instagram. Our friend Tracy asked a great question about what's the wackiest thing Joey's ever had to sign or been asked to autograph?
[01:05:44] Speaker B: Certainly. Pause you. We're just asking if the kiss good night is every night. Multiple times. It is multiple times. I don't know that it was every.
[01:05:50] Speaker A: I think it is every night at 10pm I think. I don't know if it's at other times as well. I think it's supposed to also be at midnight, but I'll be honest, we weren't up till midnight.
[01:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I want to skip a set. We did a bunch of other stuff.
[01:06:03] Speaker A: Like, you know, Beauty and the Beast was that.
[01:06:04] Speaker B: Oh, Beauty and the Beast.
[01:06:05] Speaker A: I went to see them.
[01:06:06] Speaker B: But everyone knows Beauty and the Beast is your favorite show. It's an existing show.
[01:06:09] Speaker A: Well, everybody. Everybody who watched last week knows it's not my favorite. But.
[01:06:13] Speaker B: But we've talked about Beauty and the Beast.
[01:06:16] Speaker A: They had a matinee performance. That's all I want to say. I went to the matinee performance of Beauty and the Beast and of Tale of Moana because they had them. And that's always a really nice thing when they have that. And then the Muppets were in the grand hall that night. We had some drinks.
[01:06:28] Speaker B: We had night two, night two of Coco. And so Coco dinner. Night two is the Dia de las Muertas. They will never say Day of the Dead. On the ship, they call it the day of celebration. And that's kind of what the show kind of centers around. But it is. Dia de los Muertos is the theme. I will say this was one of the strongest menus that they had on the ship. And so this was finally the night that you were going to see things like, as appetizers, cheese enchiladas.
[01:06:55] Speaker A: Chicken enchiladas.
[01:06:56] Speaker B: Chicken and. Well, yeah, chicken and cheese enchiladas. Guacamole. Although they only give you two chips with your guacamole, so save some chips. If you order the guacamole from the salsa, they had beef empanadas. But I'm going to be very clear. These are not the empanadas that are typically served on the ship that are ground beef. These are birria shredded beef empanadas.
[01:07:16] Speaker A: It was one.
[01:07:16] Speaker B: They're larger. They come with a really delicious sauce. I think the empanadas are great.
And then they have kind of the pork carnitas and some other things on the main menu. I will say this. My suggested tip to you is if you really just want some Mexican food and cocoa, then, like, we're a bunch of the appetite, the enchiladas, at least on the Maiden. And from what we've seen are pretty substantial appetizer. Like, they're two chicken enchiladas as an appetizer. Like, I mean, if they're really hungry, I mean, get two of those or ask them. Bring them two of those. I thought that the mains on this menu were okay, but the appetizers were real. Now, the mains were good. Like, I don't want to. I don't want. Like, the mains were good. The pork carnitas was really, really good. Comes with good sea bass is good. So there's a lot of good food on this menu. I think it's the strongest menu that they have. There's a few things.
[01:08:10] Speaker A: Great desserts too, right?
[01:08:11] Speaker B: There's a few things. Okay. But most of all, yeah, the Sunday.
[01:08:14] Speaker A: On this menu is fantastic. It's a dolce delete. Sunday I had that churro. Churros we sort of, you know, shared.
[01:08:21] Speaker B: Which is why you won't get the churros. In 1923, they moved them to cocoa.
[01:08:27] Speaker A: Now the thing we did after dinner I want to tell people about, which is.
[01:08:31] Speaker B: Oh, the show. But hold on. The show, the second night, much like the first night, it's. It's. I think it's the. The shows in Coco are great because they're music based. There is dancing, there's stuff happening on the stage. There is a story around it. But I was say it's. Let's just say it's a little looser of a story than like at Frozen, where there's like a definitive story to be told. They are telling a story and it's a good story, but it's not like you could eat dinner, have a conversation.
[01:08:58] Speaker A: And not really pay.
