[00:00:00] Speaker A: We did note a theme of the two cruises where there was a lot of cheating going on at the trivias and things like that. Like, we saw a man trying to download Shazam in the middle of a music trivia quiz and he couldn't get it to work and he was just like, this is so. What are you doing?
Calm down.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the DCL Duo podcast, brought to you by my Path Unwinding Travel. I am your host today, Sam. As you can tell from hearing my voice once again, unfortunately, Brian is still sick. I just recorded an episode yesterday with another guest and he was sick. And poor Brian, today I'm. I'm actually recording on his birthday and he's just really under the weather and you know, it's a band cold, so it'll. It'll take a little while for him to get over it and feel better. But. But I am not solo. I'm so super excited because I've got a first time guest on the show. Not first time listener, longtime listener, but he's coming to us all the way across the pond from the uk, from Essex in the uk. Welcome to the show, Ewan.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Hi, Sam. Thank you for having me on the show. It's great to finally get to speak to you. Happy birthday, Brian, and I'm very sorry that you're ill and I hope your man cold clears off soon.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. Me too. Because there's nothing worse for a wife than a man cold.
Or a husband. Husband, I guess too.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, Ewan, I'm super excited to have you on the show. You have, I think, a cool Disney background and Disney Cruise Line background. I know that the sailing sailings that we're going to talk about today or we're back to back sailing on the Magic, but let's kind of rewind and go back to where did your love of Disney come from? You obviously didn't grow up near a Disney park. Well, I guess if Paris, Euro Disney could count. Yeah. Yeah. But tell us where sort of that Disney magic started for you.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Definitely started at a very young age when I was a kid. I think my earliest exposure to Disney was definitely. Do you remember these storybooks they used to sell? So I remember having those as a child and it was like the Adventures of Dumbo. And that from. That really is where like my love of Disney and the Disney stories started from. And then I was very lucky. 2002, just post 2001, we were very lucky. My family took me to Walt Disney Disney World and that changed my Life forever. I became obsessed with the Disney parks, like how they work. I used to recreate them out of Lego in my bedroom. Yes. And unfortunately it did leave me with a severe phobia of lifts, or elevators as you call them in the States for many years because I went on the Tower of Terror at six years old.
Oh my God, this fear that every lift I was going to go into would suddenly evaporate and I'd be killed. So for many years my parents had to put up with me as a child going up the stairs.
So even like the Eiffel Tower, I made them go upstairs because I was so scared.
But thankfully I've recovered and I went back. We've only been to Disney World twice. So I went back a couple of years ago when I was 8. Oh God, 10 years ago now when I was 18.
And then also been to Disneyland Paris quite a few times when I was a kid.
But I haven't been there for a couple of years now and I'm hoping in the future on my honeymoon, which we will talk about later, and we'll go back to Walt Disney World for my partner. Perry's his first ever trip. So, yeah, really from an early age I've loved Disney.
So it's just great to have finally got a step on the cruise line a couple of years ago.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Awesome. I love that. So Perry has never been to a Disney park.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: He's never been. Well, he went to Disneyland Paris as a child but can't remember it.
And after two of our cruises now we have stayed in Orlando and been Disney Springs. But he has not let me take him to a park. He wants to do it properly.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: I get that you don't want to go for like just a few hours. Like it's frankly, it is a lot of money to buy a ticket when you can only go for a part of a day. So if you're just getting off of a cruise and you only have part of the day, like I can understand.
And also you if you want to do it when you have like, I don't know, like four days plus. Right. So you can hit all of the different parks and spend a full day in each park or, or maybe do park hopping if you're into that. Right. So yeah, I totally understand Perry's hesitation to do it in sort of a piecemeal fashion instead of a full on trip. Yeah.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: It's just very painful when you're staying there and you're like, I want to go.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Yeah. You're like, it's so close and there's the Tower of Terr. Now I have to ask you, will you go on the Tower? And you had this phobia as a child of elevators because of the Tower of Terror, but will you actually go on the Tower of Terror now?
[00:04:45] Speaker A: I went on it when I was 18 and I was fine. I should tell you the reason I went on it as a six year old was because my mum and dad said to me, you can have a T shirt.
I gave myself a phobia for a blooming T shirt. I still own it. It's still at my parents. It's like a crop top on me now. But still got the T shirt.
Thankfully the cycle, multiple damages over.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Is it a Twilight Zone Tower of Terror T shirt? One of those, yeah.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Oh, I survived the Twilight Zone.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Oh my God, I love that. I love like the ones that would have like. It was like all the, like the Fab five characters in the elevator. I used to have one. I, I, I. It's long gone. I don't like, but I had one from back in the 90s. I think the first time that I went on the Tower of Terror, I was like kind of obsessed with it, like loved it. But I was of course a teenager.
I'm a little older than you and so I didn't go on when I was six years old.
I don't think it existed when I was six years old, to be perfectly honest. I can't remember when it opened. But yeah, absolutely love the Tower of Terror. You got to get to California because the better version is the Guardians of the Galaxy version.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Yes. And Perry's a big Marvel fan. So desperate to get into the West Coast.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Absolutely. All right, well, when did you start with Disney Cruise Line then? Having, of course have this love for Disney and the Disney parks. But you had a little bit of a fear of going onto a cruise, is that right?
[00:06:11] Speaker A: I thought it was going to be rubbish. I was really.
It was. We were, it was 20, 21 Covid.
We were having. We love going for walks. So we live in Essex, like you said, and we love going down to the white cliffs of Dover. I know you and Brian have sailed out of Dover before and we love walking along the clifftops. And as you may remember, during COVID the magic was based in Dover and we were walking along, it was like
[00:06:36] Speaker B: parked there for a long time before it started. Those staycations at sea.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So I saw it, I took a picture of Perry and there was the magic in the background and I thought, oh, I wonder, you know, as A kid, I was desperate to go on Disney on a Disney cruise.
I secretly wanted to be a cruise ship captain when I grew up, but my parents said no. And then I googled it and then I found out about two weeks after we went for that walk, they announced the staycation cruises.
And we live very close to London Tilbury port. And so we booked. It's about 10 minute train journey. So we booked. I booked on that. A surprise cruise for Perry's birthday. This is a theme. I like booking these cruises as surprises.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: I love it. And celebrations. I love it.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Yes. And so we went on our first cruise, a staycation cruise on the Magic, which is fantastic. Three nights just pootling around the North Sea off the coast of Essex.
We then did a second cruise on the Dream in 2022. It was one of the first cruises without the masks and the COVID testing, which is fantastic. So we went out of Miami, hit up Cozumel and Castaway Cays. So our first time at the island. And then we did. I think it's one of your favorite itineraries, the Seven Nights Eastern in 2024, which is linked to the celebration cruise that we're talking about today. And then finally to cheekily boost us up to gold and booked the back to we're here to talk about today.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Nice. So this was number four and five then all at once. I love that. Very, very smart. Especially when you're traveling all the way over from the uk. Of course, it's a, it's a big flight, it's an expensive plane fare and so, you know, it's harder. Obviously you do have cruises out of the UK in the summertime on Disney, but it's a, it's just that season and you know, depending upon when you can get off of work and what fits in the schedule and what fits in the budget. Yeah, it's, it's not, you know, perfect
[00:08:32] Speaker A: timing and I'm sure lots of Brits have said this to you. It's actually sometimes cheaper for us to fly to the United States and get one of the cruises from Florida than it is from Southampton. And so it would have cost us the same amount to go Southampton as it would have done these two days, these two cruises out of Florida is mad.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: That's crazy. That's totally crazy. Oh, my goodness. All right, well, so why did you choose the Magic? You had to like do some rescheduling, if I'm remembering correctly. Yeah.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: So 2025 was a year of weddings for us, which we went to eight weddings over the course of the year.
And we had six weeks in a row of just wedding, wedding, wedding, wedding, wedding. And when I first decided I was going to book these cruises, I booked them originally on the Dream out of Fort Lauderdale because we loved the Dream when we went on it in 2022. It's got a special place in our heart. And we wanted to hit Lookout Key and we wanted to try the new island and the new terminal. I'm a bit of a geek like that. I really wanted to try.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I understand you, Ewan.
I'm a sucker for checking out a new port, a new terminal.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: I was just desperate. I was like, oh, I can tick off everything. And Perry would have been like, oh, this is nice. And I'm like, yes, I get to do it. But unfortunately my brother decided to get married.
So it was too bad it was back to back cruises again.
So I just shifted one of the cruises. So we kept I think the weekend one and then just shifted the body the side so we moved the back to back. And then one of my childhood best friends announced he was getting the way married the weekend after.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: So how many times do you ship this cruise?
[00:10:16] Speaker A: How many? So, so third time lucky. We found the cruise on the Magic out of Port Canaveral. It was just after Blackout Window because it had just done the Turner Classic movies charter, and it was the final two round trip sailings that Magic was doing out of Port Canaveral.
And it was Monday to Thursday, Thursday to Monday.
And it was quite cheap, it was affordable. And I thought, you know what, we've only been on the Magic during COVID so we hadn't experienced the Sailor Wave party. We hadn't experienced half the shows. Every time we'd interact with a character on the Magic, we'd been stood about 10 foot away and taken an awkward selfie. And so we thought, you know what, let's try the Magic again. Like, let's go back to that first ship that kicked off this obsession. And well, it's this expensive obsession.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Expensive obsession, absolutely. You know, that's actually really smart because it really is different. There's so many things. I mean, when sailing during like Covid times, there were some things that were really nice. For example, like lower capacity on the ships. Right. Like some of that social distancing is a little bit nice as well. There's some good things about the social distancing.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Lovely.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, like it's just ye. I feel like a lot of those cruises were quite relaxing. But then of course, not all of the, you know, Activities were up and running. The, as you mentioned, the character interactions were more limited. Of course, your sailing was a sailing to nowhere, as all of those staycations at sea were. And you know, it's, it's.
I think that's fine for a shorter sailing. I mean, for example, like what, what the adventure is going to be doing in Singapore. You've got a huge ship with a ton to do on the ship and so I don't know that you'd have time to do it all if you had any port stops. And even for you, you had a short sailing on the Magic out of Tilbury. You also hadn't been on a Disney ship before, so plenty to explore in those three days.
