willowvacay

We had a great first day on the ship.  Before reviewing the rest of our trip below are some pictures of the ship including the main pool deck, atrium, adult pool area, etc...

After dinner we went to the nightly show.  The show on the first night was titled, “The Golden Mickeys”. It was an awards type show that featured many classic songs from Disney movies.  It was really good.  The theater was nice with ample seating on the on the 3rd and 4th floor.  

One of of my favorite things about the show was the concession areas right before you come into the theater.  You can purchase popcorn, candy, beer, wine, bottled water, etc.   

Overall Experience at the Golden Mickey’s show:  On a scale of 1-10 I would give it a 10.  The theater is large with plenty of seating, I liked being able to purchase popcorn, and the show was excellent.

On 12/12/2018 at 5:06 PM, kodesthemoose said:

Great review so far, I hope you have been enjoying the cruise.  FYI the muster stations are (of course) different for everyone so some do get to go to a theatre or other indoor area, but others are outside.

 

Thank you for your nice comments.   I’ll try and complete the review in the next few days.  

On 12/12/2018 at 6:54 PM, emjayel56 said:

What a thorough and enjoyable report... hope you are having fun

 

Thank you!  We had a great time with our friends on the trip.  We are relaxing in Orlando today before we head home tomorrow.   I will work to get the review finished ASAP.

On 12/11/2018 at 12:39 PM, zencruisers said:

Enjoying the review and pictures. Thank you.

Thank you so much.  I will do my best to complete it in the next few days.

On 12/11/2018 at 11:34 AM, PopFla said:

It makes perfect sense for the muster drill to be held at the actual location where you should go in an actual emergency. Seconds count in those situations, and all passengers should be familiar with their evacuation station, rather than having everybody make a mad rush to the theater or MDR where their briefing was held.

I agree.  

On 12/11/2018 at 9:41 AM, gometros said:

Loving the review. Curious to know more about the NCL buffet, since we've only sailed Princess, Carnival and Cunard other than DCL. You should have seen the buffet before it became Cabanas. It's a big improvement. The old buffet was simply a two-sided queue. You enter, push your tray along and exit out the back. No stations like it is now.

Thank you for the nice comment.  I will try to complete the review in the next few days.  As far as NCL is concerned it just depends what ship you are on.  The Breakaway class ships are very similar to Cabanas in that there are stations but they run along a wall in a horseshoe shape.  On the Jewel class ships there are stations that are setup that you can walk all the way around and are in different places in the buffet area.  

Dinner that evening was at Animator’s Palate.  We were introduced to our waiter, Kevin, and our assistant waiter, Yulia, as soon as we sat down.  They were great with our crew which consisted of 6 adults and 5 children.   I’ll be honest I am not always a big fan of food in MDRs on most cruise ships.  We like to frequent Cagneys or other type restaurants while cruising.

However, I will say the food at Animator’s Palate was excellent!  My wife and I both agreed this was the best MDR food we have had on a cruise.  My phone died prior to the food coming so unfortunately I do not have any pictures of it.   I cannot say enough good things about the food and service during this dinner.  

Oue tablw was not located next to a wall, but if you were lucky enough to be seated in certain  tables along the wall, Crush the turtle will come over and talk to you and your family.   I’m not sure how this works but it’s prettu cool.  

Overall Animator’s Palate experience:  on a scale of 1-10, I would give it a 9.5.  The food was very good and the service was excellent.  

After muster drill, our daughter was tired so we went back to the room before dinner, so I can’t comment on the sail away show.  As we leave ports I have always enjoyed watchinf the Pilot go from the Cruise Ship to the Pilot Boat.  I’ve seen some daring jumps from the cruise ship to the pilot boat on several of our cruises.  Nothing too daring happened on this one though.  

Below are a few pictures as we headed out of the port on our way to Nassau.

Sorry for the delay in posting.   Thought I would have more time to post on the ship. We just got off this morning and I will do my best to finish it over the next few days.