[01:08:59] Speaker B: Listen to the music, not pay attention, and then just watch the dancing and things like that. It was. I think it was really well done. The other thing I want to say about Coco that we didn't talk about was the space. So they have moved a lot of the serving to the outside of the restaurant. They have really shrunk down the furniture and the chairs as big. The pillow and things are not as big. I don't think that there is a terrible table in that restaurant like there is in Arendelle. The theming of the restaurant is just on point. And I just. I gotta pause again and say the level of detail that they put into this ship is nowhere near what's on the wish it makes. It really juxtaposes the wish and makes you understand that they were building that ship at a time when there was, you know, supply Chain delays, scarcity of things, budget cutbacks, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Because when you step on the treasure, you're like, micah, I'm just like inundated with theming. And it's really, really good. So that carries through to Coco. I think Coco is a vast improvement, in my opinion, over Arendelle in terms of the space itself. So it's a really strong restaurant and has, I think, two really good menus.
[01:10:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. After dinner, we went back to the grand hall because. Because Sage and Coriana were doing what's called Stories from the Lamp Aladdin retold. So it's like a two man show with props. The props are mostly hats and scarves and they literally retell the entire story of Aladdin with just two people. It's fantastic. It's funny. That was done, I think three times or supposed to be done one other time, and it got canceled and rescheduled. But yeah, it was just fantastic. Okay, moving to day seven, castaway day.
[01:10:42] Speaker B: I'm going to cover day seven because I think that there's really just three things on day seven that I really wanted to make sure that we highlighted. And so first is I did get to. We did not get off the ship. This was castaway day. We got off the ship to do some runs and stuff, but, like, we didn't spend the day on the island. The weather was not terrific on this day. And so we use that time for stuff on the ship. And so one of the things I got to do is I finally got to do the Curse of the Golden Egg on the Aqua Mouse. And one thing they, they are enforcing a two rider policy depending on the wind. And so I had to ride with kind of a random stranger I don't know as name shout out to you. Thank you for riding with me so I could do the Curse of the Golden Egg. They do rotate the shows by day and so if you want to know what they're playing, they have a sign up. But like, Golden Egg wasn't offered every day. So casting day, I wanted to do it.
It's the same Aquamouse screens and sprayers and a big water ride. I will say the Curse of Golden Egg was a lot of fun. It was a fun storyline. I think the other storylines are just as fun, but it was a little fun storyline. Sprayers were all working. I was wet before we even hit the ride at the end, which I think is what the intent of the Aquamouse on the Wish was. And it just never quite seemed to always work. All the screens were working, all the sprayers were working. I got soaked on that ride. If it had been warmer, I would just would have kept going. It was. It was. That was a really. I think the Aquamouse was firing on all cylinders. So I think it's a great addition of the show and I love it on the Treasure. Everything seems to be working right now, which is really, really great. The other thing I wanted to hit was they did have the cast. So I think Captain doesn't like to play the horns as much as some of the other captains as we played them kind of sparingly.
Great Captain. You did. You did fabulous job getting us good weather and in and out of ports and windy days. Thank you for that. But didn't seem quite like playing the horns. And so on the last day, they said we were leaving castaway at 5pm the captain at 5pm is going to play every horn we have. And so. So everyone was up on deck and we were crazy. We made the mistake of standing, like right by the horn Tiff and Dale Pool. And I was using my. My phone and these microphones with a wind muff on to get the H horns. And I lost my hearing probably for 15 minutes afterwards. They played every horn. I don't know the full count, but I want to say they have about a dozen horns, including a Haunted Mansion horn, a Moana horn.
[01:12:56] Speaker A: So good.
[01:12:57] Speaker B: An Encanto horn. Like all this stuff. I have full recordings of all of them. I just want to do some post production editing to get the sound to be the right level so it doesn't blow out somebody's eardrums if they listen to it. But it was a really impressive array of horns. And the Haunted Mansion one is just, just fabulous.
All right, next up, Sam's already given you her review, so she just needs to be quiet on this. I want to talk about Tales of Moana. So Tale of Moana. I. So I am not the show person. Everyone knows this on the ship. Everyone knows us on this show. I'm not the show guy. I didn't see Beauty and the Beast. I still haven't seen Beauty and the Beast, I don't think, ever.