Although it's very different than a Caribbean sailing because obviously the weather is not very warm up in the North Sea.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: And yeah, Captain, Captain Fabian did a great job of just finding the one patch of sun.
If you look at the cruise map off the cruise globe map, I put it on just this fantastic little loop where he'd found the sun. It's just going up and down the North Sea.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah.
I got to give a shout out to Emma and the cruise globe.
If you have not checked out their app and their website, they're great. You can actually go back and look at where your cruise, your cruise's. Exactly.
Location from quite a few years. I mean, not just Disney, but other cruise lines as well. It's really cool. And you can even get like merchandise to sort of commemorate that route, whether it be, you know, a printed map, cruise cards, things like that. It's really kind of fun stuff. And Emma's a great, great content creator at Emma Cruises as well. But yeah, and, and obviously she's from the uk, so everyone in the UK who cruises knows Emma, of course.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. We've got. Was it Emma and Ben and David are our two big cruisers.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: Yes, two big. Yes, yes. And Ben and David do a lot on Disney. Emma does not. She's not, she went on Disney once. I still, I still contend that she needs to do it again because I told her she did it wrong. So.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: But yes, I, I, I agree. I've watched a video and I was like, you've done it. You've done it wrong.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: Yeah, well, all right, you and you got you flying all the way over from the UK to Florida. How far in advance did you get to Florida? Obviously not. You can't fly in the same day you're flying across the Atlantic Ocean. But I'm curious, like, did you come in to. You know, acclimate to the time change and all of that.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Please don't judge me.
So we had another wedding, got booked the date, the weekend we were due to fly out.
So we got on the ship on the Monday. Now usually I'm a bit like yourself. I like to get out early in case anything goes wrong.
But unfortunately a good friend of mine, he booked his wedding for the Saturday, which meant the only day. And I was like, I can't move the cruise again.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Right, Right. No. How many times?
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Yeah, at this point I was like, I might as well give up.
But we, so we booked our flight on the Sunday.
So the wedding, frankly was in central London. We then flew out on the Sunday, which was very risky. We flew with an airline which I now have heard are incredibly unreliable. So it's a miracle.
Norse Atlantic, I don't know if you've heard of them, they're a low cost carrier that goes between London and Orlando and apparently they cancel most of their flights.
So we were, we were very lucky. And so we got, we got there, no problems. And then we got an Uber out to Port Canaveral and stayed at the Country Inn and Suites by Radisson, which we heard, I think I heard one of your guests, it stayed there and it was actually really close to the port. Very nice hotel. Would highly recommend to anyone who wants a, like a nice hotel that's cheap, reasonably priced, it's near McDonald's if you need food.
You know, you've got to kick off the American way, haven't you?
[00:15:30] Speaker B: Of course, of course. You've got it. That's, that's hilarious to me that that's, you know that. But it makes, it makes sense. I mean, everybody sort of associates, right? Like America with McDonald's. It's, it's absolutely fair. It's like, I love that there's much
[00:15:45] Speaker A: more going for America than there is McDonald's. But it was also the only thing open because we arrived at the hotel at nine o' clock on Sunday.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Oh yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's a. That close. Ewan. I mean, I will say, you know, when we fly to Florida and we're on a six hour flight, so it's, it's a long flight for us. We, we are also flying out in the early morning, usually the day before our cruise. Like we have.
The backup is always the red eye flight. Right. Like we can always, there's really for us, like, like on our preferred airline, which is Alaska. I mean people probably see we put, we tag Alaska half the Alaska Airlines because Our hub is here in Seattle and so we can fly to a lot of major cities direct on Alaska Airlines. And so that's why we fly them. But like we. There's really like two flights a day to Orlando. So one is like an early morning flight which is what we take the day before our cruise. And then the backup is that red eye flight which is not preferred. Not just because I don't want to be on a red eye flight, but I honestly don't know how Nathan would do on a red eye flight. It's just. I mean we've flown overnight to Europe but he didn't really sleep much and it's not ideal, I think with a kid and I think some. I mean I'm one of those adults who doesn't sleep well on a plane either. So yeah, if I can avoid a red eye and have a day flight, I'd rather do that. But at least we have that backup option if something gets delayed or canceled.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll never be doing this again.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we've got to actually, this episode will come out probably shortly after an episode where we learned of. There's actually a DCL duo theme song that one of our listeners came up with. Virgil came up with. He's only come up with the title, not all the lyrics but. But it's Only Fools Fly in on Embarcation Day. So shout out to. To Virgil for Only Fools Fly in on Embarkation Day.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Need another one of your listeners to like write the full song to write?
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. We do. I need. Hey, if you're listening and you are a songwriter out there and you want to write a song, Only Fools Fly in on Embarkation Day. We would love that. That would be amazing. Yeah. All right, so you fly in the day before. You're down in the Cocoa beach area already. Get to McDonald's for dinner, go to bed. You're trying to adjust to the time zone. Of course. Like how was, what was your port ARR. Time and how was like transiting to the port? I imagine you're just getting an Uber or something in the morning.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Yeah, so we, we just got an Uber in the morning.
We. Our port arrival time and we were silver for this cruise was 11:45.
Now on our previous cruise in 2024 when we went on Fantasy, we got stuck in really bad traffic around the port.
So because we left it a bit, we cut it a bit fine. We thought, oh, it's fine, we're only about 5 minute drive. We'll just get the Uber about 10 minutes before the port arrival time.
So this time we thought, right, we'll it 35, 40 minutes beforehand. So we called the Uber about five past 11 and thought, I will do it, hopefully we'll get there on time. We've been very lucky. We always seem to get former NASA employees as our Uber drivers.
So we always get such like fascinating insights into like their careers at NASA and how they just love going on like the different cruises. We always say that Disney is the best. I don't know if they're just trying to butter us up, you know, such amazing gentlemen that we met doing these Uber drives. And we got there at quarter past eleven and so half an hour before our port arrival time. But I wasn't too worried because I really wanted to take a picture of, as you can see behind me and Perry, he likes his Polaroids. So we wanted to get some pictures of the terminal because in 2024 we just rushed in and because we were running late, we didn't really have a moment to, you know, just take stock of where we were.
So we got there and the lady went, oh, you can go in. I went, well no, I'm not due in until quarter to 12, I want to take a picture. She went, no, just go in. I was like, no, I want to take a picture.
And so we just mooched around the front taking pictures of the terminal. And also the Wish was in so huge. I was like, oh my God, there's two Disney ships.
So I was taking a picture of the Wish. We got the pictures we wanted, then they let us in. So yeah, we got in about 20 past 11, I think after we'd taken all the pictures. So yeah, about, about 20 minutes early, which was quite impressive. I know it's a smaller ship so I think they were getting through the crowds quite bit quite quickly.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Yes, well, and the port is such a well oiled machine. That can happen, right? Like, especially if they didn't get hung up with like customs or something for the prior crews, right, the prior crews coming in when they empty the ship and they have to go through the whole customs process and then the customs has to clear the ship for reboarding. Right. But like that can happen very quickly. It can sometimes get delayed by customs. Disney really has no control over that. And so but if they get clear, they will sometimes start boarding, you know, a little bit on the early side. And that really means that even folks with, you know, slightly later port arrival can get into the terminal and board on the ship even early as well. But it's nice you get there early to be able to take some pictures. I will say if you get to Port Canaveral early, if you're parking a car, you don't want to get there too early because the garage isn't open.
Or you know, I think they open the garage at. Can't remember if it's 10:30 or 11. But they don't open super early because they're trying to let people who were on the previous cruise get out of the garage and empty the garage. But if you're coming via Uber or you know, private transport, you, if you get there early, it just means you're gonna have to wait outside if they're not ready for you. And that's, there's nothing wrong with that. Like it's, it's, you know, you can, you can give your bags to the porters and just kind of hang out outside. There's a bathroom you can access and then as soon as they are able, they will call your group and you can go do the check in process and get at least in the terminal. Now did you guys wait long in the terminal before boarding or was that quick as well?
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Probably about 20 minutes or so.
Which again was, was really nice because we hadn't had a proper chance to explore the terminal, you know, have a look at the map on the floor. Had to go and check out the vending machine room just to see what was in there. And so it was quite nice to just get an idea of what the terminal's like before rushing onto the ship. And it was quite nice just to take a breather because that morning we'd been a bit rushed, you know, we got up a bit late, got breakfast. The queue, if you go to that hotel, they do great. You make your own waffles, which is fantastic. We are queuing for, it's like queuing for a character interaction, for a meet and greet. So we were there for about half an hour waiting to make our waffles.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: That's like such an American hotel thing by the way, that I feel like that's. So if they have like a little breakfast buffet where it has like, you know, some eggs and maybe some sausage and, you know, things, maybe some pastries. And then if they have the waffle machines, they only have one or two waffle machines and everybody wants to make their own waffle.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Yeah, well, my, my uncle, Fun Fact, used to manage a hotel on Grand Cayman and when we went to visit him that was like the highlight of the trip was making the waffles and it was a comforting. So I remember after our cruise in Miami, I booked a Comforting and Suites, and I said to Perry, went, oh, this hotel. We're going to do waffles at breakfast. And they did not.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sorry.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: I saw this hotel actually did the waffles. And I was like, right, well, you're sold. I'm booking you.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: I love it. I love it. All right, well, you are. You board, obviously, the beautiful Disney Magic. You had been on that ship before, but did you notice anything different? I feel like the ship is the same every time I go on there. And I mean that in the best way. Like, they do a nice job of kind of upkeeping, and even when they replace the carpet, it's the same carpet as it was before. Right. So. So I don't know if you notice anything different other than the fact that you could go near characters and people weren't wearing masks and all of that.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So it was actually what hit us first was when we first went on the Magic, you know, during the restart, when. I don't know if they did it in the States, but when we came on the ship, you were introduced, your family name was called out, and then you were put on a little spot, and then Mickey and Minnie did a little dance for you, didn't they? And so it was quite unusual by walking back into the Magic's atrium, and then there's no one there to do a private dance for me. I was like, oh, well, this is disappointing. I want to get off.
But no, it was. It was just like coming home. The smell hits you.
And also, you forget how small the atrium is on the classic ships. I mean, we haven't been on the wish class yet, but the.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: You're gonna. It's huge on the wish class. Yeah.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: So. But I think the big thing that stood out was just how beautiful she looked, given she's, you know, almost 30. Like, it's amazing how well they keep her. And then also the Soul Cat Lounge, because we went straight, straight to the Soulcap Lounge just to talk about dining reservations and things like that. And that was brilliant because when we were on the ship previously, it was the Promenade Lounge.
Although I agree with what you've said previously, they missed a trick there with that not becoming the Snuggly Duckling.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Yes. It's still a great space. I think they did a really nice job with that refurb. But the theming would have been perfect to do the Snuggly Duckling, just like you have on the Wonder. You've got, you know, Tiana's and the French Quarter Lounge. It just. You get that really lovely tie in and you don't have that on. The other part that I thought is weird on the Magic is you've already got like a piano bar. So. And Soul Cat, like the movie Soul is very, you know, jazz and piano themed. So it's like weird that you've got like two bars that have piano theming. But I mean, it's fine.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: We did notice on this sailing that Soulcat was much busier, more popular than Keys, I think.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Keys on the Magic.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. We went in there a few times and it was just dead.
And maybe it was just because of the musicians and people's tastes were aligned to the musicians over at Soul Cat Lounge. But yeah, Keys really wasn't that busy on our cruise. It was Soul Cat that was getting all the clientele.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: Yeah. I wonder if people, especially first time Disney cruisers don't sort of realize where Keys and Crown and Finn and Fathoms, like I wonder if they don't necessarily find that area. Yeah. Whereas Soul Cat is right outside of the restaurant. Right. So like you're gonna, you're definitely gonna pass it a few times. The other part about Soul Cat and it's the same with French Quarter is you can bring children in that space. Right. It's. It's a family friendly space even when it's a bar at night, as opposed to Keys being adult only all the time. And then of course they do some of the drink tastings and Keys as well. Yeah. So it may, that may be a factor of this. And I'm curious, obviously the demographics are going to be different.
Who's sailing out of, you know, Port Canaveral is different than who's sailing out of London. Tilbury.
You're going to have. It's going to be like all Americans sailing out of Port Canaveral. It's going to be everyone, I imagine on your sailing out of Tilbury was from the UK because it was during that time where you really couldn't do a lot of international travel. I don't even know if other Europeans, like mainland Europeans, were on your sailors.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: No. So. And I think when we booked it, said it was only open to UK residents.
Yeah. They weren't. They weren't. It was still that time where you couldn't really travel off the island. And so actually to step on a boat and be able to get off for a few days, it was the closest we could get because we sailed quite close to Mainland Europe. And it was like hello.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: Waving to our friends.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it was very good. I don't think.
I mean most of the crew were British. Like we kept saying to each other it was like should we just join the crew? Because it's like being at home. But yeah, there weren't many international like guests on this sailing. It was mostly Americans.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Now you did a back to back. Tell me like how. How many nights was each of the sailings and what were your port? You. Well, you said your port stops on. No, you say your port stops on your previous cruise. What were your port stops on?
[00:27:42] Speaker A: This.
Yeah. I haven't actually told you why I took this cruise yet.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: Yes. So it was a free night which went. Which is a quite unique itinerary. I believe it was a free night from Book Navel that only went to Castaw Reiki and then a day at sea. According to the Disney Cruise Line blog, the last time the magic did that kind of itinerary was 2016, I believe going to Scott. They say it's quite, quite a rare one. And then we did a four night which went to Nassau and Castaway again. So we didn't make it to Lookout but we did get to go to Castaway twice which was fantastic. And then another sea as well. So it was a really nice like I guess kind of a double dip into. Into Castaway and we love it there. So it was just, just the perfect itinerary for us. And given it was a celebration cruise, it's one of our like happy, you know, our. The ship that started it all Castaways are happy place. We just couldn't think of a better place to celebrate.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Now you were celebrating your engagement, is that right?
So it's a good thing you didn't like plan your wedding because you had all those other weddings to go to.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: We were weddinged out and bored before we even got to my own.
CSC was an engagement cruise. We actually got engaged the morning before we got on the fantasy. In 2024 I proposed to Perry on Cocoa beach at four in the morning during a rocket launch.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Oh, that's so cool.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: I was a little extra because he loves space as well. So it just felt like the perfect special moment. The launch was almost cancelled and thankfully in the last minute it happened.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say you can't necessarily rely on a launch. Like they get scrapped or scrubbed at the last oftentimes because of like the weather has to be just so for them to launch.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: And so it was because I think the previous 10 launches of the Dragon or whatever the SpaceX rocket blown up upon entry. So the FAA banned them for a week and they lifted it on the morning. And I said to Perry at half, I woke him up at half three in the morning and he went, I don't want to wake up. We're coming again. I'll look at it. You know what we can do another time. I was like, you are getting out of bed.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: But he didn't know you were planning on proposing on the beach, so.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: He didn'. So yes. So rather than getting him a ring, he's a. He's a trainee nurse, he works in healthcare, so having a ring wouldn't have been good for. He lost it by now. But why don't we make memories instead? And like I said, our happy place for Disney cruises. So I thought the perfect treat would be a Disney cruise. Now, Disney did almost spoil. Well, they did spoil it a little bit for me because I had a bit of a confusion with an agent on, on the phone of mine who told me that if I booked it, it wouldn't appear in Perry's house app. Like the, the cruises wouldn't appear. We'll sort it out. That's absolutely fine. And then he texts me from work one day saying, why is.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: Why.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: Why are we going on the Disney dream Roll? The Dale. I was like, oh.
So I had to tell him what was going on. I didn't tell him everything, but he knew the proposal was coming. He just didn't know.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: He just didn't know the timing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, for all he knew, you were going to propose on, I don't know, Castaway or something, right? Like, because that would have been, that
[00:30:53] Speaker A: would have been so. I mean, that was the second option, actually, if it was either going to be the baths at Virgin Gorda in the caves or it was going to be cast away. But he did say to me, if you, like, propose in the middle of the ship, I will kill you.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: Right. He doesn't want it to happen, like, in the atrium in front of everyone.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Like, not with like Donald and Daisy, you know, Dan sick.
I don't want that. I was like, okay, I respect.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: I understand. I understand that. I would be okay with that actually. Like, so, Brian, if you're listening and you want to re. Propose to me, I'd be okay with a proposal in the middle of the atrium or the grand hall, depending upon the ship. Yeah, that would be. That would be okay with me.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: And then a vow renewal on Castaway.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: That's like, exactly, exactly.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: We've got some not coming today.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: I know for sure. We've got some friends actually who are doing a vow renewal this summer on Castaway.
It conflicts with other travel plans we have, so we aren't going to our travel plans actually to come on our adventures by Disney. So we aren't going to be able to go. But I think that's, I think a Val renewal on Castaway sounds awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:32:02] Speaker C: Are you listening to our show because you want to make the most out of your next vacation. Great news. The fabulous team over at MyPath Unwinding Travel can help guide you so you don't miss a thing. Their team of professional travel advisors are carried caring, knowledgeable and experienced. It's why we use them to book our 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 complimentary consultation to make your vacation even more magical. Ready to talk to the experts? Head over to mypathunwinding.com DCLDUO or email DCLDUO mypathunwinding.com so they know we sent you their way. Thanks My Path Unwinding for sponsoring today's show. Now back to the episode.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: All right, well, let's, let's dive into some of your favorites on, on this cruise in particular.
And I know you have a couple of kind of crazy things and stories about things that happened on, on the cruise, including on Embarcation Day. Let's, let's start there.
Tell me a little bit about Embarcation Day and maybe a couple of one or two funny things that happen on Embarkation Day.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Embarkation Day was just, it was mad. And you know, we've been on a, we've been on three Disney cruises beforehand, so we thought, oh, it'll be absolutely fine. We know what we're doing. But it just seemed to be a very lively crow and the bars were popping. There were quite a lot of drunk people all over the place who just seemed to be really getting into the spirit of being on holiday. I had to worry not to be a snob. I thought we were on Carnival.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I will say that's not usually the Disney vibe.
But I will also say it was a three night cruise and a shorter cruise in general.
Especially if it's like a weekend cruise. Right. I think this was a weekend cruise as well.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: This was the Monday to Thursday segment.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Oh, this was the Monday.
Maybe not. Never mind.
Yeah, that is, that's a little odd. But every once in a while you just get a more lively, boisterous drinking crowd.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, so we had an experience where we were walking to our stateroom and we were trying to get through the door and this drunk lady's just appearing down the corridor, she's bouncing off the walls and I thought, we've not even had Sail away yet. It's not that rocket.
And then just as we were opening our door, she bounced into ours and fell into the stateroom. And she was like, sorry, I'm drunk. I was like, I can tell you're drunk.
She just carried on waddling towards the back of the ship. So I don't know if she probably just was probably still on Deck 2 going round and round.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: Maybe she's probably looking for her stateroom. But yeah, she would have got a
[00:35:01] Speaker A: surprise with us too. But it was a lot of fun. It was nice to see people were like having the time of their lives. But even it was match your mate night as well. And that was probably the most R rated and wild version of that that we've come across. The. The couple one of the couple. Couple number one. Goodness me. If you're on the cruise, you know, they were very busy when they got on board.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: And couple number one is the newlywed couple usually. So, you know that, that makes sense. But I will say sometimes couple number three will surprise you. The, the couple couple that's been together the longest time.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: Couple number three, I think were business owners and had half their business with them on an away trip because there was a big group of about 60 of them. So yeah, they were like put up there by, by all their staff.
So. But they were very good. They were one of those couples who are just so in love that they just got the guy with. It was very sweet. I think all the staff are like, we want to get their dirty stories.
But it was very, very wholesome. Couple number two, I think hated each other afterwards.
And couple number one were cheating. The host didn't let them win because they were not very. I mean they're on stage but. And we noticed a lot of. We did note a theme of the two cruises where there was a lot of cheating. Going on at the trivias and things like that. Like, we saw a man trying to download Shazam in the middle of a music trivia quiz, and he couldn't get it to work. And he was just like, this is. So. What are you doing?
Calm down.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: It's just. Yeah, it's just a Mickey or, you know, it's a rubber. It's not even a. Like a metal metal. It's a rubber rubber metal. Like, chill out, people.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: Just be happy you're there. And I did. I was almost going to tap him and say, you do know Shazam is built into Siri. Like, you don't need to download it.
Yeah. Couple number one, they didn't let them win. The hosts were very good about it. They didn't really call it out, but they didn't let them win because they were.
Every time they'd come back, she went, hi, babe.
It was not a vibe we've seen on Disney before, but I think what was nice is that when have you heard of the term Brits abroad? When British people go. When British people go abroad, they get very drunk, they get very loud, and then they start having fights. What was really nice to see is that everyone on this cruise, although they were merry, they were all incredibly lovely. Apart from one lady who we encountered on embarkation day on our second cruise who tried to take our table at the restaurant. Yes. That was an experience.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: I gotta. You gotta tell us. What? You can't just say that and move on. Ewan. Like, what? Like. Like what happens? Like, what. What did you. She tried to take your table. Like, how does that even work?
[00:37:44] Speaker A: She tried to take our table. So because we were back to back, we. So because we're British, we're introverted. The idea. And also because it was a celebration cruise, we didn't fancy sharing a table. Although I think if we were to be put on a table with yourself, Sam and Brian, I think we'd be absolutely fine because we could chat. But there's always that. It's always that nervousness, isn't there? Like, we're awkward Brits and we're like,
[00:38:05] Speaker B: I. I kind of love that you describe yourself that way because I. You. You know, it's funny when we think about, like, Americans and Brits and sort of the stereotypes, right? Like, the stereotypes, like, Americans are all, like, extroverted. They'll, like, tell you their life story. Like, they'll tell you about, like, you know, their childhood, like, they first meet you and that, like, and that Brits are, like, a little more, you Know, stilted and a little less willing to share and a little bit more introverted. Right. So it's a really funny thing that you. You say you fit the stereotype.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: We fit the stereotype. But then I should say we have made many friends on the cruises. Like, we always end up chatting to people in the bar. I think just the idea of doing it at dinner.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And being forced. Yeah, and being forced into it. Yeah.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: Because unfortunately, we did see a lot of tables on our cruises who had been put together and they just weren't getting on, they weren't vibing. And we felt so guilty because we found the couple who we were supposed to be sharing the table with, and they looked lovely and we felt so bad that we just deserted them. But we had a nice time. But because. So we had our servers on our first cruise. They were great. They were overworked. It was a bit of a disaster, to be honest with you, but they were great. And our head waiter, he said to us, would you like to have the same on the same team on your back to back? And we said, yes, we would love to. They've been great. The table's fantastic. It was brilliant for animators. Like, we had right next to Sorcerer Mickey when he appeared, it was brilliant.
So, yeah, second cruise begins. We're in Rapunzel's royal table and this. We've seen this lady around the ship again. She was, on the face of it, quite inebriated. She was drunk and she was very loud. Like, there was a pianist in the atrium and she was there by the piano, like, screeching out Disney songs.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: It's not a sing along.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Yeah, not a sing along. And then we thought, this is going to be a long four nights because we just can't seem to escape you.
And, like, we went for a drink at Soul Cat. She was there. I was like, oh, no.
And then we were having our meal, minding our business, and the lovely, like, Irish folk band were going round doing their little jitty in Rapunzel's. And we were by the service station and she just appears and starts loudly saying, I want songpong. Who was our waiter.
I was like, sorry. And then she goes off. And then the head waiter comes back, says, some gone. There's someone here who wants to talk to you. And he's like, what? What's going on? And we don't really know what happened, but it sounds like she then came over to where we were, sat and stood right by our table and started having a meltdown on the wall, saying, that she, her and her family didn't like her server who was in another restaurant. She'd come from another restaurant on the ship.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: Oh, gosh. She wasn't even eating in Rapunzel, even eating in Rapunzel.
[00:40:44] Speaker A: She was somewhere else on the ship and she had this meltdown in front of me and Barry on our table and demanded that we move.
He could have somebody who she had this, like, deep emotional connection with. And poor, poor waiter. He was like. He said. He was like. You could clearly tell. He was like, I can't remember you situation. And unfortunately, on our second cruise, they were really.
They only had, I think, for that restaurant, free head waiters. So they were all covering, like, quite a big be at the restaurant. And one of them, he was very nice. He came over and he said, I'm very sorry. Would you be happy to move restaurants or join tables with someone else? It's just that we've got this guest who has a very deep emotional connection with your serving team. And you're the only table which we can give because our service, they had two big tables, so we had two tables with 10. And then us. And we were like, look, we appreciate you in a very hard position, but know fully understand service go. But also, like, it's our holiday. We've built a connection with these people over 3, 4. This was our fourth night now on the ship. They get us. We have a good rapport with them. You know, they know our drinks order. We've got good banter. We're getting on with them like, no, you're not impacting our holiday. And you can't just turn up in a restaurant, have a tantrum and demand my table.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: Absolutely. And, and if you want to request that server, you can do that ahead of time. And usually Disney will accommodate you. I mean, they. They will do their best to accommodate. So had she made that request ahead of time, well, then she probably would have been in the same rotation as you at another table. And they wouldn't. Your server wouldn't have had those two tables of 10. They would have had some different arrangement of. Of ser. Of tables. Yeah. So it's certainly like, she could have done that if she didn't do that ahead of time. Time. Like, why should that be prioritized over you? I'm glad, I'm glad they asked you rather than said, we're going to do this. And also, you don't want to this. Even if it was like, oh, can they join you? Hell no.
[00:42:49] Speaker A: That's what we. That's what we said. And she was stood right by the table when we were having this discussion. Like, she would go away. And we, you know, like I said, we're awkward. And.
[00:42:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not even about being awkward. You. And you got this crazy drunk lady who is like, you've seen her multiple times already. You're like, no, she's. I mean, she wasn't the same drunk lady who almost fell into your seat room.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: No, no. Thankfully, she got off.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: This is a different drunk lady. But, like, you can tell, like, if you've got a person who's acting like that, that is not a person you want to be sat with for the rest of the cruise.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: We, the few. When every time we came across it that night, we were like, we don't. Like, please don't be put on our table. Please don't be near us. And we were not. That was our red line. We were like, we've paid a lot for this. We've traveled a long way. This is. We're celebrating our engagement. We're are not ruining our happiness for you. And you can also see that in the pressure. The poor waiting stuff I just felt for them, they handled with it brilliantly. Like, the service on Disney's, you know, is brilliant. But I just thought they had to ask. They were very lovely.
They took it on the chin and we apologized, as we do for not wanting to move. But, yeah, we never saw her again after that. I don't know what happened.
We didn't see her around the ship. We didn't see her on Castaway. We didn't see her in Nassau. Like, we don't know where she was when.
[00:44:02] Speaker B: That's surprising because on a. On the Magic and the Wonder, there it is a small enough number of passengers that you do tend to run into people, you know, maybe not necessarily, like, participate in an activity that they're participating in, but you usually pass people in the hallway, right? Like you. I feel like I see a lot of people kind of over and over again. And like, those Match your Mate couples are a perfect example, right? The Match whoever is like the couples that match your mate. If you go and see Match youh Mate, they are now like a celebrity for the rest of the crew.
People will say hi to them. People will make inside jokes to them. Like, it's.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Yeah, we never did. On our second cruise, we didn't do Match on May. I can't remember the one we did, but.
Oh, goodness me, I can't remember it. Like, Perry was at the front, and I was like the spokesperson for our side of the nightclub. And I can't remember the game.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: Yeah, like one of the. I can't remember what. There's a bunch of different. Of the adult show. Majority rules.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: Majority rules, I think, or something like that. And we became ship celebrities from that. Mainly from him swearing and everyone being
[00:44:59] Speaker B: like, oh, I love that. I love that. Well, listen, they, they also, as soon as they hear your accents, the U.S. americans are going to be like, oh, those are the two British guys we saw. Right.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: Like, we had that. And then one. One lady we met, she. She apologized. We made a great friend called Val. She's a travel agent who. She didn't try and sell us anything. She was fantastic. I don't know if she listens to the show. Hi, Val. If you do. She. She apologized because she plays a game with. She plays one of these games where, you know, you predict famous people who are going to pass away.
And she predicted for the first time that the Queen of England was going to die. And that was the year the Queen died.
So she was like, I'm very sorry for your loss. I was like, yes, we're all in mourning.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: You know, we were in. We were in London right after. Actually, we were in. We were in Europe when the Queen died and we were in London right after the Queen died. Like, we went and. And paid our respects in the park and everything. Yeah. When they, when everybody was bringing flowers to.
Was it St. John's Park?
[00:45:58] Speaker A: I can't remember.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: Oh, Green Park. Green park, yeah. Yeah, we were. Because we were staying. Right. We like to. We. We stay at a. Whenever we come to London. We love this hotel called Saint Erman's that's really close to Buckingham Palace. Yeah. And so we always, like, we. We love going to green park and St. James park and just kind of walking and just. It's just pretty. It's like being in Central park in New York. It's just pretty and nice to walk around. And so. But we made sure we, you know, you have to pay your respects to the Queen, you know.
[00:46:24] Speaker A: Oh, definitely. I was there when announced I was in work. I work in Westminster nearby. So I was ended up on the mall with just thousands of people who just all stood there staring at the palace, like, what is going on? But it was such a. Yeah, it was like. It was such a unique moment.
You're here for a moment of history.
[00:46:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's kind of fun that Val was like. Well, I mean, weird, but fun. Fun. I mean, it's just. I. You never know who you're going to meet on a Disney cruise. You in like, you meet all kinds of characters. In fact, one of the things I love about Disney Cruising is the people watching aspect. I don't know if that's something that you and Perry enjoy, but I think it's a really fun part.
[00:47:01] Speaker A: Yeah, we absolutely love it. We quite often like to perch on deck four on the promenade deck or just up on the. Around the adult pool and just watching what everybody's up to, you know, saying, oh, look, they're doing this today, they're doing that.
It's so much fun, isn't it?
[00:47:17] Speaker B: It is so much fun. It is so much fun. What were some of the other things you enjoyed doing on the Magic? Obviously, like we mentioned, you'd been on it before, but not everything was sort of up and running. So you didn't. For example, to see all of the shows probably the first time you were on the Magic, did you hit up the shows? Did you hit up more trivias and game shows and things like that as well?
[00:47:37] Speaker A: Yes. You'd be very happy to hear we did hit all the shows.
We saw five out of six. I guess we didn't go and see Dreams for a second time.
We chose to have a night in the hot tub because on our second cruise, only one of the hot tubs, there was no hot tubs in the family area running and only one in the adult area because the. Oh, goodness me. The health, like a health agency came on board to do a test in between the two crees. Yeah. And they were really struggling with the chlorine levels. So on our back to back, we spent hours. No one was allowed in the pools. So we were like, oh, we had this benefit of being able to sit around the pool and have a nice quiet day. So we'll just read our book and get sunburned.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Would have been probably the CDC, the Center for Disease Control in the U.S. yeah, that would be. That would be the. Because you're sailing out of the of US Port, they have to comply with CDC regulations and that can include, you know, the chemical levels in the pool to make sure that they're not essentially spreading disease. Which is the same reason why you don't. They don't allow people in diapers, whether that be children or adults in the pools. It's actually a. It's. It's on all of the, you know, any cruise line, not just Disney, but it's cdc. And then there's similar authorities throughout Europe and most of the world and has similar public Health type regulations. Yeah.
[00:48:56] Speaker A: So, yeah, we hit up the shows.
Can I just say twice? Charmed. Surprise. Hit like love. I could. I can't get enough of that show. Like, I would happily watch the magic again to watch that show because they didn't play that on the staycation cruises.
We had a fantastic cast and the guy playing the Duke was just. And the King.
[00:49:16] Speaker B: Oh, Duke Wesselton. Or not. Not Weselton, that's in Frozen, but the Duke and yes, absolutely in that.
[00:49:23] Speaker A: And we had a brilliant lady, Germaine, and I can't remember her name, Broadway actress. She did a fantastic personal concert as well, so that was great. Going to hear her life story, what Disney means to her. That was such, like, a special moment. We also did a lot of trivia. We love trivia. We're useless. We try and we aim to win one per cruise, which we kind of do. And usually it's because no one else turns up or it's incredibly niche that everyone is scoring really low.
I did nearly win Disney Parks trivia.
[00:49:52] Speaker B: Wow, that's hard.
[00:49:54] Speaker A: So we were tactical.
On our second day at Castaway, we got back on the ship early and we just had an afternoon in o' Gills doing trivia. We got to know one of the cast members and we just spent the afternoon with her. She was fantastic. Sapphire, she's called.
And I thought, yes, I've won this because I go, yay, Yay. And I was like, 16. I've won. You know, it's still quite low. But I was like, yeah, yes. And then just all of a sudden, this voice came from the Corner, I've got 17. And I was like, wouldn't you come? No one saw this lady come in and she. And she just swooped in and won. And I was like, what is this? I think our favourite activity is the animation classes. We love drawing the characters. We also love doing the crafts. But we were very, very lucky this cruise because one of the cast members, he was called Gus. He. I don't know if you've come across him. He, outside of his work for Disney Cruise Line, is also a Disney illustrator. Illustrator.
[00:50:44] Speaker B: Oh, cool. So he's really good.
[00:50:46] Speaker A: He's really good. So he actually brought back, you know, because of the moments on screens, which I didn't mind, I actually quite enjoyed that. I found it really helpful. Like, I find it easier going off the screen because some of the cast members drawings are a bit, well, the worse than mine.
Good. He. He was great. Like any drawing class we saw that he was doing, we would go, because you know, he took the time to explain it. He spoke about his background, what he's drawn. We did BB8 with him as well, which was fantastic. That was character we'd never drawn.
[00:51:16] Speaker B: I mean, he's all circles. Right. How hard is that?
[00:51:19] Speaker A: And surprisingly hard, because you've got to get all the different circles in the right. And then he gave him an arm, which I wasn't expecting, and then trying to draw him later.
Yeah, we absolutely love that. And then, yeah, just the general. Like, I like to go for a run each morning on deck four and things like that. Oh, and of course, seeing the characters as well, which we don't get in the uk.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: Yeah, well. And I love the older ships for going for a run, by the way. Like, I know people always are sort of asking, like, you know, if you're training for a race, for example, like, how do you do that while you're on a cruise? And I think the answer is the classic ships.
Unless you're a treadmill person. If you're a treadmill person, then it doesn't really matter what ship you're on, because they all have treadmills. But.
[00:52:01] Speaker A: And also, top tip, for anyone out there who is like me and is over 6 foot 3, do not use the treadmills at the front of the gym. On the Magic and the Wonder.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: The ceiling will hit you.
[00:52:13] Speaker A: I had to move because I was banging my head and I was like, oh. Because we were sailing into Nassau and I was like, oh, there's the dream. I can have a fantastic view in. And then everyone was just laughing at me because I just kept it, just me.
So eventually I gave up and went to one of the lower treadmills and I was stuck behind all the equipment trying to look.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: I was like, oh, yeah, then you couldn't. You couldn't see out the window is the problem. Right. Whereas we want the. You want the treadmill that's at the window.
[00:52:37] Speaker A: I was trying to run with a stoop and it wasn't working. I kept falling.
[00:52:41] Speaker B: So, yeah, I will say I'm 5 7. I've never had that problem. So it's only if, probably if you're over six feet tall that you're going to encounter that problem. If you're under 6ft tall, you're probably just going to be fine.
[00:52:54] Speaker A: You're fine. Just stick the tall people at the back.
[00:52:57] Speaker B: That's right. And they can see over our heads anyway, so it's fine.
I love it. I love it. You know, it's funny, I forgot I was. I just Recorded a show yesterday and I mentioned Golden Mickey's being on the Magic, but that was wrong. I was thinking of the Wonder is Believe. So that's the one. The only one that you, that you skipped was Believe.
[00:53:16] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:53:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I understand.
Or was it Dreams? I don't. I. Oh, dreams. You're right. Dreams is the one with Anne Marie, the, the middle schooler.
Believe is the, the one with the man and the flower and the daughter. Yeah, yeah. Both of them involve daughters. Parents child thing. But yeah, both.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: One slightly squeakier than the other is how I distinguish them. And Peter Pan appears. And we did see Dreams on our third. We did all three on our first cruise, so we did a show each night.
And then on the second cruise, we didn't do Dreams again. We, we had a nice, relaxed final night on the ship, which was actually a really nice way to like end the cruise. And we went to. We had two nights in a row of Tangled, which absolutely, like Perry, he adores Tangled. It's his favorite movie. And then we also had the Tangled restaurant as well, Rapunzel's. So it was like so much. I've never heard the last. I've seen the lights so many times.
[00:54:10] Speaker B: It's so good though. And, and, and I've got, and I've got a dream. I just, I mean, I think the show lineup on the Magic is fantastic. I think, you know, the only, the only one, the only ships that beat it in terms of show lineup are the newest ships in the fleet, really, the, the Treasure and the Destiny. I think of the classic four, I think the Magic has absolutely the best show lineup because of Tangled and Twice Charmed. Those are, are just phenomenal productions. And Twice Charmed, I think, you know, I think people don't realize, like, it's not a variety show like Dreams Believe, Seize the Adventure, Golden Mickeys. It is a twist on the Cinderella story, but it's its own story.
It's got its own music. It was written for Disney Cruise Line. It's, I think, a really fun production. I try and see it every time. It doesn't play necessarily every cruise itinerary, but if it's playing and you're on the mag, it only plays on the Magic. And if it's playing, I highly recommend. Recommend people see it.
[00:55:09] Speaker A: We were, we were concerned that they wouldn't play it on our free night because it was Halloween on the high seas cruise as well. So I was a bit concerned that they wouldn't necessarily do it. I thought, oh, that might be the one they cut.
They can do all the Halloween entertainment, but thankfully they still went ahead and do it. Did it. So we got to see it two times, which was brilliant.
[00:55:30] Speaker B: I love that. I love that.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: So good.
[00:55:32] Speaker B: Well, you. And I didn't ask you about the ports, so I want to kind of just hit the ports. You went to Nassau once and you went to Castaway twice. Did you get off at Nassau? And if so, what did you do?
[00:55:42] Speaker A: So we actually had Paolo brunch on, on Nassau Day.
[00:55:47] Speaker B: I mean, it's a perfect day at Nassau.
[00:55:50] Speaker A: Well, we did get off.
We did get off in Nassau just after our brunch. We thought, you know, we better walk, walk it off. But also the dream was in next to us, so had to get off and take some pictures.
[00:56:04] Speaker B: You had to visit the other ship, just like you did with the Wish and get Port Canaveral.
[00:56:08] Speaker A: It was great. Like we ticked off all the, all the different ships. It was fantastic. I got to see all three classes. It was. I was like, ah, I just need to go on a Wish class ship now and there and then. Harry really wanted to go to Senor Frogs, mainly because. And over here in Europe we have a ripoff version of it. Yes. In Spain they have a ripoff, ripoff version of it. They call it Senor Frogs but they spell it Senior. So it's. So he's got the. I've never noticed it before. He's just, oh, yeah, that's my Senor Frogs T shirt. It was, it was only when we're. It was only when we're in that side. I read his T shirt. I was like, that says Senior.
So we, we went over to Senor Frogs and had, and had a drink, you know, and bought a T shirt for him. There was a lad having his 18th birthday party because of course, in the Bahamas it's like the UK, you can drink at 18. I don't think he's going to remember his 18th birthday party because an aeroplane came down from the ceiling covered in shots and everyone was buying him.
