[00:00:00] Speaker A: A little while ago, we did something we'd never done in over 700 episodes of our show. We told a story, a real one with Axe, about three days our family spent in Amsterdam with friends ahead of an Adventures by Disney River Cruise.
We weren't sure anyone wanted that from a Disney cruise podcast. Turns out you did, so we're doing it one more time. For now, here's the setup. This past summer we sailed through Holland and Belgium with a boatload of listeners as a part of our podcast, cruise version 2.0.
If you haven't heard of Adventures by Disney before, or ABD as we call it, you're not alone. ABD is Disney's luxury travel brand.
The idea here is let's get people out of the parks and into the world so they offer land vacations, river cruises and other kinds of experiences. ABD actually started back in 2005 with two tripsWyoming and Hawaii, and it's since grown to dozens of destinations across six continents with itineraries that have even reached the seventh. And and if you've never done a river cruise, throw out most of what you picture when you hear the word cruise. There's no water slide, no atrium, no 5,000 people. These ships are long and low and narrow, built to fit inside the locks and under the bridges of a working European river, and they carry maybe 150 passengers instead of a few thousand.
Instead of taking a tender into port, the ship ties up in the middle of a town. You walk down the gangway, you're practically in town square. You unpack once and the hotel sails to the next country, sometimes while you sleep. Disney doesn't build or run these boats themselves for the river cruises. They partner with a line called AMA Waterways, a genuinely well regarded name in river cruising. And Disney layers its own people and programming on top the adventure guides, the kids activities, excursions with special access.
And the ships that AMA uses are perfect for abdominal they have spacious, well appointed, well organized rooms, some of them connecting to accommodate families. They even let you sleep three to a room, which can be unusual in the river cruising scene. River cruising is normally aimed at, let's say, a quieter demographic, but Disney's whole move here was to make the river a place you could bring a nine year old. And if this is the part of the show that's making your ears perk up, good news, this is not our first river cruise with Adventures by Disney. We have several episodes in our back catalog on Adventures by Disney, river cruising and land based trips, including our own prior experience with Adventures by Disney on A Christmas markets, river cruise down the Danube, same partnership, ABD and AMA Waterways, but through Germany and Austria in December with the twinkling market stalls and the mulled wine and the gingerbread.
So if this episode gives you the itch, there's more where it came from back in the feed.
So what's special about this episode? Well, I brought a microphone with me. I sat down with folks who came with us, put it on the table between us and asked the obvious question, was it good? Would you do it again? Fully expecting a travel review, food, staterooms, Would you recommend it? That is not what I got out of almost every conversation I had. I got something bigger and stranger and frankly, more moving than I had any right to expect from a trip whose main food groups were chocolate, french fries and beer. One of our listeners said it best, so I'll let her go first. Her name is Bri. She and her husband Sean have four kids, and they drag the whole crew across Europe just about every summer. And I wanted to know why.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: I like the idea that we are letting them see the world. It's not just something they're seeing on the news and taking stereotypes or just highly opinionated opinions, and they can say for themselves how the world looks and what the people are like and how much we all really have in common.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Now, that's a heavy thing to say on a trip whose itinerary is basically castles and chocolate. But it stuck with me because it kept happening. Four conversations, none of them overlapping, all of them quietly arriving at the same idea Bree had just handed me. So here's the trip we're going to go on. You'll meet four travelers. A woman who nearly didn't come at all. A woman who has, as far as I can tell, never once met a stranger. A family of six, including kids ages 9 to 21, who cannot agree on whether they even had a good time. And at the very end, someone who does this for a living and who turned out to be the single best argument for this kind of experience that I have ever heard. And there's one more thing woven through all of it. I'm not going to tell you what it is. I just want to see if you can spot it before I do. From the DCL Duo, this is Brian.
Come with us.
All right, welcome back. We start with act one. Just tell me what to pack. We're going to start with the person who almost said no to this entire trip. Tracy and Michael are old friends of the show. You've heard them before. And when this trip came around, Tracy Was, in her own words, nervous. Not about the money, not about the flights, about the general idea of this vacation altogether.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: So I was very nervous about this trip because it's. First of all, I'm a vacation girl, not a trip girl.
So this is definitely more, this is more like our adventure by Disney in Italy last year, where we were constantly moving, constantly excursioning, constantly doing something early mornings, late nights. And I was really concerned, you know, just about, this is our vacation. I want to, like I'm a, I'm a pool girl at heart or an ocean girl at heart.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: A vacation girl, not a trip girl. I've never heard the fundamental divide of human travel put so cleanly. A vacation is where you go to stop.
A trip is where you go to go. One has a swim up bar, the other has a 7am lobby call and a man named Dieter telling you the bus leaves in four minutes.
Tracy knows precisely which animal she is and she signed up for the other one on purpose.
So why do it? Her answer is the entire psychology of the anxious traveler compressed into one sentence.
[00:06:22] Speaker C: Coming with friends, knowing that they had my back, that I was going to be okay, that I could say no if I needed to.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: So that's the deal Tracy made with herself. I'll say no if I need to. I'll walk up to the scary thing as long as there's an exit and some friendly faces between me and it.