[01:13:36] Speaker A: You didn't go to see the adventure.
[01:13:37] Speaker B: I did want to see Beauty and the Beast this time. It just didn't work out with my spa treatment. But anyway, Tale of Moana, when I walked in the theater, I was like, is that like the state? That's the stage. Like, this doesn't look like anything like the stage that we've seen. You Know, the past six days, they did a really nice job with the stage. There are effects kind of throughout the theater, which I think is. I mean, kind of like frozen, but just fantastic to see the quality of the people. There's two actors who play Moana, a young Moana and then an older Moana. Young Moana is very older. Moana is just a star. Let me give my review.
Two shows to yourself.
Fantastic. The story is great. I think one of the reasons I like the show is Moana is one of my favorite movies. And I think they did really justice to the movie. And then took a little bit of license with some new songs. Took a little bit of license with how they displayed the characters. So, like, not to Ka. So shiny the crab.
[01:14:43] Speaker A: Oh, Tamato.
[01:14:45] Speaker B: Tamatoa is played by a woman instead of, you know, kind of the male character he is in the. In the movie.
But the traditional songs are there. The traditional story was there.
[01:14:55] Speaker A: There's only. There's one new song.
[01:14:57] Speaker B: The effects were really fun with how they kind of played those out. The Taka puppet. Oh, my gosh, the Taka puppet was so good. And, like, I won't ruin it, but, like, it has a transformation that is just really, really cool to see. My only criticism of the show is I thought our Maui could have been a little stronger and. No, no, no, no, no. You gave your review. Maui was a little stronger.
And it is hard. I just want to say this is a hard. This is like the Genie. Like, the Genie was defined by Robin Williams. Maui has been defined by the Rock. And I think it's always a hard act to follow when you're following the Rock, who did just nail that character in the movie.
And so I will just say, like, I. That was the one weak link for me. I don't want to say that the actor playing Maui was a weak link. I think he's a fabulous actor, has a great voice, but I think it's hard to do that character justice without trying to almost mimic how the Rock played the character. And so, anyway, overall, a hit.
[01:15:56] Speaker A: And as much as I love Maui, I just think he's different than the Rock.
[01:16:01] Speaker B: You can't just let me finish my review.
Overall, I thought it was a great show, and it was a show that I will actively go back and try to try to watch again, like I will when we're on board. Especially on Seven Nights Sailing, I can devote a night to a show. And so, like, I will go see that show. So, anyway, I love the show. I think it's a great AD to the fleet. And what I really think is great about it is I think it bodes for the next set of shows that they'll start doing and what they're really trying to do with the stage shows and really take it to the next. They're not resting on, like Broadway style quality. They're now really, I think, getting into some of the setting and the CG she did in Frozen. And it wasn't. They didn't. But this is another level to Frozen, in my opinion. And so I think if they do that with the Hercules show and the Destiny, you're seeing kind of an evolution of where they're headed with their shows. All right, with that, we did do.
[01:16:50] Speaker A: A Periscope Pub snack dinner instead of.
[01:16:52] Speaker B: We decided not to go to 1923. I will tell you, the 1923 second night menu was the weakest. Super weak. Like, we were like, we're nothing on this menu. Looks exciting to us. And so we ended up just signing it to Periscope Pub. And we got ourselves wings, chicken wings and tachos and whatever. And beer and just ginormous pretzel.
[01:17:10] Speaker A: Yeah, super good.
And had some drinks at Scat Cat after that as well. Had a really nice octopus looking glass. And my drink in Periscope Pub, it's on Instagram.
Super, super nice.
[01:17:23] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:17:26] Speaker A: Because I disagree with him about Maui. I don't think. I think. I don't think Maui was at all weak. I think he's just really different. And so you have to adjust your expectations because he's really different than. Than the way the rock plays him. And he looks different too. He doesn't look like you kind of imagine Maui to look.
[01:17:43] Speaker B: They couldn't have somebody looking like.
[01:17:46] Speaker A: Exactly. Anyway, did you want to grab a couple of thoughts from Nathan? Do you want me to grab him and I'll give him my mic?
[01:17:53] Speaker B: While you're doing that, I want to give kind of my overall review of the ship really fast. And then we're gonna have Nathan on us talk about the kids clubs a little bit. I think this ship is a team, 10 out of 10. I think that there are some challenges the ship has. Most of them are just like, I want to say, like operational challenges, but they're not like, I don't want to blow this out of proportion. I think, like, guest services was on point. Dining, we heard from several people was just not firing all cylinders right now. But the nice thing about an operational challenge is it can be fixed easily. It doesn't require a dry dock and a bunch of changes to the ship. So I think this ship Overall is a 10 out of 10. And an. I will. I can't speak for Sam, but I will say it is my new favorite ship in the Disney fleet. And the Wish has gone from like, number two all the way down to the bottom. For me, I think it's a combination of itineraries, the investment in theming, the shows, the spaces, like, everything. Like, I want to get back on this ship quickly. And the saddest part about it is it's not sailing to Lookout Key. If this ship was going to Lookout Key, I would probably avoid some of the other ships in the fleet for the time being. But we have special guest Nathan with us. So this is an episode of the Duo plus, and so we want to get his thoughts on the kids club. Now, Nathan can't go in the Oceaneers Club outside of an open house setting now because he is 11 and so he spent most of his time in Edge. In fact, I think we saw Nathan for a grand total of maybe six hours on this cruise outside of sleeping because he was in Edge so much. But Nathan, you did go down and tour the Oceaneers Club during an open open house. Was there anything different in the. In the kids club?
[01:19:31] Speaker A: No.
[01:19:32] Speaker B: Okay. There may be some differences that a keen eyed, observing adult would, would find, but just use, use Nathan's review as what you can expect from your kiddos. There's no significant change. It's a carbon copy between the Wish and the Treasure. All right, Nathan, Edge. Talk to us about Edge. What was this space like and did you like it?
What?
[01:19:56] Speaker C: First off, it's a really big space. They have a. They have a little board where you can draw on and it has like a little. It's like an elect.
[01:20:05] Speaker A: It's.
[01:20:05] Speaker C: It's a screen, but it has like pens that you can use to, to draw stuff and you can save your drawings. Have a little chill space that has like a big TV screen and. And like chairs that you can pull out. And it's kind of like a hangout space. They have a mini fridge.
Usually just has Diet Coke and Coca Cola.
[01:20:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Wait. Nathan came back to our stateroom one night drinking a Diet Coke. Like, where'd you get a Diet Coke? And it's like, oh, it's in the mini fridge and Edge. So it was funny.
[01:20:42] Speaker C: Sometimes though, they have things like Sprite or Fanta and there. And then they'll usually play something like a movie on the big. There's a big screen, like right when you enter. You can turn and see it with a red couch in front and you usually. They'll play like a movie or something on it. Then they have a mo. This is like most of the area, but they have this giant. They have this, like, really wide kind of hallway thing.
So it's not really a hallway, it's more so a room.
But it has tons of comfy chairs. It has tables where you can play, like, a few tables where you can play chess.
But in front of all the comfy chairs, there's like two. There's like two comfy features per. One of these is a screen with either Nintendo Switch or, I think, like, PS5 hooked up.
I counted, and there are four PS5s and three Nintendo switches.
[01:21:49] Speaker B: All right, this is good detail. This is good detail. But what were some of your favorite activities in Edge?
[01:21:56] Speaker C: Probably either playing on one of the Nintendo switches they had with other people.
[01:22:03] Speaker B: Or.
[01:22:07] Speaker C: Watching a movie while having a soda.
[01:22:11] Speaker B: Do they have a smoothie bar in Edge?
[01:22:13] Speaker C: No, but they have. They have a bar space where you're allowed to, like, eat lunch from the like with pool deck food and stuff or drink a soda. Also, big benefit of Edge I have not seen on any other ships. They have an elevator in Edge because if you go. There's one of the elevators that if you go in it, you'll notice it's a double door elevator. The second door is actually hooked up to an elevator door in Edge that anyone can use.
[01:22:49] Speaker B: Well, you probably have to tap your band to get that door to open.
[01:22:52] Speaker C: No, you don't.
You can just press the buttons.
[01:22:55] Speaker B: All right, so I want you to give me.
Take yourself out of Edge for a second. What were your top three favorite things about the treasure?
I remember. Remember five? Edge, not Edge. And the first answer is Ed. So that's how much he loved Edge. Okay, so give us two more.
[01:23:15] Speaker C: Okay, the food.
[01:23:20] Speaker B: Which. Which P.S. you ate Mickey's Mac and Cheese almost every night.
[01:23:24] Speaker C: Yes, but, like, they also had ch. I also had chicken tenders and st. All right, okay. The food and probably the show shows.
[01:23:34] Speaker B: Did you like Moana?
[01:23:36] Speaker C: No, I mean, like the shows and dinner.
[01:23:39] Speaker B: Ah, okay. The dinner shows. What is your favorite dinner show? Was it Coco or Marvel?
[01:23:43] Speaker C: Marvel.
[01:23:43] Speaker B: Which one? Night one with Spider man or Night two with Night two. There you go. All right, so Marvel Night two was a hit with the kiddos.
Nathan is the Disney treasurer ship you want to go back on, and is it your favorite ship or not your favorite. Yes, it is your favorite ship.
[01:24:00] Speaker C: Also, one thing I forgot to say, you cannot access Edge from The elevator. You can only access the elevator from edge.
[01:24:10] Speaker B: Okay, well, there you go. All right, say goodnight to everybody. Bye. All right. And then we're going to hand your microphone back to mommy.
I just want to find out, Sam, did you have anything that you wanted to say about the treasure that we didn't cover? Is it a 10 out of 10 for you must go back?
[01:24:28] Speaker A: Yes, it's a 10 out of 10, 100% percent. It of course, is doing the Eastern Caribbean itinerary and Western Caribbean itineraries. Of course, Eastern is our favorite. So that's what I want to go back for time and time again. We're going back in April. I can't wait to see if they have whatever the tea event will be at that time. I'm going to drag Nathan to it or I'm going to tag along with Ashley and her daughter Catherine to go see it because I absolutely need to have a kid 12 or under to go to it. Go to whatever the T is. Yeah, it's a fantastic, a fantastic ship. It's got the number one and the number two stage show on dcl. It's got. Coco is a fantastic restaurant. Marvel is a fantastic restaurant. 1923, night one is fantastic. 1923, night two.
[01:25:15] Speaker B: Yeah. The last thing I just want to say about the treasure, I can't wait to go back in April. I think this is just such, such a great ship.
[01:25:24] Speaker A: Oh, and Voyager. People ask me if I saw any special outfits, special characters, that sort of a thing. The answer generally is no. We saw a lot of Christmas, you know, Christmas stuff and all the normal stuff, but Voyager Mini we did see and I did get a picture, a couple pictures with Voyager Mini. So that's what my ears are. Voyager Minnie, she is exclusive to the treasure. I did not see Voyager Mickey, although I do have a plushie that is Voyager Mickey. So I imagine, I'm hoping that there is a Voyager Mickey out there and we just didn't get a chance to see him or they don't have the costume ready yet.
[01:25:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And Linda's saying, you know, haha, I hope you want to go back because you're going in four months.
[01:25:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:26:00] Speaker B: I just want to say, like, not only am I excited to go back in four months, but like we booked a Virgin Voyages cruise for July and I was actually trolling the Disney website trying to figure out if we could just swap that out and go back on the treasure. Unfortunately, it's doing a Western Caribbean sailing which is not, not really our favorite. So we're not going to change it. But like I was actually.
[01:26:17] Speaker A: We still really, we want to go back on Virgin and try it again with the seven night itinerary.
[01:26:21] Speaker B: But the last thing want to say is this heading into this Maiden, a lot of people were concerned like, is it going to be ready? Is this going to be like the Wish? Are they going to have to bump the date? This ship was 1000% ready with one.
[01:26:34] Speaker A: Exception of the dining, like operational stuff.
