[00:00:00] Speaker A: What's the, what's your favorite cruise line that you've sailed? Is it Disney or is it one of the others?
[00:00:06] Speaker B: It's not really a fair fight with Seabourn in the mix.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: I feel like I have to exclude. Yeah, that's, that's not really comparable. I think that's like three times the cost per person per night and all the others.
So I mean, yeah, excluding. Excluding Seabourn Foreign.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Welcome back everybody to this week's episode of the DCL Duo Podcast, brought to you by my Path Unwinding Travel. And Sam is not with me this evening. She's not feeling well, but decided to press ahead with our recording. So you're stuck with me. But I've got a fabulous guest joining me and we will. We will have a fun chat. But before I get to introducing the guest, wanted to read one of our reviews on the arrows we promised to do each week. And so this one comes from Mickey Mark 365 who writes the Essential DCL podcast. I have been listening to the DCL duo for some years now and find them to be the experts on dcl. My wife and I recently booked our fourth DCL cruise and we are getting uncomfortably close to five years and did not want to lose our castaway club status. We booked a May repositioning cruise on the Magic from San Juan to Fort Lauderdale. It's a unique sailing and our first time on the Magic. It's also our first DCL cruise without our sun. I have really dug into the back catalog and I found everything I need and more to prepare for this trip. What a terrific resource. Thank you DCL duo. Well, thank you Mickey Mark365 for leaving that review.
For those of you out there who don't know the reference here about five years, Disney Cruise Line implemented a couple years ago now a policy that they would reset castaway club status for anyone who had not sailed in the last five years. I have not actually seen them do that. If that's happened to you, I'd love to hear about it. But I have not actually seen them do that to anyone quite yet. So hopefully that was just a terms and conditions that they don't actually enforce for folks out there. I would sure hate to see someone lose their platinum or pearl status over not sailing in five years. But with that Mickey Mark, thank you so much again for the review. Really appreciate it. Hope you had a fabulous sailing for all of you out there. Remember, one of the easiest ways to support the show is to head over to Apple Podcasts. Hit those five stars or leave us a written review and we will read it at the top on the air at the top of one of our main episodes each week. So with that, I do have a fabulous guest. I want to introduce Larry to the show. First time guest on the DCL duo. Welcome, Larry.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Thank you, thank you. First time caller, a long time listener.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: There you go. There you go. Well, excited to have you on. You've got quite the interesting Cruising story, but we always like to start folks with their Disney background. So how did you get into to Cruising and Disney Cruise Line and yeah, tell folks about that.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: So for Cruising, I've long had an interest in it. I actually went on my first Cruise on my 10th birthday on a now defunct cruise line completely a junked cruise ship called the Discovery One on a defunct cruise line called Discovery Cruise Lines.
So that would have been 1990 to date myself a little bit here. But then I didn't get to go cruising again for a while. I knew I liked it at that point and I wanted to try it again. But I did get to try it again until it was kind of out on my own. And then in 2003, I was able to go sailing on the Norwegian Star. Not the current Norwegian Star, the again, at this point, I believe junked Norwegian Star that was previously sailing around Hawaii. And that was actually a very fun cruise because that was a work cruise for me. I worked at something called the Perl Whirl.
If any of your listeners are familiar with the Perl programming language called Perl and the developers for that language and many of its greatest enthusiasts were sent onto a cruise for a learning cruise with many training sessions during the sea days around Hawaii, of course. So that was still a lot of fun. But that happened to land on the same cruise as Trek Cruise 2003.
So it happened to be that you had a ship that was half full of programmers and half full of Star Trek nerds, which, surprise, surprise, has a great deal of overlap.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: I was going to say that just eventually is 100% full of star Trek nerds. Right.
Not all of them can program. I'm with you. Yeah.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: So we ended up opening up all of our events to the whole ship to each other so that we could go to each other's stuff. And so I got to hang out with some of the Star Trek effects people. I got to meet Wil Wheaton, do some other things and also then do a bunch of programming tasks and learn a lot of cool stuff from the language developers. So that was A very cool first cruise, not a Disney cruise, but then it was a little while longer. Then I started cruising with my wife. We cruised on Carnival just to make sure that we liked it or that she would liked it. We went on the Norwegian Getaway. We went on our honeymoon which was a crazy cruise on Seabourn.
We did a Pamela Canal crossing from Miami to San Diego on the Seabourn Odyssey, which was a great ship by itself. But then after we had kids we decided, well, we didn't have any cruises for a while after we had our kids, but we were really itching to get back. And so of course Disney makes a lot of sense. I like to call myself a Disney inspired dad.
I wasn't big, big into Disney as an AD obviously. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I had a lot of Disney in my life at that point, but wasn't big into it as an adult until I had kids. And then we kind of went hard going back to the parks and going on the cruises now. And so once the kids were ages 2 and 4 we took them on the Disney Wish.
And that was in 2023.
And so that was their the kids first cruise experience.
And then we had a cruise last year which I felt pressured to do because I was afraid that the Norwegian Parliament was going to ban larger cruise ships from the UNESCO fjords. And so we foolishly took a three and a five year old at that point onto a two week land with the Midnight sun cruise where the sun did not set for well over six days continuously. And that was a lot of fun.
We had a great trip on that was on the Sky Princess and then the cruise most recently the Merch was the March 1st sailing on the Disney Treasure.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Seabourn is not a cruise line that we have heard much about.
They're the luxury end of cruising if I recall correctly. Or they're at least trend toward that. Was that your experience?
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, that is a lot of inclusions on that line. I believe Gary Bembridge slots that into his ultra luxury line. I typically follow the Bembridge guidelines lines for slotting my guys. Yeah, so that is an ultra luxury line. That was our honeymoon. So we went all out on that honeymoon cruise right after we got married. And yeah, that was a 16 night through South America, obviously through Panama and then up the coast of Mexico all the way up to San Diego. So yeah, that had everything included. There was a few excursions that we paid for. But I mean they asked us, you know, that's the kind of cruise line. They asked us like what we drank before, before we embarked and you know, whatever we told them was there was bottles of it in the room, you know, that, that sort of thing. So, yeah, there's nothing, nothing quite like that. I think that we've done that we've done since and that we'll probably do again soon. But that one was a lot of fun.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I can imagine. Yeah, the Seaborn's much smaller ships and they can get in and out of some pretty, pretty interesting ports. So, yeah, that would be an amazing cruise. We loved our Panama Canal cruise that had South America on it. So. Yeah, that was great.
Well, let's, let's talk a bit. What I'd love to talk about is your impressions of the Treasure.
And I think when you reached out, you said you, you know, you have some thoughts on sailing with kids on Disney versus sailing with kids on Princess.
And I'd love to, I'd love to hear those thoughts because I think Princess Cruise Line is now really trying to position themselves as a more family friendly cruise line along with Royal. I mean, Royal's sort of always been a little family friendly on the, you know, family vacation side of things, but for Princess, that's a bit of new territory for them. But let's start off with the Disney Treasure. So you were on the Disney Treasure. It was you, your wife and two.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Kids, I think you have now four and six. Yeah, a six year old boy and a four year old girl.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: And what was your itinerary on the Treasure?
[00:08:41] Speaker B: So we did the, was it Western Caribbean with the US Virgin Islands and then hitting Castaway on the way back.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: Okay, and which do you remember? Is it Tortola or.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Yeah, It's Tortola and St. Thomas.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: So Easter. Yeah. You were on an Eastern Caribbean itinerary then. Yes, yeah, yeah. And so what, what piqued your interest in sailing on the Treasure and you know, going on Disney? Was it just you had kids and the Treasure was the new ship or what, what, what piqued your interest there?
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much what you said it was. You know, we wanted to do the new ship. I had heard a lot about it. I was very excited, of course, about, you know, many of its features, including Hot Imagine parlor, stuff like that. But yeah, mostly it was a new ship and it had been.
Our placeholders were sort of burning a hole, about to expire, weeks away from expiration at the time of the cruise. So that helps plot the timing out. But yeah, we wanted to do the new ship and we wanted to do it at approximately these ages with the kids when I thought they would enjoy it before they sort of graduate to bigger things.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Nice. And so what kind of. Well, let me step back and say from a planning standpoint, heading into the Treasure, you mentioned Haunted Mansion parlor. Anything else that was like you really wanted to try and do while you were on the ship?
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I mean, we had heard from you and from other people about sage and coriander. We had heard, of course, about the Moana show. Those were big draws to the ship as well. I would say I was excited about some of the other lounges.
I like those properties, like 20,000 leagues. Of course, everybody loves Jungle Cruise. I've never met anybody who didn't love Jungle Cruise, so those are very inspirational. And I love the idea overall of the ride inspired theming on the ship. So there was lots of attraction there.
In terms of the destinations, I wanted to just hit places that we hadn't hit with the kids before. So, you know, the kids, they've been to these different locations in the Caribbean, including the Bahamas. And so we wanted to make sure that we hit new places that they've never been. My wife and I have been to St. Thomas before. We had never been to Tortola, but we wanted to make sure that we hit both of those.
And then going back to Castaway, of course, is always, always great.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: What kind of stateroom did you book on board?
[00:10:57] Speaker B: We had the deluxe family stateroom, again, following the Bembridge rules, making sure we had cabins above, below and on either side and across.
So that, that put, put us on Deck 9, which I thought was a pretty good compromise. It was very quiet.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Deck 9 is one of our favorites. Yeah, we usually, we like to stay deck nine forward. We don't always do the veranda state rooms because we just find that we don't use them. But yeah, Deck 9 is a great spot, I think. And then, you know, pre boarding, how was the process for you booking activities, getting checked in, all that stuff? We've heard various cases of hiccups here and there with the IT systems, but also want to know, did you get the stuff you wanted to pre book or did you have any problems?
[00:11:33] Speaker B: I would say I had an average Disney amount of technical glitches. Usually that happens at the less stressful periods of online booking, which is when you're doing data entry about the people cruising. So that system where you upload photos and stuff like that, that's probably the most glitchy part. But it's also less stressful because there's less of a time. There's less of a clock waiting for you at that point. But this was a very competitive sailing. It's an early sailing on the Treasure. There's a lot of high status people. We're only sailing as a silver castaway family at this point. So one thing I didn't mention, this was a three generation cruise that we did.
We did the cruise. I should have mentioned this.
I mentioned my kids and we also cruised with my parents. So this was a two week vacation that started with a week at Disney World and then we had a week on the Treasure and then we had one surprise day that the kids didn't know about until the very end at Universal Studios. So yeah, so we did bring my parents and so we had distributed the adults in the room so that we had a silver. Because my parents had never cruised with Disney. So we distributed the silver Castaway club members over both of the rooms and then had to sort of reshuffle those after we got on board.
So we were silver members on this extremely competitive sailing. You know, three, essentially three months into the paid passengers of the ship's life.
And no, we got blown out of pretty much everything right away except for the sort of lower demand excursions. So did not get Palo brunch. Did get a Palo dinner at a terrible time that I did not keep on a day that I did not want.
So, you know.
But excursion in St. Thomas, the most popular ones. TT70 is what I'm talking about here, if you're looking it up, which is you take a boat to the beach on Joe's Van Dyke.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Yeah, we're booked on that one in a couple weeks.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Yeah, so there's a few. There's three different excursions that will get you there. Only one of them gets you there without a bus and that's TT70 and that one books up immediately. I was able to get the. I was able to get on that excursion, try to get either brunch enchantee or Palo. Did not get either of those. My parents were able to get the virgin bass excursion in Tortola. We were able to get the tropical treasure hunt excursion which is like a pirate treasure hunt in St. Thomas. That one we were able to get. And we can talk about that one a little bit later.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: I definitely want to hear about that one.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that one had pretty good availability and we were able to get the Royal gathering at a good time. And very critically, I was able to get Bibbidi Bobbidi boutique at a time directly before the royal gathering, which we had signed up for, which worked out perfectly and I was very lucky to get that.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: Let me ask you, the grandparents joining, how hard or easy of a sell was that? Had they been on a Disney cruise before?
[00:14:32] Speaker B: They have not been on a cruise since they took me when I was 10.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: And so, yeah. And they're going to having their 75th birthdays here pretty soon.
They were a difficult sell, especially my mom, who wasn't really sure about it and didn't want to feel trapped. I think if it had not been a chance to spend a week with the kids and a little bit with me, but mostly with the kids, I think that probably would have been very. I don't think they would have come on that cruise without the kids and some family time to hang out.
But spoiler alert, they did actually have a great time, so I might be able to get them again.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Nice, nice. And the kids, I mean, were they excited to go on a cruise or how did you prep them for this, if at all?
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So they had been on the Disney wish in 2023 and the six year old remembers that more than the one who was literally in the nursery in the Small World nursery for a lot of it. So neither of them need much convincing. They know that dad loves cruising. We talk about it and they hear cruise podcasts in the car sometimes. So they kind of know what's up. And they remembered the Disney Wish. When we were prepping for the Disney Wish, Disney used to have this downloadable PDF thing that you could print out and read with your kids and fill in the blank. Our cabin number is going to be 9556. And our room steward's name is Fill in the Blank. And it has all this stuff. And then here's like, here's a picture of the ship you're going to be on. You can color it in. And so you can still find the link on the Disney Cruise Line website in places where they forgot to take it down. But it's missing two or three ships at this point.
It's pretty out of date. But we did that with the Disney Wish. And so we still have that binder from where we printed out the DCL PDF thing for cruise prep. And we actually have.
And this is in the photo album I shared. I can share these with the audience as well. But we actually have a countdown blocks in the kids room that every day you can shift one of the blocks and put up a different number and it counts down days until my Disney Cruise. And actually, if you flip this one over, it's days until Disney World on the other side. So you can always be counting down to your next Disney trip.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Yeah, the downloadable book I remember, I feel like they still sometimes send me an email saying that you can download that book. But it's interesting to hear. It's woefully out of date for the kids. Did you do a character call? That's another thing you can do.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Did and he did and it kind of didn't work. It rang through and then it cut off within like seven or eight seconds and it didn't. Yeah, it went to voicemail. It didn't really work for me.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. For those of you out there not familiar, if you have kids, even if you don't have kids, you can through the Disney website, you can request a character call for your cruise and they have some fun pre recorded character calls for your kids. Well, so Larry, you head out, presumably you got to Orlando a bit early before the cruise. Did you spend some time at the parks beforehand or did you, did you just stay the night before? Like. Yeah. What was the pre cruise like?
[00:17:47] Speaker B: Yeah, so we had eight nights at Walt Disney World prior, prior to the cruise. So yeah, so we, we flew in from, from the Pittsburgh Airport and we used a great service which I will recommend called cast and crew transportation.
They were really good and they, they picked us up at the airport, they brought us to the Polynesian. We did three nights at the Poly for Magic Kingdom and then we had a break day after Magic Kingdom when we moved from the Polynesian to the Beach Club. And then we did five nights at Beach Club. Both of these in the Villas. In the dvc. In the DVC Studio Villas.
So it has that extra fold out bed for the second kid and it has a little kitchenette area thing in there. So yes. And then we did five nights at Beach Club where we did the other three parks and we finished almost every attraction on the touring plans list in the four parks. We only missed like four or five things across the, across the list.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Nice. That's impressive. It's impressive for sure. Now on the seaside, did you stay at the new tower at Polynesian or were you at the old DVC side?
[00:19:01] Speaker B: We were at the old DVC side. I did walk over there and take the tour because they were doing open, they had an open studio tour thing.
So yeah, so we walked over there, we checked it out, saw a restaurant and everything. But we were staying at the, at the old, the old villas. But it was still pretty nice. The refurb is still looks good.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Nice. Well, and you did it in the right order. Always do the parks first because those are. Then you get to relax after.
So how did you get from the resort out to the cruise ship? Did you take Disney transportation or private transfer or.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Yeah, we took the Disney transportation.
Yeah. Totally worth it, I think for, for two reasons. For the luggage pickup privilege where the bellhop takes it straight from your room to the bus and they put their luggage on the. Well, I guess now they're loading it on the box truck. Now they just take it out of the box truck. They put it on there. You see your luggage when it gets to the cruise ship. So that's a great benefit. And then also just the organizational structure that they have around the people where they do the passport checking and all the authentication and stuff at the resort before they put you on the bus. Having all that done and having everybody organized and stuff and all the stuff checked beforehand is very nice as well.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: So when you get to the port on Disney transportation now, do you bypass all the lines and just head straight into the, straight up the escalators in the terminal, like go through security and through. Or do you still have to do like a check in process at the port if you take the Disney transportation?
[00:20:22] Speaker B: They did scan. Yeah. So they didn't actually scan the arrival documents at the resort. They did scan the arrival documents at the port, but we had what appeared to be a dedicated line for just the DCL buses.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that's nice. That's still a nice benefit. Yeah. So what time, what time did the bus pick up and what time did you get out to the port then?
[00:20:44] Speaker B: Let me look. I think it was right around.
I feel like we left right around 8:45 or.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Oh, early. Okay.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, because we, we had a couple stops after. I don't have the time here. We did have a. We. We did have a couple stops after the beach and yacht club, because the beach and yacht club pick up together.
And then there was a couple more stops on the way to the port.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: So you probably rolled up to the port around 10:30 or 11 at the latest then I would guess.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Yeah, they had not started boarding when we got to the port, so we still had to wait.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Nice. Now which, which boarding group did you end up in?
[00:21:18] Speaker B: We got boarding group four.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, that's not a long wait. Boarding group two is the, is the largest boarding group now on Disney because all of the pearl status and I think even platinum status get put into boarding group two. So it could be a Large boarding group, but yeah. And then obviously have concierge as boarding group one. Nice. Okay, well, so you show up to the port, you get on the ship. Now did your kids know about the whole announcing your family name when you boarded or did you keep that secret from them?
[00:21:44] Speaker B: They sort of halfway remember from the Wish. I think, although it's different, the Wish.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Was much more muted than I think some of the ships.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And the audio too is. The audio is very different and I think they improved that quite a bit. Or they just aimed at you, I don't know.
But yeah, it sounded good. My parents were I think more impressed by that than the kids were.
They really liked it. But going back and backing up, we actually didn't even board with boarding group 4. I was trying to cajole the 4 year old into taking. I had made the matching crew shirts for everybody.
And so we had all six of us in the matching shirts. Everybody had their favorite characters, their name on them, everything else. And I was trying to control the four year old and just taking one photo where he could get everybody in the photo with their shirts.
She, she was not having it. So I think we ended up in boarding group six or seven or so. I don't even know.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Nice. Well and by that time too, it's. It usually boarding moves very quickly. That's the one thing I like to remind people is like, you know, it's nice to get into boarding group one, it's nice to get into boarding group two. But boarding group six, seven, eight, like they, they start to move really quickly. And in fact if you show up to the port around like 12:30 or even one o' clock, like doesn't matter what boarding group you have, you're pretty much walking right at that point. So. So yeah, well, so you get on board, what were your first imp?
You've sailed the Wish. The Treasure is a very different feel. I mean it's the same layout but a very different feel. I think when you get on board. What were your first impressions of the Treasure? And you walked into the grand hall there.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: I feel like the first thing I noticed was the similarities before I started noticing the differences. So it's still a grand three balcony, chock full of LEDs everywhere. You could cram one with the tiny stage up on top. Very much more Aladdin style now of course. But the first thing you notice I think is the similarity with the lighting and the chandelier and the crazy programming and the scents. Obviously the scents hit you right with the scent machines. They got Right there. So that hits you right away. One of the first things you notice when you're on, I feel like the Disney ship, I feel like this happened both times, is not even what you see, it's what you smell. The smell gets you right away. And so, yeah, that hits you. You know, you're there.
And then, of course, you start noticing the details and the differences. And it's very.
It's very much Arabian Nights type, themed, you know, and we did have Jasmine and Aladdin there up on the little. I don't even know what it is, like a little terrace. And so that was a great fit for when we boarded. I feel like we were lucky because we boarded very early and we got to see them and. Yeah, and. But what you notice about that grand hall right away, I feel like, is just the detail and the elegance and the lighting of that chandelier and the way that it fills the room. And then the carpet, it. How it.
Thankfully, the dry carpet, how. How it matched everything and how it really pulled it together. Um, those were the first things that draw your eye.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I should have asked which sailing were you on? Like, how. How deep into the. The inaugural season did you get?
[00:24:49] Speaker B: So, yeah, I feel like it was. So it was four or five. I think it was seven. I feel like it was. I think it. Yeah. So March, this. March 1st, I think that makes it the 7th or the 8th. It's either the 7th of the. A sailing, I think.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: All right.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: So, yeah, I mean, still got that new ship smell. Um. Uh, yeah. I mean, what I noticed, too, is just like, it.
The.
The contrast in the color scheme and that between the Wish and the Treasure is pretty noticeable. But also, I think, to your point, like, they put a lot. It feels like they put a lot more detail into the. The ship than. Than the Wish, or at least perhaps noticeable detail. I. I don't know if you. You see it on the Wish. Were you a fan of the Wish? Did you like the Wish in the. The layout of the ship? It was a pretty divisive ship. So I don't know if heading into the Treasure, you had any sort of reservations about the ship based on its, you know, layout, size, that sort of stuff. Stuff.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: The basic layout I mostly agree with the theater placement, the dining, the lounges, the rooms that are at least mostly isolated from sound.
The basics I think they got right where I have the same complaint, I think, that most people have with the midship elevators not existing mostly, and with the frequency that they shut down the midship Stairs or render them inaccessible for either photos or event or whatever it is.
It sends you all the way to the aft or to the. To the fore.
Quite, quite a bit, I would say. So my main complaint would be, you know, if. If you are going to not have a midship elevator, fine, but at least leave the stairs open as much as you can.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Or what. You know, what I like is I think between three and four, there's kind of a hidden set of stairs off the main hall that you can use. But then they didn't extend that from. They didn't have a corresponding set from 4 to 5. So, like, if you're on, you're right. You can't get down to Deck 4 or 3 unless you head all the way.
I think forward is usually the direction I had based on kind of placement. But you can't get there without going forward or aft to us to a. To an elevator bank or stairwell there. So, yeah, it's. I will agree it's frustrating from that perspective.
Well, so you get into the. The treasure. What, you know, what does your family like to do when you first board a cruise ship? We always joke that, are you headed to cabanas or not? But now there's so many options and not everyone wants to eat when they first get on board. So. Yeah, where are you, where are you headed? What do you, like, do as a family when you first get on board?
[00:27:11] Speaker B: I gave the kids a choice, and this was not, as I'll explain momentarily, this was not on me. I was making my wife to this one. So I gave the kids a choice about if they wanted to go do the Aquamouse and the pools or if they wanted to go eat.
And they chose predictably, both.
So we had them in their swimsuit. We had them in their swimsuits and took them up to Mickey's Feastival of feasting to have to have lunch. And when I say we, I mean not me, because I had a list of seven tasks to immediately accomplish once I boarded.
So I left my family to go to the pool deck and get some food, and I immediately started tackling my list.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Well, I think we have to know the seven tasks that needed to get done upon board. That's a lot. That's a lot to get done. And how did you prioritize it? Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: So, okay, so I did these, turns out in the wrong order. The right order is to do Palo is to get in the Paolow brunch line first. So, yeah, so if you wanted the PA Brunch line Do that first. I did that second. Unfortunately, what I tried to do first was to flip my dining rotation such that formal night put me in 1923, and that cost about. About 20 to 30 minutes after I boarded and took the Palo Brunch line from being just pretty long outside of Triton's Lounge, like, you know, maybe 20 to 25 families deep to it stretches clear off to the other end of the ship. So if you have to. If you're trying to get Palo Brunch, you want to get in that lane, get in. Get in first.
So, yeah, Palo brunch is on the list. Moving 1923 to night two, which is the formal night I was on the list. Do Palo brunch first. I did not get Palo brunch and I did not get 1923 to night two. Then I had to swap. Like I mentioned before, we did the little trick where you put a castaway club member in each room. So we had to go swap. We had to go to guest services and wait in that incredible line on embracation day to swap the rooms. But we had several tasks that we were able to complete there. We were also able to move my shave at Hooks Barbary to a different day. We were able to add my wife to Adventure Tea, which we can talk about later.
And I'll just add here that adding a If Ed Venger T is sold out and you're sailing, adding a child to that is nigh impossible. Adding an adult to that is fairly easy.
I attempted to move my Bibidi Bobbidi boutique reservation earlier, which turned out to be impossible because I had the opening appointment, which I did not know at the time, but it turned out to be perfect anyway. And then I tried to get into the chocolate and liquor tasting class, which I did in fact, get into.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: N. Yeah, on the Adventure Tea, I suspect it's because the kids are typically a higher price for those things and they have goodies and gifts and so they probably don't stock enough on board to add people. But, yeah, those are good tips. And I would say I'll give you one secret potential tip that we've used with some success, I think. We haven't had to use it recently, and so the success may be more limited now. So your mileage may vary, but if you really want the Palo Bro Brunch, if that's the thing you want, we just head straight to Palo because there's usually someone up there manning the desk for. For Pao and Remy outside of the Rose or Meridian or whatever. It is. And we've had some success just getting them to, like, take our request and get us into. To dining. Doesn't always work. I just want to be clear about that. But there's usually someone up there who can. Who can help out. So, yeah, I think a lot of times they're the ones taking the concierge calls. It's for.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: For.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: For dining changes for Palace.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: So I'll. I'll say on our sailing, so what they were doing, and I think they're doing this basically every time while it's still popular. The Palo was completely sold out. Palo brunch, I would say, was completely sold out before Silver Castaway Club opened.
And on. Once on board that, on embracation day, they added a port day Palo brunch to the calendar and then basically filled it up up with people in that line.
So if you want a port day Palo brunch, your odds of getting that, even if the line is pretty long, your odds of getting the port day Palo brunch are seen to be pretty good.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good tip. That is a good tip. And they do like to do that during the inaugural season while it's, like, still insanely popular. And then they kind of ramp it back because it does get hard for the Palo staff to be in, like, constant brunch and dinner mode back to back. So, yeah, that can be tough. You mentioned port days. I do want to talk about the excursions you took. So we're actually booked on TT70 ourselves in a couple. I'd love to hear how that excursion went, because the last time we did this sailing, we actually did a private excursion to Jos Van Dyke and a couple of other spots. And so this is our first time doing the Disney excursion out there. What'd you think? I mean, I will tell you where I get critical about Disney on some of these beach excursions is the amount of time it takes to get to the beach in relation to the amount of time you get at the beach. And so how did you find Joe's Van Dyke? And for folks who haven't been.
Did the kids enjoy it?
[00:32:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I would say the kids really did enjoy it. For this excursion, it was just the four of us. My parents did the bass, and they really enjoyed that excursion. The tours of the virgin bass with lunch, I believe.
And we went to just Van Dyke, that was about 30 minutes or so on the smaller boat to get to the beach.
And, you know, it's. It's a. It's a nice uneventful ride that the watercraft. I would recommend using the, using the restroom before you get on so you're not forced to use that one. I have my, my 4 year old did have to use it so it's there if you need it.
But it's. It's not what I would recommend. They did provide, you know, little drinks and stuff for the. For people like a little rum punch and, and some juices for the kids and stuff. But yeah, so I would say 30 minutes there, 30 minutes back. I think we got about three and a half hours on the beach.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: So I think that's a good amount of time.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: Yeah, the ratio seemed to work out. It was the longer.
Like we said, there's three different Disney excursions to just Van Dyke. And I think this was one of the longer beach times that we had there. So I wanted to take as much time as we could. My wife really likes the beach and she lets me do the cruise thing because she gets beach time.
And last time I dragged her to Norway.
So this time beach time was really non negotiable but everybody had a good time time.
The lunch that was included I enjoyed and my wife enjoyed and my daughter enjoyed and my son disagreed with it somehow and either ate too fast or there was something he didn't like in there but he had a little problem with it.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Sorry for those who don't know. So Tortola. There is another island near Tortola that has this great beach beach just Van Dyke. We've had some folks on who've talked about it in the past but it's a popular spot. Catamarans pull up and people just hop off and swim ashore. It is got the Soggy Dollar bar which is world famous is the original home of the painkiller. We actually discovered the last time we went that the bar next door had a better painkiller. But the Soggy Dollar had a really good. I think it was margarita that our friend had. But all in all it's a really fabulous beach. It's one of the most sought after beaches in the Caribbean. What was the lunch Larry? Was it at one of the local restaurants there or. Cause there were two. There's Soggy Dollar and I forget the name of the other spot that's right next door to them spot down the beach. But yeah, what was the lunch situation?
[00:34:59] Speaker B: So this excursion, now the current version of it and I think there may have been an older version that dropped you somewhere else but the current version drops you at a place called Ivan's Stress Free Bar. And it's a, it's a strip of beach there on Jos Van Dyke. You could theoretically walk along the beach to a different place, but it, it's pretty. All the other places are like, are a little bit of a walk away. Definitely further than you wanted to go.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: So you're not near the soggy dollar.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Then you're not that close actually. Let me look at how far you are. But you. Ivan's stress free bar.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: And the drops are right there. But lunch is included at the at. You get a token for lunch and a token for drinks at Ivan Stress free bar.
And let me see here. That is.
It's two, it's two minutes one kilometer away. It's so it's, it's a kilometer walk from. Along the beach from the soggy dollar.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Not terrible.
Yeah. If, if you're doing it, it'll. They Soggy dollar is kind of fa. They've got really great merch down at the soggy dollar. I'll just say that. So like if you, if you, if you want to see the home of the painkiller, I think it's probably worth the kilometer walk down there.
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Great. So. So three and a half hours at the beach. Sounds like the kids had fun. Sounds like it was a fun excursion. Except for obviously the food. Disagreeing with your son?
[00:37:10] Speaker B: Yeah, he was, he was fine. But I'm not. I don't want anybody to be get the wrong idea. He was fine and he spent the rest of the day playing in the sand and on the beach. So it was just something that just. He didn't.
But yeah, they have beach toys for the kids.
They had pails and everything and all the stuff you need to dig a bunch of holes in the beach and bury your little mermaids and everything else in there that we did. They have floaties for the adults and for the kids as well, little games on the beach, like a ring toss and stuff like that. So yeah, we had a great time there. The drinks were good. Everybody there was super kind. They had plenty of seating.
We actually, we got there and we were worried that there was going to be no seating because we saw like a bunch of people and everything was occupied. But then all the people who were sitting down got up and got on the boat that we just got off and then we, you know. So the day shift.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: The day shift arrived. Yeah. Did they have, you know, one thing people love to ask about the beach days. Do they have, do they have umbrellas for you too? Was it. Was there shady?
[00:38:09] Speaker B: They had a few of the Palapas out there, but yeah, it was. That was not that much of a problem if there's plenty of shaded areas near the bar too and all around. So yeah, they have, they have a Palapas out there on the beach, but there's plenty of shaded area where you can just sit right there.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Nice.
Let's head over to St. Thomas quickly. We always end up at Megan's Bay. But you did this pirate excursion, the treasure hunt. We had an amazing race excursion. I can't remember if it was on Tortola or St. Thomas. I forget where it was.
But it was on Royal Caribbean. So I'm really interested to hear about this treasure hunt excursion, the pirate treasure hunt excursion. Talk to us about that. What was that like?
[00:38:50] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's billed as tropical treasure hunt.
They describe it as an escape room like adventure, which sounded very appealing to me. And I love, our family loves escape rooms. I love doing escape rooms and puzzles and everything else like that. And so this sounded really cool. It sounded like very family friendly, kid friendly way to sort of explore St. Thomas and piracy and the history of the Caribbean Islands and the Virgin Islands and stuff like that. So I was very excited about this excursion going in. And I will tell you, we have had a mixed experience.
My parents actually they complained about the excursion to the excursions desk on the ship and ended up getting a partial refund after, after talking to them, just not even asking for a refund, but just like expressing that they didn't enjoy it and maybe Disney should reconsider.
But we.