Remember that instinct. It's going to turn out to be somebody's actual job. Later in this episode. And here's what Tracy, the self described pool girl, went and did on this trip she was dreading. She got on a bike.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: It was absolutely wonderful to take a excursion that took us biking past 19 windmills. We got to stop in a windmill and go through a windmill museum. It was absolutely fascinating to hear how they work and how the country itself has used technology and to be able to continue to do the things that they're doing, but also keep the history of the windmills, just the history of the windmills here in this country and how they're still using them.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Now Tracy says 19 windmills. And I want to pause on that for a second because that's not a made up number. Tracy's Talk about Kender Dike, one of the stops on our trip. There are exactly 19 windmills in Kinderdijk, most built in a two year sprint around 1738-1740, standing in a row in a marshy nowhere southeast of Rotterdam. They exist because a big share of the Netherlands sits at or below Sea level. About a quarter of the country is under sea level. And the Dutch response to that terrifying geographic fact was not to move. It was to build 19 enormous machines to pump the water back out and then keep them running for the better part of three centuries. They're a UNESCO World Heritage site now. And the name Kinderdijk means children's dike, from a flood legend about a baby's cradle found floating on the water, kept upright, so the story goes, by a cat. So the self proclaimed vacation girl pushed her limits and took a bike excursion, biking through the single most concentrated monument to Dutch stubbornness on the planet. And ultimately, Tracy didn't just tolerate this river cruise experience, but I was, I
[00:08:31] Speaker C: would say I was slightly surprised at how much I enjoyed it, and I would say it was definitely better than my expectations in most areas.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: Michael, meanwhile, Tracy's husband is the one who booked this whole thing and had a front row seat to watch his nervous wife have a mostly good time against her own predictions. I asked him how hard it was to manage her anxiety going in.
His answer was very Michael.
[00:09:00] Speaker D: My wife Tracy was reluctant to book a river cruise. It wasn't what we wanted, but with the DCL podcast cruise, it's like, well, we're going to do it.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: That was the whole strategy right there. He didn't try to talk her out of the fear, he just booked the trip and he knew the fear would be surrounded by friends and he'd let the peer pressure take over and do its thing. Honestly, Michael, elite marriage, work, buddy. Even Tracy acknowledged in her own way, Michael had the winning strategy here.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: Why did we book this? Well, because it was the DCL Duo Podcast 2.0 Cruise. I don't know that I would have taken the leap had it not been, but I knew that I was in safe hands with Sam and Brian and knew that no matter what happened or how everything went, that we would be with friends.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: So, so, and make no mistake about it, Michael knew what he was buying. He knew what he was getting himself into. The specific thing a riverboat cruise will give you that no big ocean ship can.
[00:10:00] Speaker D: I was looking forward to it because it gets us to ports and cities, especially in Europe, that we won't get to. Otherwise, there's no way for a large ocean line cruise to get into these ports.
So we were able to explore Amsterdam, which I had been to before, but Tracy had not, and through other cities in the Netherlands, Holland and Belgium as well. So we got to places we haven't been before, and you couldn't get on an ocean cruise.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Of course, Michael's right. And it's the whole pitch of a river cruise in one breath. A megaship holds thousands of people. As we mentioned earlier, it can only kiss the edge of a continent. A rowboat threads into it down the middle of countries, tying up in a town square or at least close by, near enough to walk off the gangway and buy a waffle. This Holland and Belgium itinerary is one of the newest offerings from abd, and it does exactly what Michael's describing. We went to Amsterdam, Ghent, Bruges, Gouda, Howdah, if you might recall from our last episode, places no ship with a water slide will ever reach. So was it worth it for the woman who almost stayed home? Here's her verdict. And listen for the idea I mentioned at the top of the show. Because the biggest theme of this whole episode arrives first and quietest out of the mouth of the person I least expected to say it.
[00:11:31] Speaker C: So, and the like I said. The excursions and the ABD guides were Disney quality, as always, top notch.
Just really enjoyed the time and this is not a place that I maybe would have chosen to come to, you know, Europe for.
But I'm so glad that we did because it was such a wonderful experience and I just feel like smarter and like, like just, you know, I just. Anytime that I can travel and learn about a different culture and a different country and how they live, I think it makes how I live in the United States better.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: So there you have it. The pool girl went on the trip she didn't even want to take and came home saying it improved the life she'd left behind. That's the sentiment that I was handed by almost every person I talked to on this trip. And just so you didn't miss it there at the top of Tracy's answer, she mentioned those adventure guides again, something we're going to come back and talk a bit more about at the end of the show. But Michael also brought him up on the river cruise.
[00:12:36] Speaker D: We had five guides for on this cruise. There were 119 people and we actually did get to talk to each of them individually and felt like they got to know who we were, which I'd say that was probably the most surprising of thinking that they could manage.
And it wasn't just us, it wasn't our behavior towards them. They were genuinely that way with everyone. I think the five of them each got to know all 119 individual people on the cruise or at least got to know the individual families that were on the cruise.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Five guides, 119 travelers, everyone feeling personally known by the end of the week. So Michael's little aside, they knew all of us. Isn't him being generous?
Because that was our experience too. And the experience of almost everyone we've talked to who's done an Adventures by Disney Trip. Keep those five people in the back of your mind again. We're going to come back to them a little bit later.
For now, I just want to wrap up with Tracy's verdict again. The self proclaimed pool girl decided to take a trip, not a vacation. So would she do it again?
[00:13:53] Speaker C: It's funny you should mention whether or not we'll book another ABD cruise, because yes, yes, I think we will. And I will say, and I'm gonna be really like 100 honest here, keep it or don't, whatever.
Would I do it without friends? Maybe.
But doing it with friends makes it 300% better. So we will definitely be doing another abd river cruise. I mean, the nicest part about it is they take care of everything.
We don't have to think about. It's not like a Disney trip where you have to plan your fast passes and plan your, you know, all of the thing. When do I need to rope drop this day? Do I not need to rope drop this day? You can choose your own adventure. You can go on the excursions, you don't have to go on the excursions. You can eat the steak, you don't have to eat the steak. You can eat the chocolate, which I just did, or you don't have to eat the chocolate. But it, everything is laid out for you. It's planned, it's done. You. It's literally like zero anxiety, zero worry about what you're going to do and what the plans are. They're already done.