Here are so so pics of the room and the muster drill 

About the time we finished packing it was time for muster drill.  This went by quickly. In this drill you had to go outside to where your lifeboat is located.  It is a little different than some of the cruises we have been on recently where you would go to the theater or MDR for your muster drill.

After lunch we heard down to check out our room.  We were in a family veranda room.  There is more than enough room for the 3 of us.  I also liked the set by splitting the bathroom into two different rooms.  One with a sink and toilet and the other with a sink and shower/bath.  There was plenty of storage or all of our things.

Our daughter still sleeps in a crib, but I’d you were traveling with older kids the couch pulls out into a bed and there is also a Pullman bed in the ceiling.   

Our daughter took a nap while I unpacked. My wife explored the ship with her friends and won a $75.00 spa credit!  

Overall room experience on a scale of 1-10:  In comparing this room to all other regular balcony rooms I would give this room a 9-10.  It seems bigger than most regular state rooms, I like how their is a curtain to divide the room, there are a ton of shows/movies on the TV, The A/C works great, plenty of storage, and the set up of the two bathrooms is great!  

The WiFi isn’t allowing me to upload pictures right now, I’ll have to do that later. Sorry.  

Once we made it on the ship we went to Cabanas Buffet for lunch.  The experience was not any different than any other ship.  The food was typical ship buffet food.  Some people say they think it is of higher quality compared to other cruise lines.  I found it to be about the same.  Almost everything we had was decent to good.  

The lunch buffet on any ship is crowded the first day, however we  found a place to sit.  There was plenty of seating outside by the pool deck as well as outside behind the buffet on the stern of the ship.  

I didnt like the set-up of the buffet, it was in a horseshoe shape with the same food on both sides.  Itwas similar to the Carnival Breeze and can allow for longer lines and congestion.  I prefer spaced out stations like on NCL Jewel class ships.  There are two main doors in and out of the buffet, however doors on one side were locked.  This caused backups both ways going and out of the buffet.  The buffet also closes after a certain time, which was frustrating when we were trying to get our daughter a snack.  There are pizza, hot dogs, etc available to eat towards the front of the ship.  

Overall Buffet experience:  5-6 out of 10.  Nothing special, food was average.  Poor set up.  Deducted a point for not being open all day.  

My wife typically does the reviews but I decided to take over the review for this cruise.  We are a family of three traveling with two families of four.  This is our first Disney Cruise.  We have been on 10 other cruises (NCL, Royal Caribbean, and Carnival).  We have liked the other cruise lines with NCL being our favorite for a variety of reasons including:  My time dining, The Haven, and other “freestyle cruising” options.  We are curious to see how Disney compares.

When we left our home in North Central WV it was 18 degrees, needles to say we were excited to get to Orlando to enjoy some warmer weather. Prior to the cruise we stayed at the Four Seasons Resort on the Disney property.   We enjoyed the resort.  The service was excellent and the pool area was one of the best I have seen at any hotel property.

This morning, the 11 of us loaded up in a large van at the hotel and were dropped off at the cruise terminal after about an hour ride.  The cruise terminal was not busy this morning.  At the time only The Dream and one other ship were in port.  Soon after we got here the NCL Gem docked next to us.  

It was a prettey efficient drop off process, the porters quickly took our bags and we were off to the line to go through the metal detectors.  This line was pretty long, however, a cruise line employee came up to our group and said, “how would you like to go to a shorter line?”  I was worried it would be some type of trick, but she was right.  There was no line on the other side of the building.  We quickly went through the metal detectors and then we on to get our ship cards.  As soon as we got our ship cards it was time for us to board.  It was a quick and easy boarding process.  The exact opposite of what we experienced going out of NYC on the escape earlier this year.

There is a cool ship model in the terminal where you can get a picture with Mickey.  We elected to skip this so we could go ahead and get on the ship.  

Overall Check-in experience on a scale of 1-10:  I would give it a 9.  It was quick, efficient, the employees were friendly, and the large ship model was really cool.