So you get off. The way the excursion works is, you know, you get off the ship, they meet you, they explain, you know, sort of how the excursion is going to work or how the, how the puzzle is going to work, and then they give you your first clue. And so you get off the ship, they walk you through the, through the dock area a little bit and then you stop near an exit to the port and then they hand you like a map with a puzzle piece and they tell you, you know, to go find essentially, you know, like a mermaid statue. And, you know, there is a mermaid statue, you know, maybe 100ft or 50 to 100ft from where you're standing. And you sort of walk around little port area. It's basically visible from sort of the starting, the starting portion. And then you, you get another clue there. And these clues are, these clues are at a level where they're solvable by, you know, by kids, basically. And it tells you, basically you have to walk to the Pirate Museum. And so this is confusing because it doesn't exactly tell you where it is and it's not really clear which way to go. But it turns out that really what you do is you just wait until all the different groups because you've been broken up into groups of. It's supposed to be about six people, but we ended up putting a group of 10. I thought we were going to be by ourselves because the website said they were going to break you up.
If you had more than six people, you'd be, or, sorry, if you had fewer than six people, you'd be combined with other groups. And so I thought we had six people. I thought we'd be by ourselves, but they stuck another family of four with us.
So we had 10 people and there was a few other groups of 10. I think there was four groups of 10 on this excursion, or approximately 10.
And everybody was kind of wandering around and trying to find where to go. And then they sort of gather everybody together in one big group and take you off to the Pirate Museum to continue the excursion. And so you walk, you walk out of the port and it's maybe, you know, like a five, five minute walk outside the port to get to the Pirate Museum. You cross the street, you get into the pirate Museum and then there's a whole bunch more clues and that the Pirate Museum has essentially been set up or kind of like retrofitted to accommodate this sort of treasure hunt inside the museum. And so almost the entire remainder of the treasure hunt is inside this Virgin Islands Pirate Museum. So it's a history of piracy in the Virgin Islands. On the Virgin Islands.
Pirates who fled to the Virgin Islands, were jailed in the Virgin Islands, all kinds of stuff like that.
And so there's exhibits all around the place. You have to go and, you know, for example, you have to go into a wind tunnel and see the maximum speed in the wind tunnel. And that gives you the combination on a lock you have to open to get the next piece of the puzzle.
There's a portion where there's hidden characters.
They distribute black lights. And you have to find the murals or the hidden numbers or elements that you can see on the back of exhibits have been painted on in black light ink or in black ink, stuff like that. And so you go around the museum and this takes about, about. You have about 45 minutes, I think, to kind of wander the museum, solve all the puzzles. I think it took us about 30, 35 minutes to solve everything.
Most of the groups, I think, had finished not long after that, depending on how many, like, little kids they had and stuff. But, yeah, you walk around the Pirate Museum, you sort of, you know, you see the pirate flags, learn a few things about the local pirates, and, you know, do the little pirate prison photo pose and everything.
And then, then once you solve that puzzle, it tells you the name, basically, the solution to that puzzle. Sorry, spoiler alert. The solution to that puzzle tells you the name of a local beach called Sapphire beach, because the answer to the final riddle is Sapphire. And you have to solve it letter by letter.
And then they basically take you to Sapphire beach, which is a beach with a.
It's much like the Ivan's Place. It's a beach with a bar and a restaurant. It's a bar and a restaurant. I think it has a small inn or a small beach hotel on the back that. But basically they take.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: But all of this is walkable. You're walking to all of these places?
[00:43:52] Speaker B: No, no. So this was part of the major complaint about the excursion. So you spend about 10, 15 minutes at the port doing this one clue. You spend about 45 minutes at the Pirate Museum indoors doing basically the rest of the clues which take you to Sapphire Beach. And then this, you know, sort of the. The highlight of the excursion is supposed to be you go, you meet a pirate, and then you dig up, you find, you know, it takes you to. To a Pirate map. And you find the, and you find it and you dig up the treasure. So it takes you to Sapphire beach and. But taking a Sapphire beach turns out to be like a 30 to 35 minute ride and kind of a cramped leaky van where we kept getting splashed with like air conditioner runoff and stuff in the back. And, and it was. And our, and once again our group got split up so my parents ended up on a different vehicle than us. And so, and, and you know, so yeah, a lot of the excursion ended up being taken up by this 35 minute van ride to and from Sapphire beach back to the port. So that was a lot of it.
And then, so you get to the beach and then basically there's a pirate there. They, they have you, they give you the last clue and then you have to sort of pull all the puzzle pieces you've gathered together. And it says, you know, go on the beach and find, find a place to dig.
Which I was hoping it would have been more or there would have been, you know, something a little bit more clever. But basically what it amounts to is you follow the pirate out to where they just hid the treasure box and the kids get little trowels and gadgets and stuff or they just use their bare hands and then they have to go dig it up. But there's people that, there's basically people all over the beach. It's a working, it's a working beach full of tourists.
So the place where they have hidden the treasure chest is basically just wherever out of the way spot they could find at that time. Am not full of like sunbathing Americans.
So you kind of wander through the crowd of people on the beach and then the kids go and they dig up and then inside the treasure chest of course they get all kinds of little stuff they can keep little pirate plastic gold and little gemstones and stuff. So cool little things that they like. And they do have one cool pirate with a lot of pirate stuff and he looks very piratey and we got some photos with him. So that's really cool. And then they give you of lots lunch and let you hang out on the beach. Lunch was not great.
My parents definitely complained about that as well.
The kids ate a little bit of it, but they mostly just wanted to play in the water. I think the kids like doing the riddles and stuff. They were a little bit young, especially the four year old was a little bit young for this one. I think maybe there were other kids there who were between 8 and 12 and I think that probably worked out better for those families that was maybe a slightly better age. But they liked it it. They liked that but they probably they liked playing in the, in the beach just as much.
[00:46:53] Speaker A: It. It's interesting because I was just looking at the site and they have. It looks like they have an adults only version of it which makes me wonder how fun that would be if it's really geared toward young, young kids. I mean maybe they upgrade the, the puzzles in some way. Although I, I'd be skeptical. It sounds very different than the one we did the one we did on Royal. I would actually recommend. It was actually a lot of fun. If anything it was geared a little bit more toward like teenagers and adults than young kids. So you know, too difficult with a 4 and a 6 year old. Alth did it one we got a bottle won a bottle of rum and we were towing a 2 year old with us the entire way. So he was a trooper.
But yeah, it's interesting. It's nice to see Disney doing something different in terms of excursions in these ports because most of the time it's like beach excursions and zip lines and stuff like that. So. But it sounds like maybe this one was not, not the right one.
[00:47:43] Speaker B: Other problem we had, I'll leave it at this is that we. There's also some training problems. I think it seems like they had some new staff both at the port side, the Sapphire beach side. We got a new person I think on both of those and I think there was some training issues on those as well.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: You know, I want to spend some time.
We've covered the Treasure now a bunch and if we have some time I'll circle back around some of the food and the shows and stuff because I do want to hear how that went. But I wanted to pause for a second because you have this experience sailing on Princess with your kids and juxtapose this Sailing on the Treasure was sailing on Princess.
What are some of those key differences between the two lines in terms of, you know, sailing with kids and then you know, where do you land in terms of which one sort of did it better for your family? Do you think they were.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it was incredibly different. You could say night and day given that we did Midnight Sun Cruise. So obviously they're going to have very different accommodations for, for kids of, of my of my kids age like the Oceaneers. The Oceaneers Club age age range I think is going to be. Is going to be a very different different.
[00:48:52] Speaker A: Do your kids like the kids clubs?
[00:48:54] Speaker B: Comparing Disney vs Princess with the kids definitely Disney wins out, I think, on all of the obvious fronts. I mean, the Kids Clubs, you don't really compare. But of course, nothing on the sea compares to the Oceaneers clubs on Disney.
So it's not really a fair fight. There's no character appearances. There's nothing like that on the Princess cruise ship. So actually boarding Princess, the first thing we saw when we went to the Kids Club was the board outside side, which side of the Kids club, which is called Camp Discovery for our age group on Princess. And it tells you how many kids are on that sailing from each age group. And I'll tell you that there was 44 kids age 12 and under on the ship.
On the entire ship. So there was five kids age three like our daughter, and three kids age five like our son.
And the Kids Club on Princess, basically, you go inside, there's like a jungle gym is like one of the Crawley jungle gym areas with like a tiny little slide. They have like a larger creative works area. And that's kind of the highlight of the club because it is partnered with Discovery Channel. And so they have all those sort of resources at their disposal. And then on the other half of the club, for sort of the slightly larger kids up to age 12, they have air hockey, like the giant four square connect four type thing, a few of the, you know, board games area, stuff like that. And then just outside, directly behind, they have the big splash pad on the ship is just behind that Camp Discovery area. So, yeah, so 44 kids on that sailing versus half the ship on the Treasure.
I will say the experience on the Kids Club on Princess, I would say, is very positive. I mean, especially considering that it's Princess and given the classical demographic of that cruise line, it was very accommodating for the family.
All of the. One big difference, I would say, at the Kids Club and Princess is that basically all of the Kids Club staff, almost all of them, or maybe even all of them, have other jobs on the ship.
So generally they're a room steward and the Kids Club or they work in guest services and the Kids Club or they have an entertainment role and the Kids Club.
So generally something that I think they do to pick up extra shifts and extra money and stuff like that. So you will see people who are Kids Club counselors doing other roles on the ship, which is, I think, not something you see so much on Disney.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: Were the hours for the Kids Clubs different on Princess than on Disney?
[00:51:29] Speaker B: Very much so. I would say that is one of the primary differentiators of Disney is how much the Kids Club remains open.
The Princess Kids Club will generally make you pick up your children for lunch and often for the dinner meal as well. So you would often close for lunchtime time. It would be closed for various events during the day occasionally. So while it was open pretty generous hours on sea days and it was usually available to you if you're going to leave your kids on the boat when you went out for port days, it had much more limited hours. It did close earlier than the Disney. You know, Disney's Oceaneers Club I think was open till 11 or to midnight every, pretty much every night of the trip. Treasure Cruise, Princess Kids Club closed considerably earlier than that. So yeah, the hours are much more limited, but we felt like we got probably as many hours as we needed out of that.
And I can go into the activities a little bit as well.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: I also was curious, was there any cost associated with the Kids Club on Princess?
[00:52:32] Speaker B: No, there was no extra cost. Everything was included with the fair. And I would say I feel like they did a good job job. I feel like we got a good value out of it. So much of the, of what they did there was activities and crafts and creative works and the kids would actually bring back some pretty cool stuff that they had made in the kids club. You know, various discovery theming stuff that they had made with the counselors or by themselves. And it was nice souvenirs from the crews.
[00:53:00] Speaker A: And so I mean the kids enjoyed it. I guess that's what's important. But I guess as parents you've already said Princess. You know, Disney wins kind of hands down across the board here. But as parents, did that impact your experience on the cruise at all? Because like with Disney, right, you can drop the kids off and maybe go have an adult dinner or drop the kids off and you know, you know, go do something else.
Did you find that, did you find it be different on Princess? Let me put it that way a.
[00:53:26] Speaker B: Little bit in how much more. The hours were limited, but we were able to drop the kids off on Princess and still be able to go do things on the ship that we wanted to do. Now there was a lot fewer of them because we were doing an extremely port intensive itinerary. It's not like we were, you know, it's not like we're going out to every show every night and staying up late, drinking, you know, at the, at the bars or going to the casino a whole lot or anything like that.
Although I did go to the casino on the, on the Princess cruise, which is, which is a nice differentiator as well.
But, yeah, I mean, I felt like we had the hours generally that we wanted, you know, Know, although it was closed more than the Disney.
The hours on Disney are just incredibly generous. It's. It's. It's rarely closed.
[00:54:08] Speaker A: Okay, let's shift back over to the Treasure for a second. Because what I wanted to understand on the Treasure was too, like. Like, how did your kids.
And, you know, your.
Your. The. The grandparents, how did they enjoy the. Let's start with the shows, the shows on board. Did your kids sit through the show? Do they like Moana, the new stage show on there? Like, what did you think of the shows and what the kids think of the shows?
[00:54:33] Speaker B: Yeah, everybody likes the shows, including the kids.
You know, there's enough spectacle, and also they like the properties. You know, they both. The kids like the Moana movies. They watch Moana, too, before. Before going on the cruise.
And so they were. You know, they had had that recently in their minds.
Beauty and the Beast was something that my daughter appreciated, I think, about. Bit more. But the pacing on that show is just so incredibly fast.
The kids really don't have a chance to get bored or to kind of wander just because that show just goes boom, boom, boom. The set changes and everything, and I don't know how they keep up. It's incredible.
There is not a spared second in that entire production with the pace of that thing. So, yeah, both the kids love that. That everybody loved Moana, especially the adults were really blown away by both the song and dance, and then the technicality of that show, the way it consumes the whole theater, the puppetry.
Extremely impressive.
I do think that show has earned probably the best show title.
I don't want to disagree with the official opinion of the show, although Beauty and the Beast did blow me away, just with the incredible synchronicity and almost the athleticism of the performance, with how much they had to go back and forth. I will add here.
We did get into the matinee of Moana on Castaway Day, and we were among the first people in line for the matinee, and we ended up sitting in the front window row next to the spouse of one of the people in the show who was telling us little tidbits here and there about stuff he'd see during the previews and stuff and things to look out for. So that was fun.
[00:56:36] Speaker A: Nice. Yeah. When we were on the Treasure, we were with the.
I think it was the mother of the actress who plays the young Moana, the young version of Moana, and she was just so super proud of her daughter for being in that show. It was really cool. It's really cool to see. Let's, let's talk food for a second multi generational cruising food.
What did the grandparents and the kids think of the food overall on board?
[00:56:59] Speaker B: I think the grandparents I think were pretty impressed. I think it was definitely a cut above what they were expecting.
The kids were pretty happy.
They're still very simple.
It was mostly Mac and cheese, cheese pizzas.
I think we, we got a cheese quesadilla in one of them at Coco.
But their, their kids menu experience was pretty, pretty much chicken fingers, Mac and cheese staples for the adults.
Yeah, I mean everybody liked the food. Comparing it back to Princess again I would say it was actually comparable to Princess, maybe like a half step above what you see. And at least in terms of the MDR food, we didn't get a chance to do Palo this time. Obviously we did do Palo brunch on the Wish and we did do Enchante Dinner on the Wish. And I would say that both of those were comparable to the bonus experiences on the Sky Princess. That being the chef's table experience where you actually walk through the galley and it's like a three hour affair where you eat at three different tables.
So you don't get three tables. Enchantee. But it is, I would say the level of service and the level of presentation and spectacle and the food quality notably is about comparable in those experiences between the 2.
Yeah, but MDR was pretty comparable. The adults favorites I think were pretty solidly 1923 followed by Marvel, surprisingly.
[00:58:33] Speaker A: Really?
[00:58:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:33] Speaker A: Oh wow. So Coco wasn't, Coco wasn't doing it for you then?
[00:58:38] Speaker B: Coco, I felt like was the weak menu option of the three main dining. Yeah, I mean I don't know. I, I'm, I personally am more opinionated about, about Mexican food and, and probably have had more than, more than I've had of, of the other kinds. But yeah, for me at least Cocoa didn't, didn't hit as much as 1923 did.
[00:59:02] Speaker A: I've said this on the show. I mean I think it, it just trying a little too hard for my taste. Like I wish it would just kind of lean into more of the Mexican fair or you know, really go into you know, some really high quality Mexican food. I mean I just came back from Puerto Vallarta and had some great mole down there and you know, but like I think you could just get away with like some amazing street tacos on the menu in Cocoa. But they, they you know, they always seem to have to do the one fish, one chicken, one beef, one vegetarian. And I think, you know, that that model, you know, kind of limits them a bit with, especially on a two dining rotation, you know, two different menus in that rotation.
I want to ask about the chef shows in main dining for a quick second. And from the perspective of. We get a lot of feedback sometimes from folks, the shows are pretty loud. And especially when you're talking about multi generational cruising. Like, you know, the, the, the grandparents are a little bit like, well, I wanted to spend time with the family and I want to have a conversation. I can't hear what's, you know, what's going on.
How did you, how did the grandparents find that and how did you find it? Did you enjoy the shows and how was the sort of volume level?
[01:00:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. So this. The songs in Coco are obviously pretty loud. The dialogue, I felt like mostly we wanted to hear what they were saying, so we tried not to talk over it too much.
You know, of course the kids are gonna do what the kids are gonna do. They're gonna be loud, whatever.
But the show in Marvel, the first night in Marvel with the, with the Groot dance party, that got loud when it had the spectacle and the dances going on, and especially when they had the wait stuff out there doing the napkins and the dancing and everything. So that got pretty loud. And you really couldn't have, you really couldn't carry on a six person table conversation during those moments.
But that said, those didn't last all that long. It was usually just like a song or two and then it would kind of go back to a more muted thing for Marvel Knight 22 for the trivia. I think the trivia has breaks in it where it quiets down, but we were pretty engrossed in the trivia on Marvel Night 2 anyway, so I felt like that between the Marvel knights, that was definitely my more favorite night. I wouldn't even call it a show. I was going to say my more favorite show, but it's really just a trivia. It's got a little bit of show built in, but it's really just a trivia night. And that suited me just fine. I think using the little.
What do they call it? The M and doohickeys.
[01:01:25] Speaker A: Oh, the. Yeah, the quantum core.
[01:01:27] Speaker B: The quantum core, yes. Yeah. Using the quantum core as kind of a trivia engine was an ideal use for those. I wish they did keep score.
They just, they don't really do that. It's just kind of for fun.
But, yeah, that was really cool for Coco. Definitely. On night two with d' Adelas Muertos, the songs are amplified pretty loud, but those are probably the most fun and powerful and captivating parts of the show anyway. And so I don't know that you. I don't know that you really want to tone those down so you could talk over it that much.
If you really wanted to do that. I'm sure you could go somewhere.
But, yeah, definitely seeing the d' Angelos Muertos show was probably a highlight of the dinner theater, so I wouldn't want to miss that. Anyway, uh, they did definitely provide moments of quiet for conversation. Uh, and I would say you could easily talk over the dialogue, but not so much the songs.
[01:02:29] Speaker A: Well, it sounds like a. A fun cruise, Larry. I mean, did. Did. Did everyone have a good time? Overall? It sounds like the grandparents actually were impressed and might actually go back again. So, I mean, it sounds like everybody had a great time, but anything we.
[01:02:40] Speaker B: Missed, we got the two placeholders. We'll see.
Yeah, yeah. Every. I think everybody had a great time. Uh, yeah, there's. There's a bunch more. We did. We did the bibbidoadvy Boutique. We did the Royal.
We did the adventure. The Adventure tea.
These were all highlights, of course, along with the haunted mansion.
[01:02:57] Speaker A: How was the. How was the adventure Tea? Actually, I want to make sure to cover that. We haven't. We haven't had anyone on who's talked about that yet.
[01:03:02] Speaker B: Yeah, so the adventure Tea is a little bit insane. It's $250 per child, and then it's. I think it's $85 per adult.
And the adults basically just get the. Just get the food.
[01:03:15] Speaker A: The food. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:03:16] Speaker B: So. So the way it works is you gather in the grand hall.
Sage and Coriander have this whole opening bit, a whole routine to kind of guide you into 1923, where they have the tea time all set up. And so you kind of go dancing and rollicking into 1923 in this line of kids and people singing with Sage and Coriander. And then you're guided in there. They have name tags on all the seats.
You sit with your name tag.
And then Sage and Koriander lead a progression of princesses to meet with you. And then each princess tells one story out of. You know, Sage and Coriander have their big adventure storybook that they always have with them. And so in this. In the adventure tea, they open it up, and each princess tells her story sort of out of the book. And so you have, you know, you have your Rapunzel, you have your Tiana, basically all the princesses that you see normally throughout the ship. And so each princess has a chapter. There's four chapters and I should say Rapunzel does bring her prince with her. So I think there's, I think that was the only, the only one.
And then sage and coriander come in between each one and then they serve courses essentially between the, between the different stories.
And so they'll bring out the savory courses and the tea and then they have a.
Between the last three and courses three and four, I believe they have the kids, you know, do this little conga kind of dance around the room with the song and everybody, all the parents hold their arms up to over the conga line and all the kids go marching through.
And I'll say the, the food is not great.
It's, it's okay. The savory food in particular is not, not so good. I don't really recommend it. They had some egg sandwiches and stuff.
[01:05:08] Speaker A: Was it tea sandwiches? Basically? I mean, is it egg salad sandwiches and stuff like.
[01:05:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's, it's, it's this typical three tier kind of tea set that you'd normally see in like a British tea with the, with the savory on the bottom and then getting sweeter as you go up. The sweets were fine, you know, for $250 a kid, $85 an adult. You know, you want something probably very good, but you're not paying for that. Which you are paying for is kind of this one on one time with the princesses and sage and coriander.
And then you get basically an adventure, like a little adventure backpack they call it, which is basically like a belt bag almost, but it has like the, the treasure logo on it and like the sage and coriander stuff on it. And then inside it has little like keyrings and little notebook and pens and stuff like that.
A standard that's like a Disney World autograph notebook with like the plastic in between the pages. And then it comes with a pen for that so you can get it. It's like a. But it's a, it's one you can only get. It's a unique one that you can only get from the adventure key with, with the logo and everything on it. You also get like a sash to wear like a tie up royal like Persian royal thing like Moravian knights.
And then of course on your way out you get a unique picture with all the princesses and sage and coriander.
And who is Rapunzel's guy? I forget the name.
[01:06:34] Speaker A: Flynn. Flynn Ryder.
[01:06:35] Speaker B: Flynn. Yeah. Flynn Rider. Yes, and Flynn Rider, which I think may be unique to Adventure T. I'm not sure. I didn't see him otherwise on the ship. But you get this unique photo which is put into your downloads, and then you get a album delivered to your room the next day or two or whatever, but with a nice print of the.
Another. Another print on the opposite side. If they had. It looks like if they have a good one of the kid from elsewhere in the ship, they just will put it in there. And if they don't, they'll just put in like a. A random printed something.
[01:07:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It reminds you. Royal Caribbean still. Hands out. Like, if you. If you get pictures at dinner, then you order them at dinner and then they bring you, like, a booklet that has your photos and it's like, so Old world cruising.
Reminds me of the days when you actually had to go, like, flip through your physical photos at a kiosk to, like, find the ones you wanted. But yeah, well, it sounds like an amazing cr. And I know there's so much we didn't cover, but I love spending some time on the shore excursions because those are great ones for folks to know about.
Let me shift gears and do a Brian version of Rapid Fire, which I always like to say comes with far less judgment than any version of Rapid Fire that Sam will give. But I also like to mix things up and not ask the same questions that Sam does. Maybe save for a few. So, Larry, since it's your first time, gotta ask, ask you. Who's your favorite Disney character?
[01:07:58] Speaker B: Oh, man, put me on the spot. Well, for my fish extender, I chose up.
I chose Carl Fredrickson on my fish extender. So I think right now I'm feeling very Carl Fredrickson.
[01:08:17] Speaker A: All right, that's a good one. That's a good one.
What's your favorite Disney movie?
[01:08:22] Speaker B: Oh, you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna go a little bit wild on this one, too. It's Flight of the Navigator.
[01:08:26] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[01:08:27] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah, I grew up with that. And, you know, I just. It's always been a. It's always had a place in my heart, so.
[01:08:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I grew up with Fly the Navigator too. It's a great movie. It's a great movie. Do you have a favorite Disney song, Larry?
[01:08:39] Speaker B: That is also hard.
You know, I've. I've played Let It Go so many times for my daughter. It's really let it go. Really grew on me especially. And I love the ride, too, at Epcot.
So, yeah, I think let it go.
[01:08:54] Speaker A: Nice. Nice.
I got to keep Sam's questions about food, so let's start with. I'm going to reverse them, though, because my favorite is the. The sweets. So do you have a favorite dessert on Disney Cruise Line?