So it makes for a really easy vacation.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: And there you have it, A resounding yes, we would do it again with friends.
Spoiler alert. We have it on good authority Tracy and Michael will be setting sail next summer on another European river with friends.
Stay tuned. We'll be right back.
All right, welcome back. Once again, we've arrived at Act 2.
Would you like a bracelet?
If Tracy is the traveler, you have to gently coax out of her shell. Our next traveler was apparently born without one. Cindy's from Vancouver, Washington. Her Disney resume is frankly intimidating. 20 Disney cruises, four adventures by Disney trips, and this her first time on a river. She'll tell you she came for the chocolate, and I believe her. Because Belgium is not a place that messes around about chocolate.
[00:15:58] Speaker E: The first reason was because it was the DCL Duo podcast cruise, and that's what got me interested. And then I saw that a good portion of it was chocolate, and that's one of my favorite things, so couldn't say no to chocolate.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: But chocolate's the COVID story.
Cindy doesn't really travel for the food or the sights or the boat. Cindy travels for people, and she has developed over 20 some cruises, a devastatingly effective piece of technology for meeting them. She makes friendship bracelets.
[00:16:32] Speaker E: My daughter is a swiftie, and so when I went to the ERAS tour with her, we all made bracelets. And you say I'm crafty, but I'm generally not a crafty person. I don't. So I don't do that kind of stuff.
I've always wanted to have something to pixie dust on the cruises, so I thought, I'll make them for cruises.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: If you missed the Taylor Swift friendship bracelet phenomenon for about two years, an entire generation showed up to concerts with armfuls of little beaded bracelets to trade with total strangers. Cindy went to the ERAS tour with her daughter, clocked the whole ritual, and thought this.
But on boats, she now shows up to a cruise with a bag of them. Some say the ship's name, some have travel quotes she Googles.
And then she does the part that actually matters, which is she gives them away, including, crucially, to people who look like they're having a hard day.
[00:17:25] Speaker E: Yeah, that's part of it. You know, getting to talk to people and more on the rundisney side. You know, I'll put a carabiner with a bunch of them hanging from my running belt, and people will notice them when they go by and say something. And sometimes you see somebody struggling, and it's nice to just tap them on the shoulder and say, would you like a bracelet? And sometimes it will cheer people up when they're really struggling, and I like to do that.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Remember Bree's line at the top of the show about how much we all really have in common? Bri says it like a philosophy.
Cindy uses it like a tool.
She sees a struggling stranger, taps him on the shoulder, and hands him a bracelet she made, which it's all the same idea, except you can hold it in your hand.
She's not theorizing about human connection.
She's manufacturing it. She's making it one bracelet at a time, off a carabiner on her running belt. And the reward for being that kind of person is that the whole world kind of leans in toward you. On a river cruise, you get to sit with new people every night, which for a lot of us, me included, if you've listened to this show for very long, is a low grade social anxiety nightmare. But for Cindy, it's basically Christmas morning.
[00:18:39] Speaker E: I really like that you sit with someone different every night. You know, I enjoy regular cruises where you sit with people, get to know them over the cruise. But I've really enjoyed meeting lots of people on this trip. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know where it comes from because my mom was definitely not like that. My mom was, you know, more shy. She would talk to people and be very friendly, but she wouldn't be outgoing.
Our son is very outgoing, like I am. He, I mean, he went to University of Washington. He knew everybody. We were, we went up one time and we're walking down the ave and everybody knew him. He knew everybody.
My brother is like that. So maybe there's something in the family.
My dad passed away pretty, when I was pretty young, so. But he was also an outgoing, friendly person.
This morning at breakfast, the couple that we sat with, we talked to them in the lounge the first day, and we've crossed paths with them a couple times. It's Rachel and Dana, and Dana rides bikes. So he said he didn't want to leave his wife as a bike widow the whole trip. But one of the excursions, she said, can I come along with you guys? So she did. And we had breakfast with them this morning. And you know, we have a family business. And she was talking about her family business. You know, her dad had a business and she and her brother ran it. So it was really interesting to talk to them about, you know, just their lives because I always like meeting, meeting new people. It. It's a lot, a lot of fun for me.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Cindy doesn't meet people and just leave with the surface level, understanding the small talk about the weather that we, we all engage in when we're. When we have nothing else to say. She comes home with the actual texture of other people's lives. She meets them, she gets to know them, she enjoys it. She flies all the way to Belgium and finds over a breakfast of eggs a stranger who runs a family business exactly like the one she runs at home. That's Bree's thesis again. You go all the way around the world to discover how much the person across the table is just you. Cindy simply gets there faster than the rest of us because she leads with the bracelet and skips straight to the good part. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Cindy also raise those guides.
[00:20:51] Speaker E: Once again, I haven't taken tours with other tour companies, but I would say the Disney level of service, it's like I never feel that I have to worry that I'm not going to be taken care of. Even today. We decided to stay in town after the morning excursion since it was shortened because of the delay.
And Gabby Gate, you know, had us get the pin for, you know, where we were supposed to meet.
And I got confused because we were in this one square and the name was very close to the pin. And so I went through the WhatsApp group and figured out who she was and said, is this Gabby? This is Cindy, and I think I might be lost.
And she messaged me back and said, don't worry about it. And I found the right place. And then she texted me back and said, we're not there yet.
Did you find it? And I said, well, I found a bunch of other people from the ship. So we're either all in the right place or the wrong place.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Three words from a guide named Gabby. Don't worry about it. And a lost traveler in a strange square stops spiraling. Remember that name. She's the reason this episode has a fourth act. But we're not there yet because it wasn't just Gabby. Cindy wanted me to know it was all of them.
[00:22:06] Speaker E: All of the other guides have just been amazing, you know, and you just have a little conversation with them. They tell you a little bit more about themselves.
They're seem genuinely interested about you.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: Two different travelers, Tracy and now Cindy, have provided entirely unprompted testimonials about these guides. Tracy felt known by them. Cindy got rescued by one. I know. I keep noticing them and then moving on.
Hang in there. One more act, then I promise we're going to hit this topic head on. For now, I want to wrap us up with Cindy's final verdict.
Would she do this again?
[00:22:46] Speaker E: I would do another river cruise, just with my experience so far.
I do like the smaller ship. There's probably two. I would love to do a Christmas market.
And then I know Mike for history would love to go to Normandy.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: So there we have it. Two acts down, two resounding yeses to doing this again.
But on our next act might find a little bit of a mixed reaction.
Stay tuned.
All right, welcome back. One more time. We've come to Act 3 of this show, not nauseatingly Disney.
Now we're going to open the lens all the way up because our third conversation wasn't with one traveler or two. It was with six. The Burns family of Concord, New Hampshire. Shawn, his wife Bri, and four kids from 9 to 21. And they are the beating heart of this episode for one simple reason. I put a single microphone on the table, asked one family one question, did you like it? And got six different answers, at least two of which openly contradicted each other. It's the most honest focus group I've ever run.
[00:24:05] Speaker F: Hi, I'm Sean Burns. We're a group of six. We're from Concord, New Hampshire, and this is our first ABD cruise, and we've done about 12 of the Ocean Disney cruises, and we are DVC members and go to Disney World every couple years.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: Another pretty impressive resume when you consider that Sean is taking a family of six on all of these trips.
So why did he choose to book this Adventures by Disney?
[00:24:32] Speaker F: Well, specifically, it was because it was the DCL Duo cruise. We've never done a river cruise before. We thought that'd be an interesting experience. My parents love river cruises, so I was like, let's try a river cruise. And we had. We were interested in the concept of ventures by Disney. Been kind of eyeballing a China one because we thought it'd be a really good way to see China in a safe way. So, like, hey, this would be great. We can do two birds, one stone. We'll try out the river cruise. We'll see what Adventures by Disney is all about. And it works for our summer schedule.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: So 12 Disney cruises deep. And using our podcast cruise as a scouting mission for China. Respect, Sean.
But before we get to whether the kids liked it, and I cannot stress enough how honest these children are about to be, I need to give you the single greatest cautionary tale I've ever heard. Because Sean is a planner. Sean plans. And there was one afternoon on a different trip when planning met its match.
[00:25:26] Speaker F: You know, I had a bad experience when we were in Paris trying to get on the trains.
I won't go into details of that.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: Oh, but Sean's family wouldn't let him stop there.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Oh, we got scammed upside down in round one.
[00:25:37] Speaker G: Oh, that one.
[00:25:38] Speaker F: So we're rushing, we're behind schedule, and we're trying to get to Disneyland Paris.
And my oldest, who's much more experienced traveler, and I, she goes to one of the ticket booths. My wife and I get line for the ticket counter, and this dude walks up on me to assist.
And I was like, okay, assist. And what he ends up doing is he sells us. So in Paris, you Buy how many zones you want to ride the train for. And we needed in theory to ride the train for four zones or five zones. And he sold us 11 zones.
He's moving very, very quickly and the lesson is a, if he doesn't have a uniform on, don't listen to him.
And there's a lot of little things, but it's like, you know, we were in a rush to get, to get to Disneyland Paris. He was like rushing the process. So she was like, hey, wait, I don't understand how he wanted to use his credit card to pay for it and then get past three afterwards. Like, what if I just walked away after he put his credit card in? Like. But even on the way back we thought we had bought like an all day pass because it was kind of expensive, like 30, 30 Euro a person. What we spent.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: Well, he said that we were, he
[00:26:35] Speaker F: basically told us that play the video. He sold us one for like 11 zones.
And so it wouldn't work obviously to go home. So we go to the machine and the machine doesn't offer us a ticket to get back to whatever. So we're trying to figure out how to. There's nobody around to help figure out how. So we're trying to figure out, okay, how many zones do we need to cross? And if we just either it was a learning experience, we could have ubered it, probably cheaper than all the train tickets.
[00:26:58] Speaker C: Be clear, that was not Adventures By.
[00:27:00] Speaker B: No, no, that was Adventures by Burns. And it was a fail.
[00:27:04] Speaker F: It was a fail.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: I want that on a T shirt, by the way. Adventures by Burns. But I'm gonna hold a laugh for one second because the story here is secretly the whole argument of this episode.
That's what travel is. When nobody's carrying you, you sweating behind schedule in a train station in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, handing cash to a stranger who's claiming to assist you, who's moving very quickly.
Everyone has been there, Every one of us has been in some version of that moment. Which is exactly why Sean noticed the difference the moment he stepped on board our ABD river cruise.
[00:27:43] Speaker F: But as they really expect, I mentioned by Disney, like you get, they help you get off the boat, the guide guides you to the, to the bus and make sure you don't hit by a bicycle because in Belgium, Netherlands area, there's lots of bicycles around that want to hit you. There's a very funny joke that made the apex predator and I agree with that.
So I like that hand holding. And I think we went to A strange land like China or Asia or somewhere else. I'd really appreciate that kind of help.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Just as an aside, Sean is not wrong about those bikes.
The Netherlands actually has more bicycles than people.