@schmoo and @moki! Thanks! That’s so interesting. I really appreciate the info. We cannot wait for this cruise and hopefully DH loves it enough to do another

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Regardless of how long the cruise' date=' the menu is different each night.

 

As noted above, the normal rotation on a 4 night is 1223 with the second "2" being pirate night. Yes, Disney dining is different than any other line I've cruised in terms of theming.[/quote']

 

 

 

Thanks @moki. Do the dining rooms have the same menu as each other nightly? As in, do animators palate and enchanted garden serve the same dinner menu night one? Or does enchanted garden have a different menu than animators palate and it serves the same menu until a repeat night?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

As noted the rotation for most 4 night cruises is 1223. The rotational (Signature) menus will be served on nights 1, 2, & 4. The third night is Pirate night. While you are in the same dining room on nights 2 & 3, the menus will be different.

Thanks! That’s also great information to know! Thanks for sharing!

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

The rotation for a four night cruise would probably look like this, 1223.

Thanks @elka! That is so interesting. I really appreciate the answer. I feel like DCL is opening up a whole new arena of cruising questions for us.

We are taking our 19m old on a Disney cruise, and although it is our first DCL, FWIW we took her at 11 months on a Norwegian cruise and we had a great time. It is very family/person dependent whether or not the cruise will have enough to do. We are planning on bringing a few toys and just enjoying the ship and the ports. In our opinion, it is very similar to doing a land based vacation with your very small child. If you can travel well with your young one you will have a great time! IMHO its all about setting your expectations to how much or how little your child can do and if you set your expectations low you will have a great time.

Hello fellow cruisers! We are experienced cruisers but are going on our first Disney Cruise this December. We cannot wait! I have learned about the rotational dining, but my question is: do you reliably go in a specific order? I.e. if it is a 4 night cruise, can one expect to see three different restaurants the first three nights and then a repeat the 4th night? We are trying to schedule an "adults" dinner on a 4 night cruise, but don't want to miss one of the MDRs. Can we schedule for the 4th night and hit all 3 of the MDRs the preceding 3 nights?

Thanks so much for your help!

Thanks for the review! We are headed on our first Disney cruise in December and are just now getting into the planning phase for that and we are so excited :).

I hope you have a great Alaska cruise! When we went to Alaska on the NCL jewel we packed layers because thats what the majority of people recommended because the weather is variable and can change quickly. We also brought rain jackets. I am not much of a jacket wearer, but I ended up being glad I had the jacket because it did rain quite a bit off and on. We did take warmer clothes, so I had hats and a scarf, the above mentioned rain jacket, pants, and the like. But a couple of days it was very sunny mid day and then it was nice to have the lighter clothing on underneath. Also, it can be chilly/windy on board the ship, so the layers are helpful there too. Enjoy your cruise!

we did our own private tours in the med on NCL. We used Discovery Guided Tours and they were excellent. Our Guides were wonderful and we got to see all the sites we wanted to see in a short period of time. The guides were well aware of what time the ship was scheduled to leave and they knew the traffic patterns well. Obviously there are no guarantees when you use a company that is not contracted by the ship, but we figured the ports of call were also not that far away from each other and we could make it to the next one if we missed the ship. It was a non-issue for us as we never came close to missing the ship.

Yes, you are correct, as the safety of the children is what's important. I am more concerned if I can use car seats in cabs, and on shuttle buses, and the basic logistics of having them on board. I am just trying to see what others who are traveling with young children do. I didn't start cruising with my children until they were teens

Hi there! We did our first cruise with our baby this past April and she was 11 months. I had this same internal debate about the carseat. We brought ours. We used it in every cab and just waited for another cab that had seat belts if the first one didn't have any. It wasn't hard to carry around as we just brought our car seat bag we bought off amazon. It was easy and well worth it. We stored it in the room with us when on the ship. Enjoy your trip!

You will want to bring some dish soap to wash the bottles. We just did our first cruise with baby and that was super valuable (the dish soap).

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Yes two sparkling wine (one for haven, one for platinum), one bottle a piece of water for platinum, and we had one bottle in the stateroom for haven.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums