Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: So we all had the black truffle presets as animators. I love it because they like pasta and we all really enjoyed those, so yay.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: I'm putting another notch on the scoreboard for myself, by the way. Yeah, they were good.
[00:00:28] Speaker C: Welcome back everybody to this week's episode of the DC Episode Duo Podcast, brought to you by my Path Unwinding Travel and Sam, as always, it is review time.
This review we keep like getting inching up like we're getting past a year ago and then it comes back. So like we're still a year behind on reading these reviews.
This one comes from Undertaker on Stage, so I don't know, maybe we have the WWE listener. All right, Undertaker on Stage writes a DCL Source Flash favorite. Although we are an established Disney family, we are new to Disney cruising as we explore, educate ourselves and plan future trips. We have tried several DCL podcasts. However, we always seem to come back to the DCL Duo. The format stays familiar, but the topics are always fresh and up to date. As DCL changes and adds new things, DCL Duo stays relevant to family travel without excluding adult only experiences from guests on their show, as well as questions from listeners and viewers. They are also great about introducing other resources for DCL and other cruise lines. Really appreciate the effort they put into providing a quality show and a source of valuable information. Well, there you go.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Wow, that is like a top notch review. It like hits all of the things that we strive to be. Thank you Undertaker. Whatever.
[00:01:41] Speaker C: On stage.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Undertaker on stage.
[00:01:44] Speaker C: I'm trying to parse it differently to see if there's something I'm missing, but no, I think it's Undertaker on stage. And so for everyone out there, as always, one of the easiest ways that you can help support our show is by leaving a five star review. Just head over to Apple Podcasts, hit those five stars. If you lead us, leave us a written review review, we will read it at the top of one of our shows on the air, one of our main episodes. So with that, and I did want to say by the time this show comes out, I'm really hoping we have crossed the 500 review mark. We are 13 reviews away, I think from hitting 500 reviews on Apple Podcasts and really excited about that. So if we haven't yet like hit those five stars, help us out.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: All right, Sam, please.
[00:02:22] Speaker C: We have a fun guest coming to us all the way from across the Atlantic.
You want to intro our guest?
[00:02:28] Speaker A: I am super excited to introduce first time guests to our show. And now first Time Cruiser all the way from Scotland. Anna, welcome to the show.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Hi, thanks for having me.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: And welcome to the Silver Castaway Club.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Ah yes, welcome to Castaway Club.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Yes, it'll be more exciting when I get to go my second cruise and get my silver swag.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Yes, yes. To get the. Either the tote bag or. I hear they're actually bringing back the sling bag across the fleet quite a bit. I think they ran out of the tote bags perhaps. And then you get your, your Lanyar to go with it. Absolutely. Well, Anna, we know since I said this is your first cruise and Brian welcomed you to the Castaway Club, of course. We've got to ask you though about your Disney background because it is quite unusual to have a first time Disney cruiser who has no connection to Disney whatsoever. So I'm going to imagine that you have some background or love for Disney that came before deciding to cruise on Disney Cruise Line. So why don't you tell us about that?
[00:03:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I actually think that going to Disney is quite popular now in the uk, although perhaps wasn't quite so popular when I was younger. So as a child there was the odd person I knew who'd gone to Disney World and I would have loved to have gone and always wanted to go, but didn't as a child. We did go to Disneyland Paris the year it opened. So I went with my family the year that opened, about 13, I think. And then nothing, no Disney other than the kind of usual watching films, et cetera. And then I had.
And we decided that for our 40th birthdays my husband and I would take our children to Disney World. So that was a few years ago now.
So our kids would have been 4 and 7. We thought that was the perfect age for our one and only big Disney World trip, which we then repeated. So we've been to Disney World again. So we went again a few years after that, delayed by the pandemic. And we took my mom with us that time and then I took the girls myself last summer as well. So we've had three trips to Disney World and in between we've gone to Disneyland Paris with the girls a couple of times as well. So that's my kind of Disney Parks experience. And the girls have grown up watching Disney films as well. My husband didn't. So it's taken him. No, it's taken him longer to get into the Disney spirit. He's probably still not quite as into it as the rest of us. He just didn't grow up watching Disney films or shows or anything. So he enjoys it. But he's definitely not as big a Disney fan as the rest the of. Of us.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it is funny though, how that sort of crosses, you know, geographical divides, right? I mean, growing up with, you know, particularly the, the 90s, the best, the best time in, in Disney animation history, in my humble opinion. You know, sort of seeing all those great, those great movies come out.
[00:05:25] Speaker C: You're not so humble opinion. You don't have a humble opinion.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Fair, fair, fair. I'll admit it.
But yeah, I feel like it's, it's, it's quite amazing how that really traverses, you know, geographic boundaries and, you know, folks all the way over in the UK watching the same movies as us, particularly where, you know, where the English language is spoken, but even in countries over in Europe where English is not the primary language and everything's, you know, dubbed into, into pretty much every language. So pretty cool. I got to, I got to ask, how did you convince your husband to get on a Disney cruise? Well, actually, let me start with how did you decide you wanted to go on a Disney Cru cruise first?
And then how did you convince your husband that this was a vacation since he's not all in on Disney like you are?
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Well, it was actually for him because while he might not love Disney, he loves boats.
And the whole trip, actually it was a big trip and the cruise was just part of it, but it was a celebration. He was doing a degree alongside his work for the last few years and he graduated in December. And we'd been talking about what trip he'd like to take to the celebrate. And he's always fancied the idea of cruising. And I've not been keen. I get very motion sick.
But he grew up like his parents had a yacht growing up and he loved boating. And since they've become older, they've moved from sailing their own yacht to going on cruises. So it's something he'd been quite keen on. So it was compromised, really. I said I would try it if it was a Disney cruise.
So that's how we ended up going on the Disney cruise.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Oh, that's awesome. Now tell us, like, what was the. This obviously was over in the States. What was the entirety of the trip? Like, what was the entirety of the itinerary? Because you said it was. This was just part of one trip.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Well, we started in Iceland and then moved over to the States.
I mean, this is a bit of a sidebar, but when we were looking at. So we booked the cruise first and we Booked that because just the dates work, the price wasn't too bad. We quite like the idea of that time of year.
And it was right in the middle of our Easter holidays. We get the first two weeks of April off. And that was sort of Wednesday to Sunday in the first week. And then much later, months later, we were looking at flights and they were awful. They were £1,000 per person to go over that Easter break. And then we realized we could fly Icelandair and go indirect.
I mean, to be honest, other indirect. They were really expensive. But for some reason Iceland Air were a bit cheaper. They're kind of a no frills airline. They don't give you any food. But what they do let you do is stop over in Iceland for up to seven days. And I've discovered since we met a few people on the plane, North Americans coming the other way who were breaking up their journey by stopping in Iceland as well. So I think it's quite, it's maybe more common than I realized to break up North America to Europe journey by having a little break there and having a few days in Iceland. So we had a couple of days in Iceland on the way we landed.
I mean we definitely were not going to be landing the day off the cruise. In fact, I didn't even trust this landing the day before because if there'd been an issue we wouldn't have had time to get another plane. So we landed two days before the cruise and then after the cruise finished, we had three nights at Port Orleans, French Quarter just doing a resort only stay. So.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Oh, fantastic.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Bit of a mix of things, but the cruise was the biggest part of it.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, fantastic. That sounds like a great, I mean a great trip, a great holiday. I honestly think if you're traveling international to a cruise, whether that's a Disney cruise or on another line.
Yeah, not even the day before. Like two days before I think is the safe bet because as you mentioned, you know, for us getting even across country. Right. We have a limited number of flights to get from the Seattle area to Florida, but we have a couple of options. In the worst case scenario we can take a red eye. Like that's sort of our last ditch effort if we, you know, missed an earlier flight or you know, a morning or afternoon flight. So, you know, there, there are still options, but if you're traveling internationally, it's a much longer flight. You only have so many options on certain airlines. And yeah, I think the two days before is, is the right.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: Well and if, if anything happens with your luggage, you Want the extra time nationally to make sure that there's an opportunity for it to catch up with you.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: So.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I always forget the luggage option, the L issue, because, I mean, we know we have a hats off if.
[00:09:56] Speaker C: Hats off if you're able to travel, you know, internationally for a cruise with.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: A carry on only for a cruise where you need clothes for Iceland and the Bahamas.
Same trip. Yeah, I mean, that was a struggle, just even with old luggage. I could not have done that. Just.
[00:10:12] Speaker C: That must be why they make those pants that convert to shorts there.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Well, I mean, we have our friend, our friend Ed Brian, remember who, who his luggage did not make it to New Orleans for time for him to sail on the Disney one. Was that the wonder of the magic a few years ago? Anyway, yeah, it was just one of those rough situations where you, you know, sail without extra clothes and have to buy everything at this various stops. So not, not a great option or on board and, you know, Disney might help you out a little bit. But anyway, let's. Let's chat about your cruise, Anna. What, what itinerary did you choose? What ship did you choose as well? And was it really based on, you know, dates, or did you have a particular ship or itinerary in mind when you decided to book a Disney cruise?
[00:11:01] Speaker B: I was casting my mind back to this because we booked it at the end of 2023. And I was thinking, why, why did we pick this timing? Definitely because he graduated in the December. We thought going away over our Easter break was a good time. And so once you start to narrow it down, I didn't want to go on too long an itinerary the first time because I didn't know how I would cope with my motion sickness. We thought three would be not quite enough, so four seems like a good option.
We'd heard lots of people say they loved the fantasy, which was doing four nights out of Port Canaveral. And this one particularly appealed because it went to Castaway Quay and Lookout Quay. So, you know, obviously we've never done either of them, but the idea of getting to do them both on the same cruise was really appealing. So I think it was all those things together.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's a perfect decision, I think. You know, we always tell people, like, you know, if you're worried about motion sickness, choose a shorter cruise. Of course, you can't go wrong if you choose a cruise that's going to stop at Castaway or Lookout. Even better if you can do a duo dip and hit Both. I mean it's, that's an incredible itinerary to, to get to do. I am, I am also going to give you kudos for choosing a Bahamian itinerary for someone who is motion sick and or gets motion sick because like we try to tell people like your, your best bet of course outside of hurricane season your best bet for smooth seas is going to be Bahamas or Caribbean out of Florida. Like that's where you're gonna. The Atlantic tends to be the calmest outside of hurricane season.
You don't wanna do a transatlantic, you don't wanna do a trans Pacific and you probably don't even wanna do a Pacific coast cruise to be perfectly honest. Cause those are where the seas are rougher. So if you're trying it out and you're someone who has, you know, gets some oce, that's your best option for sort of the trying it out. Three night, four night, you know, what have you. So fantastic decision making there.
So let's, let's talk about the pre booking process. You're brand new cruiser had never cruised on Disney Cruise Line before. So you are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to booking stuff. But you're going to cast away and look out. I'm curious, did you even you know, decide to book any excursions at either of those places? No. Yeah.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: No, not at all. Because it was our first time. We knew that would be enough of a novelty just to be on those beaches and just to see what there was there. So we, we knew we weren't going to book anything and we didn't book anything on the ship at all other than the princess gathering.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Oh nice.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: Yeah, we didn't do anything else.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Now how remind me, how old are your girls?
How old are they now? Because that's you cruised just a couple weeks ago. So how old are they?
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Yeah, they're 13 and 10 and they both do like, you know, they're not going to be dressing up like the princesses now but they do still like meeting them. They still really like meeting characters generally.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Oh, I love that. Yeah. So that's perfect. The royal gathering. The great thing about the royal gathering booking is one, it's free and two, everybody is on equal footing for booking. You book that at 30 days prior to your cruise at midnight eastern.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: So it's a 4am for us.
The clocks have changed in one country and not in the other country.
So my husband and I set our alarms with the idea that he would do the princess gathering and I would do all the checking and he definitely had the better go of it because he was over in seconds. He turned it to me and said, C day, quarter past 10. And I was like, yeah, that'd be great. And he got it. And then there was loads of people in the group going, we didn't get the Princess Gathering. And I don't know how he managed to get it. He had multiple choices. He must just have bit at the right time.
And God love him, he did stay awake with me while I sat for approximately an hour and a half trying to, at four in the morning trying.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: To upload all the stuff.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Oh my God, it was awful. Like there were so many people chatting in the Facebook group at the same time. And I think we all agreed to complain to Disney as well because an hour and a half of the Circle of Doom constantly going round and round.
[00:15:07] Speaker C: Did you ever. So it's interesting. Did you ever think like, ah, we'll just do it in the morning and deal with whatever comes, you know, like.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: So by that point, so we started to think we should have done that.
However, by then we were wide awake at 5 in the morning. Right. Once you've been working at it, going back to sleep. Yes.
So we thought, you know, let's just stay now. I don't think it made that much of a difference time wise. We got 1245 and I know that other people who were up at the same time as us got kind of 11 15.
But I know that when I woke up the next morning and had a look online, we could still have got 1:15. So it wouldn't have been that different.
Yeah.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: I think unfortunately Disney, it, as we talk about all the time, just does not have, you know, the, the websites are not great. The capacity is always rough, especially if multiple cruises are checking in on the same day. Then you know, they just don't have the bandwidth to deal with it.
And it's really unfortunate because it makes that experience so, so bad. But the other thing that I want to point out though, for folks listening is if you want the Royal Gathering, you need to be doing that separate from the, separate from the check in process. It happens at the exact same time. But exactly what you did, divide and conquer with yourself and your husband. That is the way to do it. Or to just do the Royal Gathering first and then go and do your check in. If it's only one, if there's only one adult that can do the, the whole thing. If you really want the Royal Gathering, do that first. And I think the reason why often people miss out on that sign up is because they're doing the check in and then they go do the royal gathering and it's all, it's all gone.
The other tip is that often people sign up and then drop it later. And there are also usually more spaces available on board, but you need to, you know, try and make that reservation either through the app or through guest services, like immediately when you get there because those do those experiences because they're free, they do fill up.
And the other tip is you will be able to see the princesses at other times. You just won't be able to see them all like three of or four of them at once. And so that's the benefit of the royal gathering is you get, you're in one line and you get to see three or four princesses and get your picture taken with each of them or get autographs or get a hug, whatever you want out of that character experience. You get to sort of knock them all out at once. And that can be a big benefit just time wise because the cues for characters, as we've noticed over the years, have gotten longer than they used to be. Now they're not like in the parks, right? You're not going to wait an hour for Anna and Elsa, like you light in the parks, but you, you may have to wait, you know, 30 minutes for some of the characters on board. So yeah, definitely a smart divide and conquer plan for the royal gathering. Well, and, and I have to tell you, I think your, your strategy for not booking other things on board is the right strategy for first time cruiser. There's so much to do on the ship.
I always feel bad when people are stressing about, oh, I didn't get the string tasting or I didn't get this adult dining. I'm like, there's so on board.
You don't need any of those things that you have to pay extra for.
You're going to want to experience main dining. You're going to want to experience all the, you know, trivias and game shows and theater shows and all that stuff. So anyway, I'm, I'm curious.
[00:18:40] Speaker C: Did you, when you got on board, did you decide to try and book anything like Apollo or, you know, anything like that?
[00:18:45] Speaker B: No. We knew, we knew we weren't going to. We didn't try. I didn't even look when our opening came for I can't remember how far out it was. Was it 75 days, something like that? For first timers, we didn't even look. Didn't Even log on because we knew the only thing we were booking was the princess gathering.
[00:19:02] Speaker D: Yep, yep.
[00:19:03] Speaker C: And when you got on board, you didn't, you didn't try to go looking for anything at all.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: There was nothing we wanted to do. I mean, I think also we really wanted to all experience it all together this first time. So, I mean, you probably go on to ask about the kids clubs. We didn't even look at them. The kids didn't go. We didn't go to the open day. Oh my gosh, it's such a short cruise. It's not just a short cruise. It's that the two port days we had were days where we knew we'd be off the ship for quite a long time.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: You know, you might just pop off and pop back on again. We knew we had one real full day and then a little bit of time that first day and that was it. So we just wanted to do everything all together. So they didn't go to the kids club? Partly. Also they were concerned they wouldn't at the same one because they're 13 and 10 and we probably could have, you.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: Could have aged up the 10 year old to end. We could have asked.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: I know it was a. I'm pretty sure people said it was a full cruise. So we may or may not have had luck with that.
But we wanted to spend our time pretty much altogether. We sometimes split off two and two sometimes actually, sometimes adults, sometimes children, mainly our children going off exploring while we sat on the veranda.
But we did sometimes split up one adult and one child for, you know, briefly. But I don't think we would have wanted to commit to a significant period of time separately when we were all spending time together that first time.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: Yeah, well, like I said, I think that's a great decision, particularly for a first time cruise. And when you're coming all the way, coming all the way over, you really want to maximize your time doing a whole bunch of different activities on board. Well, let's dive in and talk about the embarkation process. You obviously were sailing out of Port Canaveral.
Where were you staying before the cruise?
[00:20:51] Speaker B: The night immediately before, we stayed in Cocoa Beach. We'd landed so late on the Monday night that we just stayed in an airport hotel, you know, kind of 10 minutes from the airport for that one night, did a few different things on the Tuesday and then stayed in Cocoa beach on the Tuesday night so that we were quite close on the Wednesday morning.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Did you take a hotel shuttle to the port or did you take a Uber Lyft.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: We hired a car for the whole time.
We really like driving in the States. It's so much easier than any other country because the roads are massive, the car are massive.
Just feels really straightforward. We priced out lots of different options because we were moving around a lot. We had this airport hotel and then we were going to Cocoa beach and we wanted to go shopping in between time.
The girls wanted to go and find crumble cookies that day. So we were going to have to source one of those. We knew they'd want to go to a Target.
We needed to get over there.
And then we had the cruise and then we knew afterwards we were going to Disney World and we could use their transport. But we were also doing a few. We were going to be doing mini golf and Blizzard beach and horse riding and we could use Disney transport. But also having a car might make it a little bit easier. So we actually just hired a car for the whole time we were over. And I separately priced up all the different things that we could do and it was no more expensive and it was just. Well, it was meant to be more convenient. The one thing that was not that convenient was the parking at Port Canaveral. That actually.
That threw a spanner in the works and nearly derailed us slightly. But everything else about having the car did make things easier.
[00:22:24] Speaker C: What happened with the parking?
[00:22:25] Speaker B: We didn't realize the card that I had been using to pay. So I have a bank account that has a card attached to it that when you use it in other countries, you don't pay any commission on the money. It just automatically.
[00:22:39] Speaker C: Right, no foreign transactions.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: Yes, Whatever is the best rate that day. That's what you pay.
We always use this on holiday and I've never had any issues. And then we went to put it in the machine at the parking in. It kept saying declined and didn't have another card. I mean, I had other cards that had.
That would have a fee.
We couldn't work out. And we probably had also queued. I don't think we had really anticipated. We knew we'd only be 10 minutes from where we were staying in Cocoa beach to the cruise terminal and we'd, you know, everyone says don't arrive early, don't arrive early, don't arrive early. So we won't arrive early. So we maybe left our hotel, I don't know, 20 minutes before we thought we wanted to get there.
And then we sat for about 15 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes maybe in a queue to get into the parking garage.
And then we Walked into the day.
[00:23:36] Speaker C: Say that again. When did you get to the terminal for the parking?
[00:23:38] Speaker B: So I'm trying to think. We got. We must have. We got there before our porch arrival time. So I think we. Our port arrival time was 12:45.
And I think we were probably aiming to get to the parking garage for maybe just a bit after 12:30, thinking it'll take time to park and then walk across the road. But we actually, because we didn't realize there'd be a queue to get into the parking garage. It was probably about 15 minutes sitting in the car and the cars moving.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Forward, just waiting for the line just.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: To get into that. And then we blocked everybody by not being able to pay.
[00:24:12] Speaker C: This is. You weren't at the Disney Terminal for this, right? You were at the.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: It was right opposite. So we were. Terminal 8 was where we went from. It's the parking garage that's right opposite.
And so there's like the three bits that you can take your car. So the lady couldn't work out why our car wouldn't work. And she was clearly quite harassed, this lady on her own trying to maneuver everybody and she said, maybe it's the machine. So she got everybody to back up. So we moved.
Mortifying. So we could go to a different machine.
No, it was not a different machine. And so then we had to dig around in my bag to find this extra card that we hadn't been using on holiday because you do pay a foreign transaction fee. And then eventually we got. And we were so flustered by this point, but thank God we'd all gone in the car. What we thought about doing initially was my husband was driving that day and he was going to drop me and the girls in the luggage at the drop off and just go park himself.
He. He didn't have any cards handy. We only had my cards.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Oh my God.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: So had he done that, it would have been a complete nightmare.
Yeah, yeah, I was beside him. So we just grabbed my normal credit card and paid with that and then we were able to get through. But we were all quite stressed by that point. Particularly we were not like our happy Disney selves. And so this is after our port arrival time by this point probably only about 10 to 12, 10 to 1, rather maybe 10 to 5 to 1. So we quickly parked and got over and actually, you know, it worked out really well because when we got down, we gave our luggage to the guy we went over. They asked our saying, well, you know, everyone had already gone in that line, right. So they have the one O', clock, people queuing up in their line. We just got to go straight through. And then there was nobody waiting to check our passwords, so we just walked straight up to a counter, straight around the corner, put our luggage on up through the hall. No time to stop because there's nobody. Everyone's just walking on straight, straight through. We barely had time to stop and take a picture in front of the Mickey Tunnel.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: But at least we weren't holding anyone up because there was nobody there. Straight through and straight on. So I'm not sure, like somebody had said in advance on the cruise ship, we should allow maybe about 30 minutes from your port arrival time to when you get on the boat. But even with our massive issue, it was much less than that. It was literally the time it took to walk and people to briefly check things, so it didn't end up being a problem. But you know when you're just, you're flustered and you're just other people up and it was a horrible way to start it, but it probably. At least then we got to get through quite quickly.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and listen, it's a good cautionary tale to folks who are coming from abroad that, that there can be issues with the credit cards. I mean, we've had issues in. When we've used our American credit cards in other countries and it's just something to remember, like having more than one card option is probably a good thing, even if that means you're going to have to pay that foreign transaction fee.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Well, and we discovered afterwards what it was, because when I was able to then get access to the Internet and the message came through on my phone saying what had gone wrong, there's something you have to enable within the app, a function of the type of machine I was obviously putting, which to me didn't seem any different to any other one. But actually I did remember that we'd had the same issue. I think it was 2022 when we were over, we were in Walmart. We had the same issue there with my card and actually we had my mum with us there, so she just paid with her card and we just transferred money to her.
But thinking back, it had been the same issue and I'd had to enable something to be able to use it in that type of machine. But it was the only time we had an issue with it this holiday.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: So funny. Oh, my goodness. But like I said. Yeah, but you know, it, it does color, though, you know, that first day, because you just aren't in your. Like you said, you're you're sort of out of sorts, you're sort of flustered when you're arriving. Um, I will say that, you know, your experience as far as like going right through and right in I think is actually pretty, pretty typical At Port Canaveral. You, you know, there are occasions where you might have to wait 30 minutes, but I think generally speaking, unless you're at the, the mo. The earliest port arrival times oftentime really, you know, very little weight except for maybe just going through that check in queue, you, if you have people in front of you. But if you, if you end up showing up a little bit after your port arrival time, you, you actually tend to do really well as far as sort of flying through the lines and getting on board. Now we've got to ask about.
[00:28:38] Speaker C: Actually can I just go back? I just want to emphasize one, one thing here. The, the using a rental car instead of transportation.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:28:45] Speaker C: Such a good point to put on this. Like everybody, everyone do the math on some of this sometimes because I have found it can be cheaper to rent the car and park it at the port than dealing with Disney transportation at times or dealing with a hard service. And, and, and even if it's like, even if it's less expensive, I think the point I would also highlight is you have a lot more flexibility on either end of your cruise. So like I've looked at it from the standpoint of well, we're going to land at mco, we're going to take an Uber to Disney World, then I got to get, get the car out to the port, then the car back and then what are we doing with our luggage if we're sticking around, you know, for, just for the day before our flight and you know, we want to go to Disney Springs, you know, it's, it's, it is sometimes way more convenient to have that car available. And maybe the incremental or slightly higher cost of that as opposed to taking some of these other transportation options is worth it. And for the Disney transportation, I'll just highlight, you know, remember they're going to take you right back to the airport. Airport, right. More than likely. Or to a resort hotel if you're looking to get around the resort or you want to go from the airport over to the parks for the day or Disney Springs. Like again, there's going to be more costs. So just do the math. I fully support sometimes the hiring the car is the better.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: We had also to eat, you know, we had four large suitcases and four rucksacks that were Quite full as well. So just the idea of having. So we'd have had multiple Uber to go to all these different places the girls wanted to go to. So.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:11] Speaker C: And then you're not taking the least expensive. You're not taking the least expensive Uber. Right. You got to take the big one.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Right. The ex sale and then.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: Well, and I understand lifting the luggage in and out.
Yeah, well.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: And you got to go to Target when you're in the States. Right? I mean, yes.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: I think also we needed somewhere to leave our winter coats that we'd brought for Iceland, our woolies.
And we also. This might have been a questionable choice choice in the Florida sunshine, but we also left the bag of dirty laundry that we'd accumulated so far in the boot of the car as well. I slightly regretted that when I got back, but we didn't see any point in taking that on the ship with us. So that and all our coats we left in the car too. And it just meant we knew that it wouldn't take up quite as much space in the fairly small room as well.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. That's hilarious. I love that you went to Target, though. I love that you had, like, certain American stores. You wanted the girls.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: I mean, we were lucky to get away with not going to the Walmart on 192 in Orlando because normally my children insist on that.
Yes. They have particular foods they like getting from it and they know where it is in the shop. And we didn't. We weren't over that side this time. I don't think we went to Walmart at all. But we did go to Target.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: That's hilarious. That's too funny. But. And you're comfortable driving on the other side of the road, obviously.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I think we're one of the few countries that drive on the left. So I mean, whenever we go anywhere.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Else, we're just right. When you travel to mainland, you're out Europe, you have to drive on.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Although, to be honest, I mean, I've probably been to America more times than I've been to mainland Europe for the same number of times. So we. And we've both. We've been, you know, coming over and hiring cars for quite a long time. So I feel quite happy.
[00:31:54] Speaker C: Sam will not let me drive a car in. In the uk.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: So, yeah, I don't. I'm afraid. I'm afraid of him driving on the. The wrong side of the road.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: I just don't think you do. I don't think you even think about it because you're on the other side of the car as well. But we've actually taken. We've taken our car to France as well.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: That's probably harder.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: And that. Yes, that. Well, I mean, we still never have driven on the wrong side of the road, but it takes a bit more adjusting because you're still on the same side of the car as usual. Right. Whereas I think when you're on the other side of the car, it makes sense to drive on the other side of the road.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Right. No, that absolutely does make sense. Well, let's jump into.
You are embarking on the beautiful Disney fantasy. You walk into that beautiful atrium, there's some folks that announce your family name and some folks clapping for you. Tell us about that moment. Was it a magical moment? Was it a meh moment or were you just too overwhelmed?
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Yeah, we were still stressed, a little bit fraught. So that maybe wasn't the magical moment we did. I mean, it was lovely. When you walk in and you see it in real life, that is amazing. We were still on edge from the debacle at the car park. I think we made the wrong lunch choice as well. So we didn't come, we didn't calm down quickly. We had the madness of cabanas right after we got on the ship. Because by the time we got on the ship, it was about, gosh, what time would it have been by then? Just after 1 o'.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: Clock.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: By the time we were in the atrium and we were hungry.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and the faster option is always going to be cabanas. But I still, I still stand by, I stand by the. The adage that the faster option is not relaxing and so that, that sit down lunch, even though it will take a chunk of.
That's the best way to start.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Oh, by the time we found a table, I'm not sure it was the faster off, given the royal palace on, say, palace, not royal court. Royal.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: I never remember which one. I'll tell you in a second because I'll look it up on the Internet.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: I think it's Royal Palace.
Yeah. So it was right there. I think if we just walked in and got a table right, then that probably would have been quicker. But instead we had to go all the way up to deck 11. I think we decided to climb the stairs as well because we wanted to see it. This is the way we justified all the eating was we just took the stairs almost all the time.
So it wasn't too bad getting food, but finding a table, we must have spent 10 minutes circling around just trying to find a table because it was quite windy that day. We did go outside initially, but to be like, at one point the food just went sliding across the table because it was so windy.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: And then we needed to come inside and find a table inside. So that did take one. Relaxing. It was probably the busiest. Saw cabanas while we were on the cruise.
Yeah, I think in future I would take your advice and go for the sit down.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it's Royal Court. I did just look it up. Royal Disney Fantasy. Royal palace on the Disney Dream. It's. You know, I don't really understand why they gave them different names because their theming is basically the same and. And the menus are exactly the same.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: So to me, other restaurants, they kept the names. I don't know why they had to make it confusing, but I know know.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: It's just. Yeah, they just, they just wanted to. Well, I'd love to talk about Lookout Key and Castaway Key first. Where did you. Well, which one did you stop at first?
[00:35:11] Speaker B: So Lookout. So we had a day at sea, then Lookout, then Castaway.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: All right, well, let's talk about.
Let's talk about Lookout first.
Obviously this is your first experience on a Disney private island. I'd love to know what you guys got up to, what you thought of the island.
Did you have any concerns about the pier? All of the things.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know how to say that. I said this sort of on the previous podcast I was on before about just a Disney World trip. And I don't know how to say this without it sounding. I think it got. I don't know if it got taken the wrong way, but we walk a lot more over here because it's not hot. It's never too hot to walk and we have good, really good public transport and things are set up for walking.
We couldn't understand why people had said this was a long walk. Even my children who complain about taking the dog for a walk were like, why do people going on about the length of this period year? I suspect if you were doing it in July, it would be completely different because actually we've never. We've never been to. I actually don't think I've ever been to the States at all in April, any part of the States. And we were, we were amazed by how amazing the weather was. We normally go in July and I can imagine if you were doing that walk in July, it would be a completely different situation.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: Especially at the end of the day, like when you're walking back after you just spent all the whole day out in the sun. I think that's where the issue really exists. But I, I agree with you. I mean I think in. In Nice we. If you get a breeze going like it's. It's not a long walk. From my perspective. It's not a long walk. It's longer than it cast Away.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: That's the thing. I wonder if it is because we hadn't done Castaway yet and I didn't really have. You can watch some videos but you still can't really judge the difference. I think for people who have. Who are used to Castaway that I can see then why it's not just that it's longer, it's that it's plain and there's nothing happening really on the. On the pier that you're walking on. But it didn't feel a long walk. But it was beautiful when you. It was really sunny with a bit of a breeze. So perfect for doing the walk.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Now what did you guys think of the. The beach, the activities, the, you know, the food. I'd love to hear, you know, your sort of overall impressions of Lookout Cay.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: The beach was amazing. We sat in. I mean we found seats really easily.
We found seats really easily on both beaches. But look out. We were just behind the cultural center.
Before you go down onto the beach. That sort of bit before the June. Before you go down onto the beach. And we were able to grab some chairs there. I think there's just like maybe two. We knew we wouldn't really be sitting on them. So I think there was maybe. I know this is a thing that you have about getting.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: We both, we both get crazy about this. You're so right. Anna. Brian and I are like why to be. Why does a family of four grab four lounge chairs? You're not using.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: We're not going to be using four lane chairs.
One of my children in particular doesn't ever sit still. So we were not going to be using 4L shirts. I think we put our stuff on two and then we were down. That sand is just.
Never experienced anything like that. That was absolutely amazing. It was so soft.
We found it a little bit cold when we first got in the water. Our only experience of swimming in the sea that's not, you know, paddling off the coast of Scotland, which obviously is just always cold of swimming in the sea had been off Anna Maria island on the west coast of Florida in the summer, which had been like going into a bath. It was not like Going into a bath, it was definitely colder than that, but you got used to it quite quickly. And it was beautiful. We absolutely loved it. So we spent quite a lot of time just swimming, all of us out in the water.
And then the sand just was amazing as well.
It's a beautiful beach.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: Yeah, we love that beach. It's just. And I feel like the potential there is just incredible. The foliage kind of fills in more. It'll be even more beautiful. It's already beautiful, but I feel like it'll be even more beautiful as the palm trees grow, as it, you know, sort of matures in. In all of its. In all of its greenery.