Genuinely, the bikes outnumber the people and they do not consider you, the gawking pedestrian, to be their problem. So the apex predator of the Dutch city street is the commuter on two wheels. And the guide's job description quietly includes, keep the Americans from wandering into the bike lane. That's that guides thread again. And this is the third act in a row that someone's brought them up without me asking.
We're almost there. But first the kids and abd.
[00:28:41] Speaker G: Pretty cool.
[00:28:42] Speaker H: So I don't particularly like cruises or boats, but I did enjoy the excursions on this trip because they didn't feel like, nauseatingly Disney, because I get enough of that at home. And so I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I will say that I was almost kind of like dreading it a little bit, but I really, really enjoyed the excursions.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: It didn't feel nauseatingly Disney.
That's Eloise. She's 16 and she's saying that with full conviction on a Disney cruise podcast.
I would sooner cut my own name from this episode than lose that line.
And she's actually paying the trip a real compliment in the most 16 year old way possible.
She's saying it felt like the actual world, not a themed version of it. Not what she gets back home.
[00:29:41] Speaker H: As, as, as my older sister was talking about. Ghent was absolutely amazing.
Definitely go to Ghent. Do not go to Bruges.
Bruges is kind of boring. I've been there before and it's like, you know. One of our adventure guides describe Bruges as the adult version of Ghent, and I have to disagree very enthusiastically because that was not the case at all.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Ghent was one of the stops on our sailing and now we opted to go to Bruges. And for the record, Eloise is picking a genuinely spicy fight here. Bruges is one of the most beloved postcard cities in Europe.
Perfectly preserved medieval canals. The whole thing looks hand painted. Everyone told us to go to Bruges, so telling people to skip Bruges is a legitimately controversial travel take, and Heloise delivered it without blinking.
Visit the castle in Ghent. The castle she's defending, by the way, is Gravenstein, a stone crusader's fortress with a literal moat right in the middle of the city.
On the should we skip the moat castle? For the pretty canals debate, Eloise has chosen the castle and Honestly, good for her.
[00:30:58] Speaker H: So I'm honestly not a fan of this cruise.
I feel like it just doesn't have like the activities that you'd expect it to have.
And I feel like it's always like you go do an excursion and then you go back to a boat and then you sit around for two hours and then you eat and then you go to bed and then it kind of just feels like repetitive in that way.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: That's Ben, he's 12 and he came to file a complaint and I don't know if you heard it in there, but the whole family kind of reacted with a what?
I'm keeping every second of Ben's review because his honesty is the thing that makes everything the grown ups are going to say in a minute actually mean something.
A why we Travel episode where all the kids gaze mistily at the sunset is an advertisement. A 12 year old telling you a river cruise is excursion boat, sit around, eat, bed, repeat.
That's a family. He's also, for what it's worth, not entirely wrong. The rhythm of a river cruise is genuinely gentler than a 12 year old's nervous system is built for. We had our own concerns about bringing Nathan on his first river cruise and this one. So Ben's feedback wasn't entirely surprising, but it wasn't shared by everyone.
And I think if I played this tape for Ben when he was a little older, he might have a different take. In fact, we're going to hear from Ben's oldest sister here in a minute and I suspect with a little perspective and time Ben might share her take on it. But before we get there, um, yeah,
[00:32:37] Speaker G: I think it's actually a pretty good cruise because like, I'm not Disney obsessive but like I feel like it can be good.
On my first junior adventure night.
I am not really like the social person if I don't know them.
So I was honestly just sitting with Ben, but then, well, he left. So then the adventure guides, they let me sit at their table because I didn't really want to sit at the other tables.
And so like, yeah, that was awesome because like I got a bond with them and like, yeah, so that's why I think they're awesome.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: That's Leona. She's the youngest in the Burns family, all of nine years old. And notice where she put the credit. Not the castles, not the chocolate, but the guides who made room for her, the guides who pulled her up to the table to make her feel included, the guides who turned what could have been not such A great night for Leona into one of her favorite memories from the cruise.
Last up is the oldest of the Burns children, Daede. It's a little unfair to call Daede a child. She's an adult. She's 21, a senior at Northeastern. And this matters because she's traveled seriously on her own all over Europe. She's not a kid anymore who gets dragged along. She's a young adult who could have spent her summer literally anywhere and chose a boat with her 16 year old sister, her 12 year old brother and her 9 year old sister.
[00:34:11] Speaker I: I definitely am. I'm the only one of the few people my age, I think, on this boat. It's mostly either children or adults, but I'm honestly used to that. My parents had me on the younger side, so I'm used to hanging out with either the adults or the little kids.
[00:34:27] Speaker A: So what's Dae Dae taking home with her from this trip?
[00:34:30] Speaker I: I think at this point with my travels, I've already understood that there's so many different ways that you can live a satisfying life. That no matter where you are in the world, you can have highs and lows and it doesn't matter where you are. Like you really have to find happiness within what you have within your life.
I think it's so different how every person in the world lives.
And I'm so grateful to spend the time with my family that I have. I think especially as I'm kind of closing out like the end of my college years and like I've gotten really to spend this last summer almost with my family. And that's been so special, just knowing that I might not have that opportunity again.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: That's what the miles have bought her. All the trips, all the travel. Not a wall of passport stamps, a bunch of souvenirs, but a way of seeing. See the world enough, enough times. And you come home knowing that a good life isn't hiding in some other city and that the specific people at your own table right now are not a permanent arrangement. And I think that's exactly what Sean and Breeze are hoping their kids will take away from these experiences. It's what we hope our own son takes away from these moments.
[00:35:42] Speaker F: Well, travel experience in general. I want them to have memories of things they did with their siblings so that when they come together 30, 40, 60 years from now, they'll say, remember when we were on that adventures by Disney and we got to see the castle or we got to have the waffles in Brussels or whatever it was. They have these like shared experiences that they can reminisce about many decades from now.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Honestly, for those of us when we travel with kids, I think Sean just said everything we hope our kids take away from travel. Bree said it at the top of the show.
Sean sang it in the middle of the show.
And here's the whole thing. Sean and Brie aren't buying their kids a vacation.
They're buying them a version of the world they can't get from a screen. And underneath it, a bank of shared memories they'll be drawing on at each other's weddings and other significant events. And the proof it's working isn't the sunset or the castle. It's day Dae 21. Already fluent in it. But it's also Benjamin, 12 years old, arms folded, not a fan. Cause here's the sneaky part of Sean and Bree's long game. Benjamin gets the memory. His siblings get the memory. Whether he enjoyed it or not, he's in the memory. He doesn't get a vote on that. That may be a drawback for Ben, but it's a beautiful one.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: That's actually easy. There was one night, just at dinner, and it was the night before Family Feud, and we, our kids are a little bit competitive, probably like their parents. And they didn't know how Family Feud was going to be run. It's actually include, like everyone gets a chance to go up front, but they were really, really thinking, we're going to game the system. Somehow we're going to figure this out. We're going to end up being the family that is competing at the front. We're going to knock it out of the park. They were making up pract questions, and we were just. Just rolling with laughter. And it was.
And it was just so great. It was just a great moment. Yeah.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: A whole family inventing practice questions for a game. They'd completely misunderstood the rules of laughing so hard they can barely get the questions out around a dinner table on a boat somewhere in Belgium. That's the thing. Thirty years from now, when these four kids are scattered across the country, that's the night one of them brings up. Sean paid for a river cruise, but what he actually bought his family were memories.
We'll be back in just a second. Stay with us.
All right. Welcome back one last time. We've reached the final act of our show, act for the Best form of Education.
Four times now, across three conversations, our travelers had pointed at the same people. Without my even asking, Leona described them this way.
[00:38:33] Speaker G: The adventure. Guys, they're awesome.
Especially if you've got them on your good side.
But no matter what, they're still pretty awesome.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: I think Leona picked the perfect word and way to describe some of the most important people in this.
The adventure guides. Four times now, across three conversations, our travelers have pointed at the same people without my ever asking. The adventure guides. The five people who somehow learned all 119 names. The guide who texted Cindy, don't worry about it.
The guides who walked us past those bikes to make sure we didn't get taken out by apex predators.
The ones who pulled a shy 9 year old up to their table. This is the thing I told you
[00:39:19] Speaker J: to watch for throughout the show.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: So for the last act, we stop looking at the trip and we take a look at one of the people who carries it. Her name is Gabby.
[00:39:30] Speaker K: Yeah, well, my name's Gabby. I am originally from Los Angeles, California, but now I live in the great state of Tennessee in Nashville. And this is my 11th season with adventures by Disney. So I started with the class of 2016 and have been going strong ever since. ABD was my first Disney job.
I found out about it when I was studying hospitality and tourism for my undergraduate degree, and somebody came in and presented Adventures by Disney as an opportunity in the hospitality and tourism industry. That was unique and fun and exciting, and I kind of had my heart set on it. The second I heard about it, I was enthralled. I grew up a Disney kid because I'm originally from la, so I grew up going to Disneyland. I watched Peter Pan every single morning. I wanted to travel. Travel.
So when they presented that job, it was something that I was always so interested in doing. And I'm just lucky that they allowed me the opportunity to be a part of the team, to be honest.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: And, yeah, a kid from Los Angeles who watched Peter Pan every single morning and grew up to fly people around the actual world for Disney. If that's not a clean narrative arc, I don't know what is.
And she can tell you the exact moment it clicked.
[00:40:41] Speaker K: Honestly, it was probably after training. I don't even think. I hadn't even started, but I had a great guide class. We all went down to Orlando and we did Disney University and we were doing the training, we did traditions, and, you know, Mickey came out with, like, the name tags and the hats and people were crying and I was like, this is so me. Like, this is exactly like where I wanted to be. Because it means something, you know, it means something to so many people. It's nostalgic, it's emotional.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: So we asked Gabby the same question we'd been asking everyone. What do people actually get out of this? And where the travelers had circled the answer, Gabby walked straight to the center of it because she'd had 11 years to think about it. And not surprisingly, for someone who does this 40 weeks a year, she summed up the whole thesis of the show just so nicely.
[00:41:30] Speaker K: Okay, so I believe that traveling is the best form of education, and I also believe that it's the best bonding experience that people can have. So the fact that I get to be a part of that, no matter where we are, is very intrinsically satisfying for me.
I see families have these moments that I know I can see it in real time happening that they'll always remember for years and years to come. And it makes me feel privileged to be a part of something like that. And adults learning new things is just as exciting as kids learning new things. It's just all a part of our process. Right. And I feel like at the end of the week, I'm sending my guests back out to, you know, into their homes and back to our country even better than before, which is. It's something that I really admire.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: Every traveler in this episode has handed me a piece of that. Tracy said the trip makes how she lives better. Bri and Sean talked about how much people have in common and how much they wanted their kids to learn about that firsthand. Dae Dae even said there's so many ways to live a good life.
And Cindy, who travels to meet people, found the adventure guides to be some of the most engaging she met on the trip. And now here's Gabby, who's taken that whole idea and built a life out of it. And then Gabby did the thing that made me realize she's not merely great at her job, she's something rarer than that. She started telling us stories.
I'm going to give you two, because I think they're some of the best tape we've ever collected on this show, and because they are the demonstration of what Gabby is hoping to achieve with each of her guests.