[01:09:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I had this down here. The Pim donut sundae, I think, was my favorite.
[01:09:11] Speaker A: Yeah, that one's good.
[01:09:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I made sure to write that one, Dar, because I knew you were going to ask. Yeah, the donut Sunday was that. That turned out it's greater than the sum of its parts.
[01:09:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's a. Definitely a good dessert. What about a favory? Favory, A favorite savory item on board?
[01:09:28] Speaker B: It was. Honestly. Well, it was the captain's. The. The captain's table night in 1923.
The Captain's Gala menu. What was the. What was the steak?
[01:09:38] Speaker A: Oh, the. Was it the fl.
[01:09:40] Speaker B: Oh, no, I'm sorry. It wasn't the steak. It was the Californian Riesling risotto. That's what it was. Yeah, the. The risotto. I, they. They nailed it.
I know it's easy. It's easy to screw up a risotto and, And. And, you know, miss the cook on it or something. But I just. I. Yeah, they. They just gave me a great risotto that night.
[01:09:56] Speaker A: All right, here's where I'm going to start to depart from Sam a bit. What's a favorite port adventure you've done on Disney Cruise Line or any of.
[01:10:02] Speaker B: The cruises you've been on, frankly, probably in Slum on.
In Flam. Norway.
They have the. The train. The Flam Banza. It be one of the most beautiful train rides in the world, and I can testify to that personally.
It is a fantastic train ride. It has one stop at a gigantic waterfall along the way. And yeah, it's about. I think it's like 45 minutes there and 45 minutes back. And it is just. It is a beautiful, beautiful train ride up and down the mountains in the fjord right outside of flm.
Absolutely gorgeous.
[01:10:43] Speaker A: Nice. What's the favorite itinerary that you've been on? Is it Norway?
[01:10:48] Speaker B: That's a hard choice. It's either got to be Norway or the Panama Canal crossing.
And, you know, I gotta say Norway, because I was with my kids.
[01:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah, no, we love Norway. Norway was. I mean, we've been on the Panama Canal.
Been in Norway. I'd say Norway is still one of my favorites. And actually, that one, Nathan, wasn't with us, but we're taking them to Alaska this summer, so we'll get close.
[01:11:07] Speaker B: That's what counts. Yeah, the Norway intensive, if you have the time for it, I recommend it. You can split Norway with Iceland or you can split it with the rest of, like, Denmark or the Northern Europe.
But the Norway intensive, I think that itinerary is beautiful.
[01:11:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I really want to visit those Nordic countries. So Norway is. Norway is. Was fantastic. And especially get to see the fjords before.
If they close them down, like, I'll.
[01:11:28] Speaker B: Be saying, well, they've pushed it back again now to 20. I think it's 20, 30. So you have some more time.
[01:11:32] Speaker A: One more time. One more time maybe to go.
What's your favorite cruise line that you've sailed? Is it Disney or is it one of the others?
[01:11:42] Speaker B: It's not really a fair fight. With Seaborn in the mix, I feel like I have to exclude. Yeah, that's not really comparable. I think that's like three times the cost per person per night and all the others.
So, I mean, yeah, excluding. Excluding Seaborn, I think it would have to be Disney in terms of just entertainment, food, childcare, especially.
Yeah. All of that together.
Disney provides everything that our family needs right now, from itinerary to new ships to the Disney experience and stuff that. I know my kids are going to love Disney. For our family right now, with the ages that we have and the cruising destinations that we want to hit. Yeah. Right now, it's Disney.
Down the line, it's probably going to be maybe Royal Caribbean or somebody else, but right now it's Disney.
[01:12:37] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, get. I always tell people, get out there. Experience the other cruise lines, because sometimes it either you know, confirms your love of the one you're with, or it confirms that you. It's time to move on. Right. So, yeah. Or at least time to change the cruising mix, I would say. All right, last question here. If you could sail anywhere in the world on Disney Cruise Line, even if it's a place that Disney doesn't go, where are you headed, Larry?
[01:13:00] Speaker B: I think it's the Galaxy. Galapagos. Yeah.
Yeah.
I was either gonna say Galapagos or Antarctica, but Galapagos, I feel like, has so much to see, and there's so much there I want to show my kids, and I could spend so much time there and, you know, seeing all the different creatures and fauna and everything, it's. Yeah. Galapagos.
[01:13:20] Speaker A: I can't remember the status of ABD's Galapagos. Sailings, because it used to be that ABD did it, but now I think Nat Geo might do it or both of them might do it. So you might check those out because ABD had a nice sail. The Galapagos and Antarctica is in the Adventures by Disney Vault. Now, we just had a guest on last night talk about that, and so hopefully that one comes back. But yeah, those are both great destinations.
I'd love to go to both at some point with an adventure cruise of some sort.
[01:13:49] Speaker B: So, yeah, yeah, I know National Geographic used to do those with Lindblad, but I don't know if they've transitioned to other ships.
[01:13:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I think Disney, ABD was doing it with Antarctica with Lindblad, and then they had a different provider for Galapagos. Galapagos. But both would be fantastic cruises, especially as the kids get older and get into maybe some science or that kind of thing. It could be really fun to go to the Galapagos and see all the nature stuff. So, yeah, Larry, what's next? You got these two placeholders. You eyeing anything in the future?
[01:14:21] Speaker B: My list is right now aimed at Alaska, but I have to coordinate things with my wife here. It looks like it's going to be another. A tight fit onto the end of these placeholders if I can squeeze them in.
But, yeah, Alaska would be great, although I'm questioning that now because we are very much wanting to hit Glacier Bay. And so of course that's difficult with Disney, but if we can't do Alaska with Disney, I'll try and spend the placeholders on something someplace we haven't gone yet.
Maybe Caribbean, but I'm also looking at Mediterranean.
[01:14:56] Speaker A: Yeah, nice, nice. And those placeholders are really valuable in the Europe and the Alaska cruises for that 10% off. So, yeah, definitely, definitely check that out. But. Well, Larry, I just want to say thanks for coming on. You've got. I know a YouTube channel I think it is if you want to let folks know where they can find and follow along with you.
[01:15:14] Speaker B: I don't post there very much. Every once in a while I'll share a video at Data Vortex. That's D A T A V O R T e X on YouTube. But mostly I am just a consumer.
[01:15:25] Speaker A: There you go. All right. Well, nonetheless, Larry, thank you for taking time out of your day to come on and share your experience with our guests. And for folks watching this later on YouTube, you might notice that I had a background change to. Larry's hung in with me for a little bit as I've had some catastrophic computer problems this evening that I'm hoping resolve. But thank you so much for taking the time Larry. We really, really appreciate it.
[01:15:46] Speaker B: Thank you Brian.
[01:15:51] Speaker A: Well, thanks everyone out there for listening this week. We really, really appreciate it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. You can keep getting great content from us every week. In fact, twice a week we publish shows so be sure to hit the subscribe button to get all of those great episodes. And if you want to watch us live, we have a live show now every week Monday nights, 5:30pm Pacific, 8:30pm Eastern over on YouTube.com DCLDUO so be sure to head over and check that out. If you want help support the show, be sure to hit those five stars on Apple Podcast and if you leave us a written review, a five star written review, we will read it at the top of one of our main episodes. So please head over there and hit those five stars. Of course you can also help support the show by supporting our fabulous show sponsor, My Path Unwinding Travel. You want to book your next Disney vacation? Head over to mypathunwinding.com dclduo or email them at dclduomypathunwinding.com so they know we sent you their way. If you've got questions or you'd like to connect with us, the best, best way to do that is to head over to DCLDuo.com it's got links to all of our things. Full catalog of the podcast episodes including a searchable catalog for the podcast links off to our vlog, a link to our Etsy store where we sell some fun fan inspired magnets. Link to our Patreon if you'd like to help directly support the show each and every month, just head over to the website or patreon.com DCLDUO also as a way for you to sign up for our substack newsletter that we're hoping to start really pumping out Microsoft Monthly here, at least on a few blog articles that we've written. So DCLDUO.com is the best way to connect with us. You can also of course email
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[01:18:00] Speaker B: Sam.