Did you. Did you enjoy any of the cultural experiences? Did you check out the. The junk. A new sort of parade that happens. I think that's always fun. Or. Or check out any of the other.
[00:39:26] Speaker B: We missed the one that was around about lunchtime. Is it 12 o'? Clock? Maybe it's on it. But we were over getting food, which took a lot longer than we expected.
But we managed to catch the one. I think it was maybe 2:00'. Clock.
I was convinced, you know, I was convincing my family we had to do this. So we did see the jump canoe. That was fantastic. We had a little look at the shops. I meant to go back and I didn't. There was a lady selling jewelry that she'd made. I think it's from.
From like the sand and some of the seashells. Oh, it was. It was amazing. Her jewelry was absolutely fantastic. And if I go back, I'm going to make sure I get a chance to buy some of that, because the different artists they had there, the different things they were selling was fantastic. So I really like that too.
We were mainly just in the sea. Other than that, though, other than seeing the junk canoe, we were mainly just swimming and waiting a while to get lunch.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: Yes. Yes.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: Oh, sorry. I was going to say that's the thing about Lucace is it all feels a little bit further apart. It has to be. It all felt quite close together. Whereas at Lucace, it's a little bit. So if you wanted an ice cream. Cream. I went over with one of my children to get ice creams and the other two had said what they wanted. Us walking back. We had to walk really quickly back.
[00:40:39] Speaker A: Right. So it doesn't melt all over your head.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: They were. They were melting. And the man stopped me and was wanting to find out, like, where I'd got them from. Could I give him directions? And I've got ice cream literally down My hands as I was trying to carry all these cones back to my husband and my daughter, who were still at the sea. And luckily, my other daughter was behind me with just her cone, and she was like, it's okay. I'll tell you. As I ran across the beach with these other cones, she gave him directions, but, I mean, they were. They were just dripping down my hands. Whereas I think it's a lot. We're a lot closer to everything when we were at Castaway, So it was just a slightly different experience. But it's a beautiful, beautiful island. I would. I would love to go back.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I wonder what you guys thought of the food, other than obviously there being a longer wait for the food. Did you like the food? Did you think the quality and variety was kind of good?
[00:41:30] Speaker B: We really like the food, but they have to do something about the signs.
[00:41:35] Speaker A: They still have the signs.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: Why do they have us? Like, why have they got this sign saying burgers here, fish here, this other thing here? Why did they do that? Because everybody was lined up behind the thing they wanted. And then every so often, these cast members are coming around and saying, oh, you know, you can get anything at any station. No, no, I don't know that. There's nothing to tell me that.
We were definitely not the only.
Who thought that everyone around us was thinking the same that they had. So my husband and one of my children had lined up in one line, and I was in the line with the other child because we wanted different things. I'm vegetarian, so I was going to really probably just be looking for something like a vegetarian burger.
And my youngest and my husband had gone to line up for, maybe.
I can't remember, some sort of barbecued meat or something.
We did not know that you could get everything at every window. And so there was other people as well, families that had separated rated out to go to the correct window. So I'm not sure. I don't know why they've not changed that.
Well, they're just taking the same thing completely.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and it's been. They've changed the way they've set up the food now several times. So, like, that's. The other thing is we're hearing inconsistencies from cruise to cruise about how the food is even set up. And so the signage sounds like it's completely, you know, wrong.
[00:42:58] Speaker C: Well, I want to shift us. I want to shift us over to Castaway.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:02] Speaker C: And I just maybe. I mean, what were your first impressions of Castaway? But also, I want to hear, how do you think it compared to Lookout?
[00:43:10] Speaker B: We spent a lot of time talking about this and trying to decide which is our favorite as well, because it's hard not to compare them when you're doing one one day after the other. And they're such similar kind of destinations. I think at Castaway, it's so convenient how close together everything is. And I don't really mean getting off the ship and getting to the beach. I just mean once you're there. We.
I've heard a few of your trip reports of people saying they found it difficult to find chairs, but we did not find that at all. There was chairs everywhere. We were right opposite. The first. I want to say cookies. Is that the other island? Is it cookies?
[00:43:43] Speaker C: No, cookies.
[00:43:44] Speaker B: Yeah, cookies.
[00:43:44] Speaker A: You got it.
[00:43:45] Speaker C: Cookies. Barbecue.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: We were right opposite.
We actually started with a couple of chairs and then there was three hammocks. So we chose to have a couple of hammocks. And the girls were always on those, or one or other of us was always on on those. And then there was like one or two of those little chairs on the ground we had beside that. We were right opposite where they have all the fresh fruit and the ice cream and all the food. The toilets were really nearby. So it was so convenient. Everything was so close together there. And I think. I suspect it was. That was one of the things that made us all like it so much. I think for the kids having the hammocks as well, the beach is not as beautiful. I think obviously the sand is coarser. It's more like what probably most of us are used to.
The sea was actually colder as well, but I think also. So they did say that morning that it was quite rough and you could see the waves smashing against the kind of barrier out in the water. And I think that's one of the wonderful things with the beach at Lucca is you can just see the entire horizon in front of you. The sea just goes on and on. Whereas obviously at Castor Way, you lose something with having that barrier and not being able to see all the way out to sea. Because it was such a choppy day, there were still quite a lot of waves, even with the barrier. But it was lovely. But the beach itself, I think, is more beautiful at Lookout. But the convenience of the way they've set it up. We prefer to castaway.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: I 100% agree with you on all fronts. I feel like that everything is closer together. It's just easier at Castaway to get from point A to point B be and even just to get the ice cream without it melting all the way down your hands. So that's, that's a nice, that's a nice thing. But you don't have this beautiful, you don't have as beautiful a beach. You do have a beautiful beach, but not quite, quite as, quite as lovely.
[00:45:36] Speaker D: 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 My Path 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 own travel. My Path Unwinding Travel is an 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 client complimentary consultation to make your vacation even 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.
[00:46:34] Speaker A: Well, let's, let's jump back onto the ship. I'd love to hear, you know, some of the things you all got up to. You mentioned, you know, you really had a full day and a half, half to spend on the ship and you know, you spend it mostly together as a family. I'm curious what were some of like your favorite onboard activities? We'll get to dining and shows, but I want to hear about like sort of the other activities that you all got up to on board.
[00:46:59] Speaker B: So we did shuffleboard, which we really enjoyed and we did the mini golf. We like that too.
The girls thought they would really like the pools, but the reality is they are are children's soup with children who are much younger than them who are splashing about. They did not enjoy the pools particularly. They both did that little yellow slide.
But we kept measuring my 13 year old before we went because we knew that she was going to, I think it's 64 inches. She is almost 64 inches. We knew she was going to be nearly that height and she was just another the height But I don't think she liked being measured quite often. And they would say she was fine every time and up she went. But she obviously looked close to the height.
So they liked it, but they didn't love it.
The line was always really long for the aqueduct and that was something. My youngest. So my youngest is the one that likes planning with me. We're the ones who watch all the YouTube videos and plan things out and we had really wanted to do this and in the end we did it on the castaway key day when we got back on the ship, because we thought, well, some people will still be on the island. And still it's posted at 30 minutes and I think we waited 45 then. I wouldn't wait that long again. But it was really good fun.
So we did, we did manage to do that.
We did Midship detective.
I knew we were going to want to do that. So we did the. We did the. Which one did we do first? I think maybe on our C day, the four of us did the.
What's it called? Called Dalmatians.
And then on the castaway day. I think it was the castaway day. No, it was the one before Lookout Day. That was the night that they didn't have a show in the theater, but they were showing Snow white and my 13 year old really wanted to see it, so my husband said he would take her to that. And my youngest and I did the Muppets.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: That even the best one, the absolute best storyline.
[00:49:02] Speaker B: Yeah, she did tell them they need to do that one at some point as well.
Really enjoyed it, actually. One of the things so we really enjoyed. And then the girls enjoyed it too, together a little bit is going around and doing the pixie dust.
So we had. I mean, I know that not all first timers are going to do it up to the Fish Extender group, but I mean, I just saw us as a chance for more planning and organization. So I was all in on that.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: That's hilarious that you say that.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: Why would you not do that?
[00:49:34] Speaker A: I know. It's so much work though. I mean, it's, it's, it's really, it can be really fun. I, I like to just pixie dust and not do fish extenders anymore because the pixie dust is just like random acts of kindness. Right. But whereas Fish extender, you're planning and you're doing a more formal like gift exchange. But it's a lot of work to plan and coordinate.
[00:49:56] Speaker B: It is. And also our group changed very close to the debt cell, so they set the Groups up after the paid in full dates, but before.
So it would have been before the date they were closing as it was set up relatively late and we had joined a group. We were the last people. So there was groups of ten and groups of five. And I mean I'm not totally crazy. I chose a group of five partly also because I didn't have the luggage space for gifts for 10 people and taking the stuff back. So we had joined last in our group. So we'd taken down the details, we started to buy the things and then we went back to check at what we point just a few weeks before the cruise. And it was not all the same families. One of the families had changed, they'd moved to a different group. I think they'd maybe moved to a group of 10. And we had a new family who joined the group. So quick shuffling around of things and buying a few new bits as well. So again I did that with my youngest who really likes the planning and organization. And we did all the kind of labelling and making up of all the bags and we did quite a lot of the pixie dust bags. And so actually the first day on the ship, she's quite an early riser and my teenager isn't and we were still slightly jet lagged as well.
So I think I woke up about six that morning, maybe half five. Six. I couldn't get back to sleep. And then she Woke up about 7 by which time I'd showered and managed to not wake everybody else up. And so she and I just snuck out and we went to cabanas and had first breakfast and then we took a bunch of the pixie dust with us and explored the ship doing some pixie dusting and just, I don't know, looking at people's doors. We loved looking at the way people decorated their doors. We obviously had planned and decorated our door as well because it's another thing we could plan.
And you know, she loved that like some doors would have boards that you could write on, like questions and she you could leave notes for people. Some of them had, you know, take a pixie dust gift bag. She'd never done pin trading before. They've both got pins that they've got in Disney parks before, but they'd never done pin shading. But she saw these boards. So I ended up buying a pack in the gift shop of some pins for them to trade because she loved going around and looking at the boards and seeing if there's any she wanted to swap. So she and I spent quite a Lot of time. Both that first morning and the night Snow White was on, just going round and looking at the doors and exploring the ship as well.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: I love that. What a great. I mean, I love to do that myself, so.
Because I. When I go and, you know, gift magnets across the ship, that's usually what I. Pixie dust for people. I love getting to see different people's doors, getting to see how, you know, how other people's pixie dust. It's just really fun. It's just a fun way to really, like, explore the shipping and get some steps in. Right. For those of us who like to get. Who like to walk, I mean, we did.
[00:52:43] Speaker B: We did wonder. I think we were all a bit anxious in advance that we're going to be eating all this food and not moving very much. And we all did 15 to 20,000 steps a day.
I think on the beaches you're walking around quite a lot, swimming and things as well. But even on our ship day, we all did close to 20,000 steps.
[00:53:00] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. Well, I got to ask. Ask you about shows because, of course, that's the thing I love the most on Disney Cruise Line and on the Disney Fantasy. You have a really wonderful array of shows. You've got Frozen, you've got.
What is it? Believe. And you have.
Why am I blanking?
[00:53:19] Speaker B: Aladdin.
[00:53:20] Speaker A: Aladdin, that's right. Aladdin. Yeah. Did you go see. You mentioned you skipped Snow White. I personally tend to skip movies on the ship because I want to spend time exploring and doing other things, but I don't skip the theater shows. Did you hit all three theaters?
We did.
[00:53:35] Speaker B: We didn't necessarily think we were going to.
We'd all in advance said one or two things we really wanted to do on the ship and I said I really want to go to one of the shows. And my eldest is very into drama and she was very keen to do one of the shows as well. But we enjoyed Aladdin on the first night so much, we decided it was a priority to go to all the shows.
[00:53:54] Speaker A: Nice. And what'd you think overall? Did you enjoy all three of them?
[00:53:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we did enjoy all three of them. This is maybe good to shock you, but Frozen was nobody's favorite. We all really liked. Liked it.
Me and the girls liked Aladdin best and my husband liked Believe best.
[00:54:12] Speaker A: Of course your husband liked. It's always the men who like Believe because it's that father daughter storyline. Yeah.
[00:54:18] Speaker B: Yes. He's got two daughters. I suppose so. Yeah, he liked Believe best. We all like to laugh best to the extent where. When we started talking about cruises for the future, my daughter made me find out my eldest, which I. Other ships have Aladdin because she would like to see it again.
[00:54:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, that means I guess you're going on the Wish. Yeah.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: Or the fantasy again. Maybe.
[00:54:40] Speaker A: Or the fantasy again. Yeah. No Midship Detective Agency on the Wish. You got to go on. Only the Dream class has Midship Detective. We. We personally think that's a mistake. I think instead of the uncharted adventure, they should have put the Midship Detective Agency, or just an updated version of Midship Detective Agency on the. On the Wish class. But, you know, Disney doesn't always call me for advice and ask me what they should do. All right, well, the. The. The last biggest category that we always have to talk about is is food, because it is such an important part of, I think, any cruise. And I'm curious what you guys thought about the food. Obviously, that first day at Cabanas or that first afternoon at Cabanas was, you know, chaotic mess, and that's always what that chaotic mess lunch is. So I feel like that's not a good judge of what the food is like on board or the. Or the dining experiences like on board. But, you know, did you guys eat at Cabanas for, you know, like, breakfast and lunch? Did you eat pool deck food? And then of course, we got to talk about the dining rooms.
[00:55:38] Speaker B: Sadly, that was the only day we went for lunch. And so our only impression of it for lunch is that crazy first day because obviously two of the three days we were on the islands, and so we had the food at cookies and choo Choo. Is that. Yeah.
[00:55:51] Speaker A: Yep. Cookies and Tru. Choose.
[00:55:53] Speaker B: True.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:55:53] Speaker B: So two of the days we had that, and the other day we'd actually decided we were going to attempt the pool in the middle of the day, so we just had pool deck food. So on our sea day, so that was the only time we managed Cabana's lunch. And I suspect that my husband feels he missed out with that because he really enjoys a buffet and I think probably would have liked to have been there more often. We did go there for breakfast on. I'm trying to think, how often do we go. Two of our four days we went for breakfast, and then we did a breakfast at Royal Court in our castaway day, and then we went to our assigned.
I think it was Enchanted Garden. We went to her and assigned breakfast on our last morning as well. So we had a bit of a.
[00:56:37] Speaker A: Mix for breakfasts and what did you think about the. What did you think about the food quality for breakfast in particular, since you did sort of a mix of sit down dining and cabanas dining?
[00:56:51] Speaker B: We liked it all. We liked it all. We liked the buffet breakfast. There's so much, much choice and not everything's a hit, but you can try enough things that you're going to get some hits.
And then we really enjoyed the breakfast at Royal Court the last day. The breakfast at Enchanted Garden that there was so limited. They're trying to get you in and out so quickly. Obviously it was just like an extremely limited buffet and you're only allowed to pick your one thing. So I'm not sure we would do that in the future. Maybe we'd give cabanas a try.
They're all court. Breakfast was fantastic. So we did that on our castaway day and it was so relaxed. The food was brilliant. We really enjoyed the breakfast there. But our one regret is that we. We intended to do a room service breakfast and we didn't get around to that, so we never tried that.
[00:57:39] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and the room service breakfast, though, all you get is like continental breakfast. You don't. You can't get eggs and stuff unless you're sailing in concierge one bedroom or. Or nicer suite.
So for most people, I would say, you know, unless you are. If you're somebody who just likes pastries and toast and, you know, cereal for breakfast, then you know that room service breakfast is a great option. But if you're somebody who wants like eggs and bacon and sausage and things like that, you really got to go to either cabanas or to the dining room. Well, I gotta hear about, you know, your real dining experience, which of course happens in the three rotational dining restaurants. At dinner, you guys, of course, went to Enchanted Garden, Garden, Royal Court and Animator's Palette, and you would have had the Crush show, I'm guessing, at Animator's Palette. Yeah. And so I would love to hear what you thought about the food and then of course, what you thought about the show. In Animator's Palette, we couldn't really see the show.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: Our table was quite far from any of the screens, so we couldn't really see what was going on or hear what was going on. It was very loud.
We liked Animator's Pattern. In fact, the other three said it was their favorite restaurant. Restaurant, but it was so loud that we had no idea. I mean, I almost. The show could have not been going on, and I don't think I would have noticed, which is Maybe, you know, it's a bit of a shame, but I think, you know, you can say what your special request is in the thing. And I know you could ask to be closer to what's going on, but my husband's a little bit of an introvert and his main request for this cruise was not sitting with anyone else. So that was our request in our special requests. So, you know, you just. Then we got that. So you just then have to, I think, put up with wherever you end up with the room. So just within that room, it was, you know, not too far and not too close. We didn't really see what was happening.
So we had. Yeah, we had Royal Court the first night, then two nights in a row. Animators palette. And with the second of those being the pirate. Yeah, that was right. The second one being the pirate night. And then we had Enchanted Garden the last night.
Enchanted Garden I had been looking forward to because it's such a beautiful looking restaurant. Unfortunately we had the closest table to the entrance. So when you just walk in, there's obviously tables just either side right there with one of them being set even closer to the entrance. And that was where we were sitting. So it wasn't the kind of relaxing experience I thought it might be because we just had everybody coming in constantly through our dining.
So I, I don't know, I think probably that kind of thing can impact how you feel about the restaurant as well. But food we really liked, some things are better than others. We did tend to ask our servers what they would recommend when we weren't sure what to go for.
I, I'm vegetarian, so didn't have as many choices. My husband loved all, loved having all these choices. He really enjoyed the food and said it was better than he thought it would be in all the, the main dining rooms. I think when people say to you it's going to be like a kind of wedding food.
And he was saying maybe yes, but good residential food. And he really enjoyed a lot of his options and really like that the girls had the choice. They often had mostly the kids menu, even the 13 year old because she had Mac and cheese as her main meal every day.
[01:01:00] Speaker A: Oh, she's just like Nathan.
[01:01:02] Speaker B: That's her. It's her favorite thing. But they did, they did both often pick an appetizer from the adults.
[01:01:09] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[01:01:10] Speaker B: So we all have had the black truffle presets as animators because they like pasta and we all really enjoyed those. So yay.
[01:01:21] Speaker A: I'm putting another notch on the scoreboard for myself. By the way.
[01:01:25] Speaker B: Yeah, they were good. The girls both enjoyed them, too. And my youngest tried one of the seafood dishes as a starter as well. So she did always. She always went for the main from the kids as well, but they would go back and forth for the appetizer and the dessert between the two menus and then just have the kids menu. So I liked how much choice they had.
And it is a good way for kids to try things that they're not sure about, because she didn't need. None of them needed to eat three courses, which meant that if they couldn't finish something, it didn't really matter.
[01:01:53] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, you know, the one question we didn't ask you, which was part of the reason you went on this cruise, was your husband has a fascination with boats.
And I'm curious as to. Did this sort of increase that fascination? Did it satisfy? You know, did it. Check that box for him? Because being on a cruise ship is different than being on, like, a luxury yacht. It's a very different experience.
And it's not like being on a sailboat or catamaran or anything like that, but it is a. It is a boat. Well, ship.
[01:02:26] Speaker B: Although, interestingly, we did do a private catamaran cruise night before the cruise as well, in Cocoa beach, because I thought, just, what if this doesn't do that for him? What if that's not the ship experience, the boat experience he needs? So I booked us a sunset catamaran cruise in Cocoa beach the night before it. So he was going to get his boat experience from that. But, yes, it did. He really enjoyed it, probably of all of us, the girls, and I would say we really enjoyed it. We absolutely would love to go on another one, but we're still Parks people.
My husband would say he's more of a Disney Cruise Line person than a Disney Parks person.
[01:03:02] Speaker A: Yes. We're on Team Husband right now. Okay.
[01:03:07] Speaker B: He let me take the girls to Disney World on my own last summer, and he did come without him coming because he was finishing a degree while working.
It was literally like the final weeks of it, the final push, and I was like, just get out of your hair with the girls.
[01:03:20] Speaker A: Yeah, well.
[01:03:21] Speaker B: But he was okay with that. So he's not. He's not as big a Parks fan anyway. But he said he definitely is a cruise fan.
[01:03:28] Speaker C: Well, Anna, is there anything that you wanted to be sure to share about your sailing that you haven't had a chance to or that we haven't asked about?
[01:03:34] Speaker B: You know, I guess one of the things we've talked About. And it did come up in the cruise group as well, was. Was about the interactions with the different servers and staff.
I think that was part of what had excited me about the cruise, for the idea that you have these amazing interactions and these, you know, servers who trap your kids and chat and do little tricks. And there was none of that.
[01:04:01] Speaker A: No, that's a bad.
[01:04:02] Speaker B: And we had, like this. They were really good. They were really efficient. They always had our drinks ready, they always took our orders, they cleared the table.
Our room was always made up. All the people that we had were efficient. And I don't think that was the case for everyone because there was a lot of complaints in the cruise group afterwards. Although, again, I think maybe the fact that it was such a fool sailing was part of it, because our main impression of the servers was that they were really busy and really rushed. So we were like, I don't understand how people get to know their servers because they would be at the table for seconds and then they were gone. Just constantly moving and they did everything and we never had to wait for everything.
But the other side to that is that we didn't get to speak to them. I couldn't even remember their names now on the ship. And I was seeing it because they were there and gone so quickly that I barely saw. Whereas when we had the breakfast at Royal Court, there was not that many people in the room. When we were having breakfast, we had a fantastic interaction with the person who was serving us. And we were saying, maybe it's about the different person. But I think it was also just that we were the only person in his area. It was quite easy for him to stop and chat with us and take photos because he wasn't rushing around multiple tables. And I don't know if that is just the difference between really full. I don't. I mean, obviously, this is my only cruise experience. I don't know if it's the difference between a really full cruise and a quieter cruise or if there's any sort of change. And there may be shorter staff than they used to be, I don't know. But I got the sense that it wasn't just us and that people who'd done cruises before had found it quite a difference in experience.
[01:05:36] Speaker A: I think it's both. I honestly do think that. I don't know if they're. I mean, I get the impression that they are more strapped for staff than they have been in the past, and maybe that's because the fleet is bigger and continuing to grow. But I also think Fuller sailings in general. Like, when we've done, you know, a spring break sailing or Christmas sailing or like, ones that are. And yours was a spring break sailing in the US that's, you know, that time, the early April, really starting from sort of mid March through all of April, is kind of the, the typical spring break time, depending upon where in the, in the States.
And so, yeah, those, those sailings tend to be fuller and they do tend to have, you know, staff is a little bit stressed and a little bit less able to interact and, and, and, you know, some of the servers are really good at, like, doing that balance, and some are just like, I'm just trying to be efficient. I'm going to get, you know, good service to these folks, even if that doesn't mean I'm going to have this personal relationship. So that's. It's hard. I, I like you. I'd, you know, I would rather have that balance or, like, I love to have that interaction. But I also understand if they're just like, trying to do their job, I'm not going to keep them from doing their job right, because they've got like 12 or, you know, 12 people at one table and four people at another table and four people at another table. And, you know, I want to make sure that they, they're able to do that. So, yeah, it's hard, though. It's definitely, it's definitely a hard thing to, to balance. I'm curious you all are familiar with, you know, culture in the US because you, you know, have been over here a bunch of times, but did you, you know, have any, any.
Did you ask questions, like in your cruise Facebook group about, you know, the tipping situation or was that fair as to how that all works?
[01:07:28] Speaker B: I mean, we have been, I don't know how many times we've been over to the States. And also I've been. I had relatives that lived in Canada when I was younger, and so we would come over to North America and the States quite regularly.
So I think we felt comfortable with that.
We, you know, in terms of the actual, the prepaid gratitude. Well, the main gratuities, we just prepaid those through our travel agents because I did use a travel agent for this because it was the first time and I wanted to have somebody ask questions.
And we had read up and seen on multiple, you know, different videos and things about how much would be expected for to be the person who took our bags or, you know, any of the other things. We didn't do room service, but we actually didn't we didn't buy go to any bars or buy drinks in any bars or anything like that either. But we were aware of what the expectations would be.
[01:08:16] Speaker C: Well, and I think we've reached that time in the show where I need to hand you over to Sam for some arbitrary questions, some arbitrary rules and a dash of judgment are the round we as rapid fire. So Sam, take it away.
[01:08:28] Speaker A: All right, Anna, I'm going to ask you some Disney favorites and some Disney cruise line favorites. Your favorite ship is of course the Disney Fantasy. And you mentioned your favorite show was Aladdin. So I'm not going to ask you that question in rapid fire. But we're going to start with who's your favorite Disney character? And you can choose anything that Disney owns. I mean that can be Star wars, that can be the Simpsons or that can be of course classic Disney characters. But who, who's your favorite?
[01:08:53] Speaker B: Yeah, Winnie the Pooh.
Who maybe hasn't, I don't know, maybe always been, you know, email and character. Really.
[01:09:01] Speaker A: But Disney co opted Winnie the Pooh choice.
[01:09:05] Speaker B: So Winnie the Pooh, definitely.
[01:09:07] Speaker A: I love Winnie the Pooh. All right, what's your favorite Disney movie?
[01:09:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I have thought about this because I obviously listen to the show quite a lot and my favorite film has a different name in our country for some reason compared to the states. And I really don't know why that is. But in the UK it's Zootropolis. I believe it's Zootopia.
I don't know why. I don't know why. I do not know what the difference.
I don't know why they had to change it. I can't see this. It makes more sense for us being Zootropolis.
We don't use the word Metropolis.
[01:09:40] Speaker A: Metropolis? Yeah.
[01:09:41] Speaker B: What's the word we use in the uk? Well, I don't know.
Yeah, that's funny. But I would know. It's a Zootropolis.
[01:09:50] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we love Zootopia and it's one of our cruise traditions is watching Zootopia in our stateroom. In whatever Disney cruise ship we're on. We have to watch Zootopia, so. Or Zootropolis. I'm going to call it Zootropolis from now on. I kind of love that. All right, well, what is your favorite Disney song?
[01:10:10] Speaker B: It's actually from the same film, the Shakira song. Try. Yes, try anything.
[01:10:16] Speaker A: I love it. Love that. Great.
All right. What was your favorite onboard activity on the Disney Fantasy?
[01:10:23] Speaker B: Informal. I liked wandering around doing the fish extenders and the pixie dusting. But the Sort of formal activities. We did really enjoy the midship detective.
[01:10:33] Speaker A: Love it. Awesome. What was your favorite, your personal favorite? Rotational dining. Not the rest of the families. I heard it was you said they loved animators, but. But what was your favorite?
[01:10:43] Speaker B: I really don't know. I never came up with an answer because I loved Royal Court when we went for breakfast, but I didn't love it as much when we went for dinner.
[01:10:53] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. Yeah.
[01:10:54] Speaker B: Probably for dinner, I would say, I don't know. Probably animators as well. And particularly it was fun on pirates night.
[01:11:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Favorite space to relax on the ship.
[01:11:05] Speaker B: My veranda.
[01:11:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great one. All right, I gotta ask you a favorite, favorite food item. I need a sweet item. And then I'm going to ask you a savory item. I always start with the sweets because the savories are my favorite. So what was your. What was a favorite sweet item on board the ship? It could be a main dining. Could be cabanas, could be. Could be soft serve ice cream.
[01:11:25] Speaker B: Look at soft serve ice cream. I don't even like that. Over here we call it Mr. Whippy and it's mainly just vanilla and it gets sold in all these ice cream vans that go around their little sound on.
And I would never, ever have it. I don't even. I just don't particularly like it. I really liked the chocolate soft serve. That was absolutely my favorite thing.
[01:11:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I think Disney has like just a really good soft serve mix. I don't know why, like, I'm not that big on soft serve here either. But when I'm on a Disney Cruise line ship, I could go for either a swirl or the banana or the mango. And they have those. Oh, so good. Good. So good.
[01:12:05] Speaker B: All right. We didn't get mango, but I wish we had.
[01:12:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, it's really good. It's really good. I think, I think the. The banana might be my favorite. Brian likes it when they do banana and strawberry and they have a. You can do a banana strawberry swirl. But that. It's rare. It doesn't happen. So usually they, when they put banana out, they put banana and chocolate and then you can, you know, I don't like banana and chocolate together.
All right, what's a favorite savory item?
[01:12:29] Speaker B: I was thinking about this thing. I think this is going to sound like a really random thing, but I really liked the ome I had in Royal Court for breakfast.
[01:12:38] Speaker A: Oh, I love that.
[01:12:41] Speaker B: You know, because I could choose what went into it myself. I really like a fresh, nicely made omelette it was delicious.
[01:12:48] Speaker A: That's a great one. Honestly, you know, they like, for a lot of chefs, they test like their skills by testing how they, like, cook eggs. Because eggs, like, cooking eggs well can be a skill. And we know that because cabanas, scrambled eggs are the absolute worst. And so we know that you can ruin eggs. You absolutely can ruin eggs.
[01:13:05] Speaker B: Yes. It was very different even to the omelets that you get in cabanas. I mean, I didn't get one. I think we can. Can they make them for you in cabana? I don't know.
[01:13:13] Speaker A: I got. Yes, you can at the egg station. They'll make you. If you go to the egg station, but then you have to, you know, you have to order it and wait for it. But it, they will make you an omelette or they'll make you a scramble with whatever ingredients you want. But they tend to be a little, they make them real quick and so they tend to be kind of greasy, I find. Like they use too much of the oil. Yeah. All right, my last question of rapid fire, because I said, as I said, your favorite ship is the Disney fantasy. So my last question question is a bucket list cruise. Anna, if you could go anywhere on the world, anywhere in the world, and it was on a Disney cruise line ship and it doesn't have to be someplace that Disney cruise line currently goes, where would you sail?
[01:13:48] Speaker B: So it is somewhere Disney goes. But I would love to go on an Alaska. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I just don't know that it's ever going to be in the budget because now having had a veranda, I'm not sure I can ever not have a veranda. The difference, difference in price for a veranda room on an Alaskan sailing. And obviously we have to add on £3,000 maybe, I guess like $4,000 just for flights to come over. So it maybe is always just going to be a bucket list cruise, but that would be what I would love to do.
[01:14:20] Speaker A: Well, absolutely. We are very excited to sail our first time in Alaska this summer.
[01:14:26] Speaker B: It's a lot closer to you.
[01:14:27] Speaker A: It's a lot closer to us. It's funny. We always, like, think it's hilarious. We've never sailed to Alaska, even though we could sail literally to Alaska on any other cruise line right out of Seattle or, you know, only a few hour drive to Vancouver to sail on Disney, which is what we're doing.
But yeah, absolutely, A bucket list for sure. Well, Anna, thank you so much for joining us. We so appreciate having you on the show. We love of course having voices from, you know, non Americans and non Canadians because that's our typical guest of are usually mostly Americans. We get a, you know, we get Canadians more, more often. But it's always really fun to have somebody from over in the UK or from somebody over in mainland Europe tell us their their opinions and their views of Disney Cruise Line because it is definitely a different experience on a lot of fronts. So thank you so much for reaching out and thanks for being on the show.
[01:15:19] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. I've been really excited to think I'm going to get to relive the whole thing, so thank you.
[01:15:31] Speaker D: 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 alive, we have a live show now every week Monday nights, 5:30pm Pacific, 8:30pm p.m. 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 Podcasts. And if you leave us a written review, a five star written review, we will read it at the top of one of our main episodes. So please head over there and hit those five stars. Of course you can also help support the show by supporting our fabulous show sponsor, My Path Unwinding Travel. If you want to book your next Disney vacation, head over to mypathunwinding.com dc 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 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. 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 just head over to the website or patreon.com DCLDUO also has a way for you to sign up for our substack newsletter that we're hoping to start really pumping out monthly here at least, and a few blog articles that we've written. So DCLDUO.com is the best way to connect with us. You can also, of course, email us@info dclduo.com or reach out to us on our voicemail line at 402-413-5590. That's 402-413-5590. The DCL duo Podcast is not affiliated with Disney Cruise Line, the Disney Company, or the Disney Family of theme parks. The views expressed on the show are solely those of the individuals on the podcast and in no way reflect the views the Disney Company or Disney Cruise Line. If you have questions about a Disney Cruise or Disney Vacation, please contact the great folks over at MyPath unwinding travel or Disney directly or your own travel agent. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time for another fabulous adventure with the DCL Duo.
[01:17:32] Speaker A: So.