[00:43:06] Speaker K: There was a moment where I was working our Central Italy trip, which is hugely popular, right? And there was an older gentleman. He had been married to his wife for, I want to say, almost 50 years. And we were in Tuscany at this farm that we go to. We do pasta making and olive oil making, and we have this really beautiful farm to table lunch. And he comes up to me and my co guide, and he's like, can I talk to you, to you guys? And you know, at first we're like, nervous. We're like, oh my gosh, what's happening? But he said, my first proposal to my wife did not go as I wanted it to go. Like I had something planned and it got derailed and I would love a chance to do it again, but in a really beautiful place like this, you know, with San Gimignano in the background and the rolling hills and the sunshine. And he said, do you think you could help me set up a proposal for my wife?
And I was like, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry.
And we were like, of course.
So we helped him kind of set up this surprise where he brought her out onto the, like the veranda with a view and took her ring off and got down on one knee and asked, asked her to be his bride again and was like, I hope I've never given you cause to regret it. I just wanted to give you the proposal that you always deserved.
I know we, like, we look back and of course all the women are like, I'm like tearing up, like thinking about it. And all the men are like, kind of angry. They're like, please don't expect this in 50 years, you know, 50 years married.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: And a guest wanted a do over on the one moment he felt he'd fumbled. And to pull it off, he needed a place beautiful enough and two adventure guides willing to become co conspirators on an afternoon in Tuscany. That's not being a tour guide, that's a stranger. Trusting Gabby and her fellow guides with one of the most tender things a person can ask for. But Gabby had one more story up her sleeve, and it's the one that stayed with me the most.
[00:45:01] Speaker K: Oh, yes. We had a guest who. This is another Italy story. I promise more magic happens outside of Italy. But this one also stayed with me. She was 92 years old, traveling with her daughter and her grandchildren. And her parents were from Italy and they immigrated to the States, United us, but had never been able to bring their children back to Italy. So it was her first time in like the birthplace of her parents.
And we have our exclusive after hours Vatican tour where we get to go into the Vatican museums by ourselves, go into the Sistine Chapel by ourselves. So we get to the doors of the Sistine Chapel and we had told the guards and our local expert, who's amazing that we have this woman who it's a special thing for her to be here and it's very meaningful. And they let her open the doors to the Sistine Chapel. And she, I'm gonna tear up again. And she, and she walked in and you know, we have to be respectful. So everybody was doing the golf clap, like, yay. You know, we get to open the doors. And she said, I wish my parents could have seen me do that. And then the guard looked at her and was like, they did see you do it. So of course everybody starts crying.
Yeah, really beautiful moment.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: A 92 year old woman opens the doors of the Sistine Chapel and the country her parents left and never managed to bring her back to. And a Vatican guard tells her they were watching. And Gabby is the person standing three feet away who made that moment exist.
Traveling is the best form of education and the best bonding experience people can have. When Gabby said that she wasn't reciting a brochure, she was giving us her job description.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the guides don't just take care of their guests, they take care of each other. They're just built that way.
[00:46:46] Speaker K: Well, we have to, we have to be close. Honestly, we were together pretty much 247 on these trips.
Me personally, I've bonded with quite a few of my co guides. You would be surprised how someone can be scorched onto your soul after even just one trip of working with them so much closely and getting to know all of our guests together. I have quite a few that I talk to on a very regular basis even if I haven't worked the destination in a while. I have FaceTime dates with my colleagues in Europe and Asia and Africa and it's, it's amazing. The American guides are really supportive, I believe, of each other. We, we help each other out if we're going to a destination for the first time and we would like their perspective and their notes. They give us their experiences, their feedback, tips and tricks that, you know, even just were like, where do I do laundry? You know, like, where do I do this? Or like, where do you go just to have fun? Or what's a restaurant that you like that I could recommend to guests, you know, that I haven't been able to try yet. It's a really nice network. And since we also have very similar lives, we tend, we tend to be friends. Like, I've traveled with my co guides before, off the clock because we know we're not working, you know, this time together it's not as busy. I've gone to Australia with some of my co guides before.
Yeah, it's a, it's a good family and there's not a ton of us. You know at the end of the day, so it's fun.
[00:48:10] Speaker A: If you haven't been on an EBD before, you might not know it, but the adventure guides all carry these bags, these backpacks, we call them Mary Poppins bags, because without fail, whatever you need seems to just pop out of one of those bags.
So we wanted to ask Gabby what's always in hers.
[00:48:30] Speaker K: My first aid kit, I always have. If I have nothing else in there, which I never do, I always have something else in there. But my first aid kit is super important.
Chargers I always have.
And tied pins I always have.
[00:48:50] Speaker I: Yeah.
[00:48:50] Speaker K: I feel like those are probably the three most important things that I like to keep on me at all times, because, you know, we deal with a lot of kids.
You know, chocolate gets everywhere. Pasta sauce gets everywhere. Tide pins are huge. We just want to make. Safety is Disney's number one key. So if I can help somebody feel more comfortable in any sort of medical way, I want to have that.
Yeah. And people, our devices are huge. Like, I hate to admit this, even me, if my phone is dying, I'm like, oh, my gosh. Just panicking. So if I can have cords or extra charges for someone who maybe has taken a million phones, photos and would like to take a million more and they need a charge, I like to have that for them as well.
[00:49:26] Speaker A: Honestly, the bags that the guides carry are kind of the embodiment of the whole thing here.
They always want to make sure you're taken care of, that you're having a good time, that you're enjoying the moment. They don't want you to worry about whether your phone isn't charged enough to get a photo of that thing you're looking at that is just right there in front of you.
They're there all the time trying to make the trip better.
And, of course, we couldn't let Gabby go without asking her a couple more questions, since she views travel as an education.