The amount of Disney people in there, I was quite surprised.
Partying, you know, because they have the magic bands, you can tell how we are.
But it was a lot of fun. And then we went through the straw market, just had a little mooch and then got back on the ship. Like we could say we've been.
[00:57:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's per. I mean, perfect day at Nassau, get a drink at Senior Frogs, look at the, you know, browse the merch and then head back on the ship. I think that's. That's Great. Yeah.
[00:57:31] Speaker A: And then we're ready for the horn battle.
[00:57:33] Speaker B: Ah, the horn battle. That's always fun. I. I mean, the. The hard thing is the magic class just can't compete with the other classes and horns. Of course, the dream class can't compete with the wish class. So it's. Every class has gotten better because there's more tunes that they play. The ones on the Magic and the Wonder are not even like a real horn. It's like a recorded thing. And. Yeah.
[00:57:56] Speaker A: Yeah. I made myself look like an absolute melon on the adult pool deck. By the way. I never realized this is very. This is how I'm naive. I am. I never realized that during the sail away party, that isn't the actual horn going off. I didn't realize it was a recording. So guess which idiot was stood in the adult pool? Because on our second cruise, we didn't go to the sail away party because we thought we'll stick in the adult pool. And I wish we had because it would have explained an awful lot with that second cruise. Because what we didn't realize was the captain and the cruise director had changed over between our two cruises. So it was very confusing how Anna turned into Joelle.
Our TV was still playing an. But Joelle had now boarded. So, like, Good Morning Disney Magic was still Anne. And I was like, who's running? Who. Who is in charge? Like, what's going on? Yeah. So I was stood with my phone out in the pool in the adult pool area, and there was these people on lounges who were laughing at me. And I was like, why are they judging me on a Disney cruise? I'm just. I just want to get a video on the horns. And then of course, I heard, right, well, I'm an idiot.
[00:58:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it's not. So just during the one during the sail away. The sail away party, they play. They make it at the end with the countdown. Right. But it's not. It's just a recording. It's part of the show, but it's not the actual horn. They do play the horns usually when you like, as you're like leaving port. Right. Or so maybe a little bit after. But you don't have necessarily a great warning for the timing.
[00:59:22] Speaker A: And so because I thought up here, I might as well get the video because we've always gone to a sail away party. So this was the first one we skipped. So I just thought I had no reason not to know that the horns are genuine.
Often everyone on the ship thought I was a tool.
[00:59:40] Speaker B: I love that Ewan, I want to ask you about Castaway because of course, you mentioned it's your favorite place on Earth. I mean, it's many people's favorite place on Earth. You got to go to twice, and you were lucky you got to. You docked both times, right? So you got. You actually got like two full experiences on. On Castaway. Now, what did you guys get up to? Were you hanging out at the family beach? Did you go over to Serenity? Like, what. What's sort of your day look like on Castaway?
[01:00:06] Speaker A: So this time we, we. We. We've done it differently. So the two times we've been previously, we've always done it a bit differently. So we've. We've done one day over at Serenity and then. Or one after that we did over at. On Family beach. And then this one we thought, right, well, we've got two days. Let's split it up. So on our first day, we both did the Castaway Key 5k. I can't go to Castaway without going. Doing the 5k. I love running on there. It's such a great route. It's such a great way to start your day, isn't it? So it's always nice as long as
[01:00:32] Speaker B: it's not too hot. As long as. If it's like, if it's in the middle of this, if it's in, like, August, forget it. I gotta skip it.
[01:00:38] Speaker A: I've donated the end of August. And that was. That was enough. I was like, oh, this is warm. And so we did the Castaway five key. And then on our first day, we did the Castaway getaway package, the snorkels, the tube, and the bike hire. So that was the first time we'd done the bikes. But, yeah, we did the snorkeling in the morning and stayed over the family beach. We had such a great time. And the bikes and the. And the tubes. I cannot recommend that package enough. Like, it's such great value for money. And it filled our full.
[01:01:09] Speaker B: And if you book it ahead of time, you get a discount. So it's one of those things. You don't have to book it ahead of time. If you, like, aren't sure if you're going to use it, then you can, of course, wait and book it on the island, because if you don't use it, obviously, then you're wasting your money. But, like, if you book it ahead of time, you get, you know, you. It's. It's at a reduced price and you get all three included in one as well, which Is really nice.
[01:01:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. It was just perfect. It was such a great, nice day.
[01:01:34] Speaker C: We.
[01:01:35] Speaker A: We did the cycle route. We'd never been down past the adult beach on that bit of the paths. Had never been down that way. We did think, typical, again, Brits, we thought, we're being naughty because there's a sign that said, don't go past this point where I think the building, the new adult beach and all the way down. We're like, we're going to get told off. We're going to get told off. We're going to get told off. And then thankfully someone else cycled past. I'm like, okay, we're not breaking rules. We can go down there. And that's.
[01:01:58] Speaker B: Yeah, you can go all the way down to the end where it's. Where it's paved and then there's kind of a turnaround there and you even will see where the cast beach is. You'll pass by the cast beach. Now, you can't go onto the cast beach because it is a sign that says, you know, like, do not enter or something like that. But, yeah, it's really, it's really nice. I've run, so when I've had to do a long training run, that's where I go. I go all the way down because I. I can't con. I can't do that many miles on a treadmill and I can't do that many miles just circling the. The Promenade deck. So if I need to, I'm trying to, like, plan my training runs to do it at Castaway.
[01:02:35] Speaker A: When, when I next go to Castaway, my aim is to run down there. I'm a bit bored of doing the Loop, so I would like to. I'm going to run down there, but that beach at the end, that viewpoint is just such a stunning point for photos. So we had a nice time down there and then lunch. I was thrilled because I'd heard about the spicy chicken sandwich that you can only get at Lookout Quay, but on both of our days at Castaway, it was available there.
[01:02:59] Speaker B: Oh, both. That's awesome. In fact, we've just actually recently heard that the new, new. The new food place that's opened at Serenity Bay. I think it's called Hangar 98 or something. It's got like the side that's for the Mickey and Minnie cabanas, and then it's got the side that's for Serenity Vegas. I've heard that that has the spicy chicken sandwich every time now as well. And of course now has French Fries. So French fries.
[01:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah. It's changing. It was quite weird being. Because of the. The construction was almost done on the cabana, so it was quite interesting. Like, I was trying to put my phone over the fence to see what was going on, but I got told off.
I should have said I was an influencer, shouldn't I?
[01:03:40] Speaker B: No, because then they would have said, really, let's see you delete that.
[01:03:46] Speaker A: What are your credentials?
Sorry, sorry. You can arrest me.
[01:03:52] Speaker B: Sorry. I'm the dcl duo's UK correspondent.
[01:03:56] Speaker A: I'm the London correspondent. Please leave me alone.
But no, it was. It was great seeing it and I was just so happy to get that sandwich because I don't. I'm not quite sure with our planning when we're going to get to look out. And we loved it. We had so many of them.
It was just nice to see some. I know we'd only been there twice before. We're not quite the levels of your usual guests, but it was quite nice to have something different. And we had that both in Cookies, So that was at Cookies too. We had it on the first day, and then the second day we spent over at Serenity Bay. So I did the five again. And then we spent the whole day over at Serenity Bay just relaxing. We were actually surrounded by the Walt Disney Theater cast.
[01:04:32] Speaker B: Oh, that's awesome. That's fun.
[01:04:34] Speaker A: But we were like, we're not gonna. We wanted to talk to them. But also, like, we respect the fact that you were in your off moment. We don't want to talk to you. And a lot of them had family members as well, because like I said, it was that last. The cruise after hours, it was off to San Juan. So I think a lot of family and, like, partners on board our two cruises. So they were all having, like, a lovely time with their family. I've never seen so many photos taken. Like, they were having Photoshop shoots all over the beach and then there's two there with, like, sunburn and pasty, and they were there like beautiful Instagram models. I was like, it was so lovely to see them having, like, free time and just having fun with their families because they deserve it. Like, that cast on the Magic were just so good.
[01:05:15] Speaker B: Yeah, they're so good. And. And honestly, that. That tends to be for. For the main stage cast, like castaway day or look often, you know, their daytime hours off. Right. Because they're not. Unless. Unless they're in the side of entertainment staff that are characters or character handlers. And then obviously they might be doing Some meet and greets, but even on the islands, like, they're not doing as many meet and greets on the island as are done on, you know, on the ship on a sea day. And that's just because, like, everybody's enjoying the beach and it's not like during, you know, on the ship where everybody's, you know, filling their day with beating characters and going to trivias and things like that. So it really is their time to. To have off, I think. I mean, I will say I think a lot of the cast members are always, like, friendly and willing to answer questions about what it's like to live on a ship and work on a ship and, you know, do everything on the ship, really, because their entire life is there. It's a very, like, unique. I've loved the couple of opportunities we've had to interview, you know, cast members or former cast members from cruise line, specifically, because it is just such a unique experience. If you think about, like, I mean, you obviously had a fantasy of being a ship captain back in the day when you were a kid. And I never had that fantasy. But, like, looking back, I feel like it would have been really fun. I would have loved if. I mean, if I could go back in time, I feel like I would have wanted to work on a Disney Cruise Line ship for, like, a couple of years. Maybe between high school and college or between college and law school or something like that. I think it would have been a really nice, you know, things to do as. As a very. As a young adult. I think it's kind of a great way to see the world.
[01:06:57] Speaker A: We. We've often said when we've been on the ships, we wish that we'd just taken a few years out. Especially now we know that they recruit so many British people.
It's like being at home when you're in these trivias with them all. It's like, I think on our next cruise, we'll have to bring some Capri's Chocolate or whatever with them so we can be like, here you go. Yeah, it did genuinely feel like everyone on the ship was British. All the crew came away to escape.
[01:07:21] Speaker B: But that is the secret gift, though. The secret gift. So if you are looking for something to give out, particularly to, like, the entertainment staff, same with the concierge staff.