[01:26:37] Speaker B: I always forgive the cruiser first. The first, you know, couple months of sailing because, you know, you got some new. A mix of new crew and existing crew. So there's going to be a few hiccups here and there. So like operational challenges, like I said before are fixable, right? Structural stuff is not fixable. Uncharted Adventure not working is a disappointment. Not ruin my cruise and uncharted adventure. PS Wasn't even working on the Wish. So like that for me is. But I want to say this voyage cracks my top five favorite voyages across all the cruises that we've done.
[01:27:08] Speaker A: I mean Disney Cruise Lines and others. But the Muppets just took it to.
[01:27:12] Speaker B: Disney, hit it out of the park with this mate, with this, this ship, with this voyage, the whole thing. So if you have not looked at booking the Destiny Maiden and you want to experience a maiden voyage, Disney has learned a lot. And I think that Destiny is going to be a really great ship. I don't know that it will knock the Treasure out of my number one slot, but I'm excited to see it and I'm excited now to be on a main voyage. I'm not sort of cringing about it.
[01:27:36] Speaker A: We did get a question. Are you not more excited for Destiny? I'll be honest, I started out more excited for Destiny than Treasure and now I'm like, I, I don't know that the Destiny can beat the Treasure. This is like such an amazing ship. I mean there are other things that's going to tie, you know, I think the Treasure in of course Haunted Mansion parlors on both. But of course this will always be the first the Treasure.
[01:27:58] Speaker B: So and I want to.
[01:27:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it's going to be hard. Even though I'm really excited for all the Marvel spaces.
[01:28:02] Speaker B: One last detail I want to highlight and then we are going to wrap up because we have an hour and a half. One last detail. So this was something that someone told us. I just thought was such a special detail. So the Rose is the exact same bar as it is on the Wish. Nothing different about Paloncha. The whole thing is the same except when you walk into the rose on the Wish. There's a table with a rose under glass sitting atop some books and a mirror on the table. And it's a full bloom red rose. A gorgeous touch and detail on the wish, the treasure, it's different when you walk in, there is no mirror on the table. The rose is in its glass, but it's not sitting on books and it's golden colored now to sort of highlight the, you know, like the aging of the rose. Like a rose that wilts and starts to die.
There are the roses wilting. Some of its petals are now fallen at the base. It's losing its petals. It's because the story has progressed from the wish, which is the beginning of the story of the rose and Beauty and the Beast, to the treasure. And we were told by someone on board that on the day Destiny, the rose will be there, but it will only have one petal remaining because it's the end of the story of the three ships.
[01:29:12] Speaker A: I just got the chill.
[01:29:13] Speaker B: And so that is the kind of detail that they have put into this ship and that they're putting into the Destiny and like that is just kind of unbelievable. So, yes, with that 10 out of 10 from us, we are definitely going back on this ship. I will actively seek out getting back seek out getting back on the ship. So we're excited for our next cruise. We're going to look to book more of the treasure. Hope all of you will too. And if you got more questions, send them our way. But otherwise we are going dark on social media for the next seven days because we need a break.
[01:29:43] Speaker A: We need a real vacation.
[01:29:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm going to be sitting by the pool there. We're. We are. No Instagram, no Facebook, no nothing for the next week.
[01:29:51] Speaker A: I might have to post about chal process when I get.
[01:29:55] Speaker B: We will be back on January 6th with a live show about our New Year's Eve sailing on the Fantasy to talk about some of the special things they do for New Year's Eve and you know, revisiting the Fantasy for the first time for us since November of 2022. We have not been on the Fantasy. So excited to be back on board. She's now functionally the only ship in the fleet that has not gotten her dry dock and refurb. So it'll be interesting.
[01:30:19] Speaker A: She's a year away.
[01:30:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So be interesting to see what that's like. We'll be back January 6th. Since we will not see you before then. Happy New Year from the DCL duo.
[01:30:28] Speaker A: Happy Hanukkah Merry Christmas. It's still Hanukkah as we're recording right now, but have a wonderful new year and all the best from our family and we will see you real soon in the new year.
[01:30:39] Speaker B: See you next time.
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