What was her favorite trip that she got to go on with Adventures by Disney?
[00:50:03] Speaker K: I. The itinerary that I go back to every single year is Ireland.
I know, I know. People are always like, really?
I love Ireland.
There is a day where we go out into Killarney national park and we go before anyone else is there. Of course, it's exclusive. And we go out to this island called Inishvalen, and it genuinely looks like fairies live there. It's very magical.
It's an old. It's, you know, an old. There are ruins from a monastery and.
Yeah. A monastic settlement. And walking through just on your own. And seeing the lake and just the Irish countryside and the national park is something that's just very grounding.
And I think a lot of guests don't realize how special it is until we're there. And they just get to have this time to like, learn about Irish history, learn about the origins, the Celtic origins, and walk around. And I never get tired of going to Killarney national park. And I go back to Ireland every single summer so I can go and do that.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: Of course, we also had to know what's the one that got away, what's the trip she hasn't taken yet that she really wants to do?
[00:51:14] Speaker K: Yeah, my top two, I haven't experienced that, but I would love to. South Africa, it's like a crown jewel. And Japan, I would really love to do. I think that a lot of times people are a little nervous to go that far on their own, you know, and we just take such good care of our guests, you know, in every destination, but especially when you're in South Africa and you're in Japan, the itinerary is really beautiful. And honestly, every guest that I've had that has taken that trip is just raves about their experience and the guides and the local experts and everything's perfect. So that's something I would love to do. The safari and the penguins in Cape Town, I love. I really want to see those penguins in Japan. Yes. The temple, the food and I here we have a really fun sumo wrestling experience. And Japan and I would like to do that.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: And of course, we couldn't let Gabby go without asking her. So what's the difference? ABD does river cruises, they do land vacations. Is there a reason to choose one over the other? What's the difference?
[00:52:20] Speaker K: Can I say a couple of things that are the biggest difference? Okay. I think the biggest difference is, of course, the number of people that are on the river cruises versus the land trips. Because normally we're maxing out at about 40 on the land trips and the river cruises we're maxing out, I believe, about 160.
So we definitely have a bigger family for the week, which means we have more adventure guides. Normally on land trips we're only going to have two, and on river cruises we'll have four to six.
So that's definitely a different dynamic between guides and guests. And I don't think that one is better, one is worse. It's just different. You know, there are people sometimes at the end of the river cruise that I might not guide. Gotten to have spent a lot of time with. But one of my co guides could have spent a ton of time with them. So it's not all of us. Whereas on the land trip everybody spends pretty much the same amount of time with both of us and we get to know them.
So it just kind of depends.
Another big difference is your hotel room travels with you on the river cruise. I think people really appreciate that even though on the land trips we absolutely take care of your luggage, we all you have to do is just put it outside of your door and it gets brought down. We make sure everything is accounted for, it's loaded up onto our transportation, it gets delivered to your next room. So it's not like you're having to haul heavy suitcases anywhere. But I think there is something to be said about just unpacking once, putting your suitcase away and like not having to worry about it. For the river cruises those are probably the biggest, two biggest differences.
I will say a third difference too. River cruises offers like a taste of a lot more in a way where some land trips I think can be a little bit more immersive because you're staying in the cities and the hotels so you are able to, if you want to go out at night, leave. But the rivers, I mean we've been on this river for five days and we've seen so many things already.
So I feel like it just depends on what you're trying to achieve in your vacation, honestly, regardless of whether it's
[00:54:13] Speaker A: a land based trip or a river cruise.
We also just had to ask Gabby what does she hope the guests take away from the experience.
[00:54:22] Speaker K: I think something that I always want to bring to the table as a representation of adventures by Disney.
And I know this sounds strange but I want them to feel gratitude in a way where they feel I could not have done this any, any other time. This was a once, once in a lifetime experience in this place. There's no other company. I had two guides, I had four guides, I had six guides that were really got to know us and took the time to make sure that our needs were met and taken care of.
We had to do exclusive things. I wasn't just stuck on a bus the whole time. We had amazing tours. We had amazing local experts that were knowledgeable and kind and brought our Disney brand to a place where there isn't anything Disney, right? There's no Disney park and in the Netherlands or in Belgium. But we hope that you feel that Disney magic. And that's what I want. I want them to, to leave the trip saying I am so lucky that I got to do this. And yeah, just that, gratitude. That's what I aspire for.
[00:55:20] Speaker A: Gratitude. That's her goal.
Well, I can say she seems to have achieved it across every one of the people that we've talked to in this episode, including our own family.
We're deeply thankful for the memories that we were able to make on this cruise and our prior Adventures by Disney Trip. So much so we're already planning another.
So if gratitude was her goal, I think she achieved it in spades.
In the vein of gratitude, I also just want to take a moment to thank Disney Signature Experiences, Media Relations and Adventures by Disney PR for letting us sit down with Gabby and for Gabby for taking time out of her job to talk to us about the experience and share our perspectives with listeners.
I also just want to close up by saying we got the chance to talk to Gabby. We've also met a number of other adventure guides on our travels and I gotta say, as great as Gabby was, they're all kind of great. And as we sat there with Gabby with the recorder between us asking her questions and I reflected on her answers, made me realize while we take these trips to see new far flung places and learn and grow and hopefully help our son to learn and grow, you come back for the people and the adventure guides are a huge part of that and you can't really find them any place else other than Adventures by Disney.
From the DCL Duo, this is Brian. Thanks for coming with us.
[00:56:44] Speaker J: All right, that's our show for tonight,
[00:56:46] Speaker A: but thank you so much for listening.
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[00:58:58] Speaker A: The views expressed in this podcast are
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[00:59:12] Speaker C: Sam.