Cadbury Chocolate is the way to go. That's. That's usually like. That's like a home for them.
And yeah, it's a. For a lot of. Not just Brits, but a lot of folks from over In Europe as well. I feel like that's. It's harder to get here in the States and so you can find it now. There's more of those, like, large bars you can find. They're quite expensive, actually. Like $5 a bar. But yeah, that. I would say that's. That's kind of the. The perfect, perfect gift. All right, well, Ewan, we're gonna have to wrap it up and head over to Rapid Fire. But before we do, I want to ask you, is there anything that we've missed that either good, bad, or just notable that I. I haven't. I've neglected to ask you about from this amazing. Oh, you know what? We didn't talk to Back aspect. You got.
[01:08:16] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
[01:08:17] Speaker B: Yeah, let me ask. Let me ask you that question before we head to Rapid Fire. But, yeah, you had some conf. You were getting conflicting information about your instructions for the back to back cruise, Is that right?
[01:08:27] Speaker A: Yes, yes. It was all quite confusing about what we were supposed to do. Our stateroom host didn't really know where, you know, what was supposed to be happening. People didn't realize we were back to back. Like, please, can we stay on? Can we not? But thankfully, after a lot of different conflicting information, we got the. We got the card and the letter through. It came quite late in the day, but we got it through. I think it's because they just had, like I said, that chartered cruise. They were still trying to get back to normal after that. I'll tell you what we did get a lot of was spa.
Like, Perry entered the spa raffle for the first time. We just kept getting letters. Every time we came back to our stateroom, we thought, oh, this will be the back to back information. Oh, it's another offer for the spa.
I felt really sorry for him. He won in the spa raffle, but he. He won a voucher for Diamonds International,
[01:09:12] Speaker B: not a spa, and he wasn't interested in buying anything with them. I.
[01:09:16] Speaker A: No, no, he doesn't like diamonds.
We pixie dusted the bag to someone else. We were like, this is. We're never going to use this. He was like, for goodness sake. I wanted a massage.
When they learned we were back to back, every. Every day we'd have a different thing from the spa manager. I was like, oh, no, go away. I didn't know you could get spa mail on the cruise. And it all made sense. It was a bit difficult for us international travelers trying to work out what we need to take off the ship. Do we need our esters? Just trying to get that kind of information. And it's quite scarce online because I don't know if many like Brits do it. But thankfully once we did it, we met in o'. Gills. It was plain sailing. I think we're only off the ship for about an hour and a half.
There was an interesting thing with security, with the port security, homeland security, something that happened with them because we thought as international travelers we were get screened, you know, because we're going back in. But that didn't happen. They did something else.
So yeah, it was an interesting experience. But again, just getting to explore the terminal, they didn't really tell us where to go. They just kind of left us in the terminal and didn't give us any sign. So it got really confusing because we were left in the terminal. They didn't take us because I believe most back to back cruises go to the concierge lounge or a separate seating area.
[01:10:29] Speaker B: Just. There's usually just so in the, in the, in Port Canaveral, it's usually just sort of the front right hand, like the. Not front all the way towards like where they take pictures. Right in that sort of right hand corner. There's usually like a very small sign that says back to back cruisers and, and they. But you don't have to sit there. You can sit anywhere. And everyone sits anywhere pretty much. And so you just have to kind of like listen for when they call the back to back cruisers.
[01:10:56] Speaker A: Because they didn't call it. We just noticed everyone was. All the people who we saw have the little blue ticket with the little card. We're legging it.
[01:11:03] Speaker B: So we're like, all right, I guess we go. Yeah, yeah. But the best the, I mean the tip I will give for folks who've never sailed back to back. You're going to sail back to back the last night of your first sailing. You should get a card with instructions and it'll have in it like a little card that you need to take with you off the ship on your disembarkation embarkation day. Right. So you will. And then you'll be able to board back onto the ship before the new passenger is coming on. But you do need to take with you any passport and any of your like immigration paperwork. If you're, if you're a US citizen, it's just your passport. If you are not a US citizen, you need your passport and then any. If it's a visa or you know, whatever you sort of have, you need to have that with you because you are going technically through customs and Border patrol for disembarkation, like other passengers. And then, of course, you're reboarding. And so it is. You're, you know, you are going through that immigration process. It's generally pretty smooth. But, like, you just have to have all your stuff with you or you will not be allowed back on the ship. That's really what will happen.
[01:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah, you'll lose all your things and all your merch.
[01:12:13] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And you don't have to take your stuff off with you, even if you're changing rooms. If you're changing rooms, you have to pack up and then they'll move your stuff to a new room. If you're in the same room, you just leave everything as it is. But you. But you would. I mean, I should take off with you any, like, essential medications, your phone, if you have, like a, you know, valuables, like, I would say that's probably the time to take them off.
[01:12:36] Speaker A: We just took off and we still have our sling bag. So we just filled out our essential bits and we had our trunks on just in case you wanted to go straight to the pool. And we had some books, so we had something to do. Like, we just had a little survival kit that would do us in the morning.
And then the moment we were back on the ship, very weird not being introduced. It's quite surreal. You just walk in and there's just like the lone cleaner in the. In the atrium. And then we went straight to Cove Cafe and get our free drink, which was very nice. And I was judged by everyone because I got a plain coffee, I got a latte, and the lady behind me made it very, very well known that she wasn't impressed. I went for the cheapest drink.
[01:13:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, you do get a free coffee drink. And actually kids can as well, so you can get like a, you know, a hot chocolate or something for your child. But if you're back to back you go. When you get back on, you can go straight to Cove Cafe and they will have, you know, usually a barista or two working there and they will make your coffee drinks. And that's really, like the only time that kids are actually, like, allowed in that space in that back to back time. Because. Because it's. It's kind of. It's that in between. The ship hasn't really reopened yet for passengers, so. But yeah, we've gotten Nathan hot chocolate. We've gotten ourselves coffee drinks. Is kind of a nice perk of getting. And it's free. That's the year. That's your one Free drink. Unless you've got one of those Cove Cafe cards that you've been paying and you get your, you know, your fifth free after.
After each or your sixth free after getting five.
[01:14:04] Speaker A: I did ask if they would, you know, to have my loyalty card, but they said no.
[01:14:09] Speaker B: Yes, because you're getting a free one. They don't. They won't. They won't do a punch on your. On your loyalty card that. For that one.
[01:14:16] Speaker A: Don't ask, don't get. I knew it was gonna be a no.
[01:14:19] Speaker B: Hey, it's worth. I say it's worth it. You. And not. I mean, you may end up getting somebody who will do it. Never. You never know. You never know. All right, Ewan, we're going to. We've reached that point in the show where I'm going to subject you to some arbitrary rules, some arbitrary questions, and a dash of. Of judgment. The round we call Rapid Fire. All right, so we're going to start with a couple of Disney favorites, and then we'll move to Disney Cruise Line favorites. So, of course, the most. The first question is always, who is your favorite Disney character? And Disney means everything and anything that Disney owns. We interpret that liberally.
[01:14:52] Speaker A: Yes. Well, it has to be the number one Duck, Donald, who's on my T shirt.
Love him. Love him to bits. I had an emotional breakdown the first time I met him. Him in the parks.
All the photos of me and the child with Donald Duck is just me, like, crying my eyes out because I'm just so overwhelmed to be in the presence of this.
[01:15:11] Speaker B: Of greatness. Yeah, brilliant.
[01:15:14] Speaker A: And every time I see him around the ship, my favorite T shirt is. I've got one from Epcot of him dressed as a McGrenider guard, one of the Buckingham palace guards. That's possessions. It's got holes in. I don't care. It's Donald.
[01:15:24] Speaker B: It's Donald. Some. Someday you'll get a replacement one for it. You probably have to go to Epcot to get a. You got to go to the World Showcase in Epcot to get a new
[01:15:33] Speaker A: one when I'm finally allowed.
[01:15:37] Speaker B: I love it. I love it. All right, what is your favorite Disney movie now?
[01:15:42] Speaker A: This one. It's a bit left of field, so. First one I ever watched was Dumbo, but it scared the life Army. So I'm not going to say that it's.
[01:15:49] Speaker B: It could be scary for a child. Absolutely.
[01:15:51] Speaker A: Very. Because after the books, I was like, that's very nice. But, yeah, it did scare me, but the one that's always stuck with me it's not a traditional Disney movie. Cool Runnings. I was obsessed with that film as a kid. I'm desperate to go in the Western Caribbean to go and do the bobsled adventure. There's just something about that film. It's just perfect. And I just watched it on repeat as a kid.
Honorable mention to, like, Hercules, Encanto, some of the animated classics. But Cool Runnings has got that place in my heart. It's just such a brilliant story. I'm obsessed with winter sports. The Winter Olympics. So. Yeah, I just love it.
[01:16:26] Speaker B: I love that. Well, listen, we're going to have the Winter Olympics coming up just in. Yeah. Very soon.
[01:16:32] Speaker A: And they're in Europe this time, so you can actually watch them at a normal time.
[01:16:37] Speaker B: Yeah, you don't have to watch. You don't have to wake up at 2 o' clock in the morning. Yeah, they're not great for us, but that's. They replay the stuff. The stuff where the. Where the Americans are competing that are like sort of the big, you know, the sports that we're really good at. Right, right. They play them, they replay them during prime time. So we don't.
[01:16:55] Speaker A: We just get everything. Because we're not very good in the Winter Olympics.
[01:17:00] Speaker B: I love it. I love it. All right, well, I've got to ask you, your favorite Disney song.
[01:17:05] Speaker A: Oh. Oh. So for a while, similar to yourself, it was surface pressure from Encanto, but I think it's always been Go the Distance. I just love the score. I love the meaning of the song. I don't know if you've ever heard it. Disney goes classical. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra do a brilliant classical version of it. And it's just. It's great when you're out running. Like if you're running up a hill and you've got that sweeping you up it.
[01:17:28] Speaker B: It'll give you that motivation. I love that. I love that.
[01:17:30] Speaker A: Chariots of Fire. But Disney.
[01:17:32] Speaker B: Yes.
Also a great movie. All right, well, switching over to Disney Cruise Line, I've got to ask you, of course, your favorite stage show on Disney Cruise Line in the Walt Disney Theater. And we're talking the main stage shows. We're not talking about the ventriloquists and the magicians. They can be wonderful as well. Well, but we're talking, you know, the, the main stage cast.
[01:17:53] Speaker A: Yes. So I've always been blown away by Tangled. It's such special story to Perry. I love the film and we've been very blessed that the casts that we've seen have been absolutely fantastic. Like, it's such. I wish they put it on the newer ships as well, you know, but like, they have Frozen and Aladdin on the newer ones. I really think that Tangled should also be put on one of the newer ships because it's such a great stage show. And I think honorable mention twice. Charmed, because that was an unexpected hit for me.
[01:18:20] Speaker B: I have to agree with you with Tangled. I was kind of perplexed why they put Frozen onto the Destiny instead of Tangled. Because Frozen was already on two ships. So now Frozen is the only show aside from Seize the Adventure. Right. Sees the adventure is on now all of the wish class and is going to be on the adventure as well. So it's going to be on four ships. But all of the other shows. Shows are on like two. Well, generally speaking, the shows are on two ships. And so Entangled is only on one, and Frozen was already on two, so I didn't. But I. But I think it's just. Well, I surmise it's because Frozen was such a big hit, especially with that little girl crowd, that they want to make sure they have something on the Destiny because that's. That ship is so heroes and villains focused. They want to have something on that. That ship that caters more towards that little girl princess crowd. But, I mean, I think Tangled does too, so I don't know, but I
[01:19:16] Speaker A: think he does as well. I know it's got a slightly harsher ending with us all thinking that Flynn's dead.
It's such a great show. And like, Maximus the puppeting, like the puppetry of Disney Cruise Line is just fantastic. I mean, I can't wait to see the new. Listening to your podcast and hearing about the new shows, I cannot wait that. Yeah, I'm sure I'm gonna love the new ones.
[01:19:38] Speaker B: Yes, you're gonna love all of them. And the puppetry is just incredible. All right, we gotta move over to dining favorite rotational dining animators.
[01:19:47] Speaker A: Animators. Honorable mention for Rapunzel's.
[01:19:50] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's a. I mean, yeah, you can't go wrong. Those are just. They're all really well done. And the shows are great. Whether you get Sorcerer Mickey or animation magic or even crush on that other ships. Like really. Yeah, really great. All right, Food we got to do. We got to do a sweet and a savory. And I, I, as I always say, we go sweets first because I think savories are the best. So we save the best for last. So it doesn't matter that I don't care that dessert comes at the end of the meal. For me, dessert is coming first. All right, so favorite sweet item.
[01:20:21] Speaker A: I. I must admit, I don't always enjoy the desserts on Disney cruise line. I find them a bit too gelatini or to anyone out there who's now going to hate me. But, you know, the churro Mickey waffles, they are great. Like, they. When we first had those on the fantasy, it changed my life. I was like, oh, this is a dessert. Like, they're just such a great. You feel so much better when you have them on a castaway day and then you go and run around the island.
[01:20:43] Speaker B: Yeah, honestly, I. I would. I prefer a churro Mickey waffle over probably any of the desserts. I. I am with you. I think a lot of the desserts are. You're right. Too much gelatin, but also too much, like, too sweet and general. Like, yeah, often too sweet. And I'm not. I'm not a sweets person in general, but I do love Mickey churro waffle. Hold the. Hold the syrup. You don't. They don't need syrup. There's so much sugar on them already. All right, a favorite savory item.
[01:21:11] Speaker A: So a highlight of every trip is the truffle cassettes.
And then I'm going to do a separate one for Paolo Do. Love the chicken parm and the risotto. I know everyone says it. It's is just. Oh, it's a highlight in every trip. And we were so blessed to get a Paolo brunch blocking on this cruise. And I was like, yes, I get the chicken parm again.
[01:21:30] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. I'm with you. All of those choices are perfect. All right, favorite activity on a Disney cruise line cruise.
[01:21:37] Speaker A: It's going to be the drawing lessons. I love just sitting in a lounge with a coffee, you know, getting to draw, and it's just so relaxing, isn't it? And then, you know, you've got a little bit of paper that you can take home, and you're like, look, I did this.
[01:21:51] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and apparently, if you get Gus, you get, like, maybe really professional looking. Did you ever ask him to take. If you could take one of his home?
[01:21:58] Speaker A: No. I wish that we did, but because we're coming from the uk, our super pet cases are already, like, too heavy before we've left, so we have to be careful.
His drawings were fantastic. And I was very lucky. We finally got to draw Donald Duck.
[01:22:11] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[01:22:13] Speaker A: Because every time we've gone previously, the cast member's gone. I've drawn Donald too many times this cruise. Let's do someone else. I've done Goofy three times. I don't want to do Goofy again.
[01:22:24] Speaker B: We want the knock. Number one duck. All right, the next question. I've got two questions left for you.
Perhaps the most important one. Favorite ship? Of course, you can only choose from the ships that you've been on.
[01:22:36] Speaker A: Yes, it's going to be that first bias. I think the magic is always going to have a special place in our heart. Controversially, I do prefer the dream over the fantasy. Sorry.
[01:22:45] Speaker B: Wow, that is odd.
[01:22:47] Speaker A: I think I went in knowing that everybody loves the fantasy and you want
[01:22:51] Speaker B: to be a contrarian a little bit,
[01:22:53] Speaker A: but I think it didn't make me set the expectations. So I think because they're so similar, I can't quite see why the fantasy and like, oh, cabin on the fantasy had some maintenance issues and things like that, so the dream just kind of edged it for me. But the magic, Miss Magic is such a beautiful, beautiful ship.
[01:23:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I'm going to. I'm going to tell you, you're wrong about the dream because the fantasy is better, but it's really about the adult area. To me, that's the difference. Like, there's not a lot of differences between the dream and the fantasy, but the adult area is the thing that always makes me like the fantasy more than the dream. And it's not just the B bathrooms in Barcelona. I love those, of course, but I also just. I like the theming. I think the theming is just more cohesive. The theming is not like commute on the London Underground.
[01:23:40] Speaker A: Just going anywhere that's themed to it just brings back stress.
[01:23:44] Speaker B: Fair point, Ewan. I do not commute on the London Underground, so I love the tube. I think it's a great themed bar, but I work.
I love it. I love it. All right, last question. Your bucket list cruise. If you can go anywhere in the world on a Disney Cruise Line ship, where are you going? It doesn't have to be someplace that Disney Cruise Line sails. It just has to be someplace that you can access by water.
[01:24:09] Speaker A: Yes, it would have to be. There's quite a few. The current one. I would love to do, like a northern transatlantic, so taking off Norway, Iceland, you know, Newfoundland, the eastern seaboard, and down that classic sailing into Newfoundland. Yorks like that. That is a dream.
[01:24:28] Speaker B: That would be amazing. Yeah, it'll be a cold sailing. But you're from the uk. You can deal with it.
[01:24:33] Speaker A: We're used to it. I mean, I've been stood in a field today volunteering, so I'm Quite used
[01:24:37] Speaker B: to the cold and you don't even have to worry about sunscreen. So it's perfect.
[01:24:42] Speaker A: Exactly. It's perfect.
[01:24:45] Speaker B: Well, Ewan, thank you for playing. Other than my judgment about the dream, you passed with flying colors.
You gotta tell me, though, what's next? What have you got on the calendar? What are you looking forward to? If you don't have something on the calendar, what are you looking to book?
[01:25:03] Speaker A: So I'm partially doing my bucket list cruise.
So this September, we're going on the transatlantic. We're doing the westbound from Southampton to Fort Lauderdale, and it's going to be our honeymoon. We're getting married in April, so we're going to be taking a art martial month off work. And so we're doing the. The transatlantic, which was so ever since, because we're turning 30 this year as well. So we've always said since we got this obsession, we will do our 30th birthday. A treat to ourselves will be the transatlantic. And then I proposed and it was like, oh, let's make it a honeymoon. And then finally we're going to Disney World and we're gonna go. We're gonna go to the theme parks. So we're doing two weeks at Coronado Springs after the cruise and finally taking Perry to the parks. And so it's going to be one. It's a month of Disney. So I might be. I might be like, I'm done. I'm done.
[01:25:59] Speaker B: Perry might not want to ever go back to anything Disney, but hopefully he won't be Disneyed out. Hopefully you won't be Disney. Doubt. Well, Ewan, that sounds like an incredible trip. You, of course, have to come back on the show to talk about that transatlantic cruise. You know, we, we try to, to leave the parks coverage to our friends over at various other podcasts. They're doing great job covering the parks and so. But we'd love to have you come back on the show to talk about that transatlantic. That's going to be an epic honeymoon.
[01:26:26] Speaker A: Oh, the transatlantic is going to be the highlight. I think just six sea days. And also it's on the dream again. So we can really put to the test whether or not I like it.
[01:26:36] Speaker B: Exactly. And the time change, you know, it's incremental. One hour each day. It'll be, you know, over the course of the, the, the set, over the course of those sea days, they tend to do like one hour shift each day. Yeah. So it'll be great. Well, thank you so much for joining me. This was just fabulous. Talking to you. I love that you celebrated your engagement on Disney Cruise Line. You got engaged right before a cruise. You're going to celebrate your honeymoon on Disney Cruise Line. It could not be more perfect. But again, thank you for joining me today.
[01:27:05] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a blast. So thank you so much.
[01:27:13] Speaker C: 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 to help support the show. Sure 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. You want to book your next Disney vacation? Head over to mypathunwinding.com DCLDUO or email them at DCLDUOYpathunwinding.com so they know we sent you their way. If you've got 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 head over to the website or patreon.com DCLDUO Also, as a way for you to sign up for our substack newsletter letter that we're hoping to start really pumping out monthly here, at least on a few blog articles that we've written. So DCLDUO.com is the best way to connect with us. You can also of course email
[email protected] 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 reflective 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 my Path 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.
[01:29:20] Speaker B: Sam.
