This trip occurred in late April 2018. I am posting the unfinished draft, with the knowledge that I’ll never finish it, and my memory of missing details isn’t good enough to fill them in. Stay tuned for a post about our 2019-2020 Cruise of the Hawaiian Islands.
In my head, my ideal vacation involves adventure of some kind, like trekking through a rain forest, or surfing, but in reality, what a vacation destination is something to keep the kids out of adult hair for a portion of the day, which is how we ended up in all-inclusive resorts like the ones we visited in Jamaica, Mexico and Turks & Caicos. If we can get the kids looked after and they don’t pull faces as a result, we generally call it a win. The evolution of this trend was to go on a Disney Cruise – especially while our kids are young enough to get more out of character experiences. So the decision was made.
Disney as a sub-culture is something that scares me frankly. We joined a Facebook group that was devoted not to Disney, Disney Cruises, or our specific cruise route, but our actual cruise dates, and it was one of the busiest FB groups I have ever been a member of, which means too many notifications (until you turn them off) and way too much hype. I’m not a big fan of overscheduling or “over-researching” vacations – I feel that it leads to second-guessing yourself and your decision and creates anxiety. I don’t want to knock those that want to squeeze every last drop out of their vacation experience, it’s just that it’s antithetical to the kick-back-and-relax vibe I want running through my own vacation experience. So I won’t break down all the craziness that seems to be part of this cult and I’ll stick to what we did, and what we experienced and what we learned.
Getting to and on the ship was quite painless; in the Orlando airport, there are Disney signs everywhere, and as long as you know that you’re going on a cruise as opposed to Disney World amusement park, you’ll end up on the right bus. The staff are highly organized and friendly – this would become a theme throughout the trip. We had our essentials packed in a daypack, since we knew our luggage would not be accessible till later, and wanted to get changed into swim gear and start enjoying the facilities. Unfortunately, we took enough time getting oriented, including a tour of the kids’ club (known as the Oceaneer Club and Oceaneer Lab) that by the time we got to the pool deck, they had temporarily closed the pools. Cue tantrums from over-tired kids. We knew the first day and transition would be a taxing adjustment. I think we did get settled into the onboard routine fairly well.
We had a late dining rotation (8:15PM, when the kids’ nominal bedtime is 7:30), that concerned us, but ultimately we got through our meals well and the kids were good and ready for bed. Speaking of bed here was my first unexpected fact of cruise life:
1.) You sleep like a baby on a cruise ship. We had fairly rough seas but the rocking of the boat and the sound-proofing of the stateroom really enhanced the ‘getting-away-from-it-all’ isolation and peacefulness.
The assigned dining rotation kept us with the same server and same table-mates every night. Our server Jaithip (from Thailand) was wonderful – she learned the boys’ favourite drinks and had them ready by the time we sat down every night. One time I wanted to order a lobster pasta and she steered me away from it. I was a little irked because I figured I know what I like, but she brought me a small sample of the pasta alongside the alternate main course I ordered. She was right – the pasta was garbage. Now having said that, the food varied from good (the fast food on the pool deck) to very good (in the dining rooms) to excellent (in the paid restaurants).
Our table mates were a nice family that was celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary (as we will be in July) with blond boys aged 8 and 5 (to our 8 and 6), and enjoy running and triathlon. Thus was born our theory that Disney is spying on us at a level that would make Mark Zuckerberg blush. It can’t be a coincidence that Mickey Mouse’s sign-off is “See ya real soon!”…
On our second day, we got to access the pools. The kids really like just hanging around in the water, and they have movies playing on the big screen all the time so even when they aren’t splashing around, they can just hang out and watch the screen. I liked that the lifeguards would periodically clear everyone out of the pool for about 10 minutes at a time; it gave parents a chance to apply sunscreen to the kids or take them to the washrooms, or any other needed transition and we got to blame the staff/rules rather than be the bad guys ourselves. There were splash pads (which I confess I used to wash melted ice-cream off of faces and chests) and a small warm-water pool that was flush with a window overlooking the ocean (a surreal view), the “Mickey” slide was useable for 4 year-olds and up (but no adults), but the ‘Aquaduck’ was the biggest and boldest water slide. It actually hangs out over the edge of the ship and has some tunnels with lights, open-air sections, ups and downs, and generally traverses the entire perimeter of the ship. The Lightning Kid was too small to go on it, and Shark Boy needed some-one 16 or over to accompany him on one of the 2 seated dinghies – usually my wife or myself, but on at least one occasion he managed to rope the older sister of a friend he made into the job. The problem with the Aquaduck (beyond long line-ups) was it would be closed in high winds, which we had plenty of. Speaking of wind and weather, we did have some rough seas, and though I can’t say I got seasick really, it leads to unexpected fact #2:
2.) Seasickness is like being drunk. I’ve been seasick only once in my life (a tall-ship cruise on Lake Ontario – think pirate ship), and that was from continuous rocking. The rocks on this voyage came fairly unexpectedly – not a constant rhythm – and I’d sway this way or that as if I’d had too much to drink. At first, I thought it might make me throw up, but it was more like a flashback to having had that much to drink and expecting the next most obvious result than actual nausea. Once I realized that, I was pretty much out of the woods. I had some landsickness for a few days after returning.
The pools were a little disappointing from an adult perspective. The kids’ pools were too packed for an adult to swim, and in fact the only pool deeper than waist height was the ‘Donald’ pool right in front of the screen, and of course, that pool was the most full at any given time, which meant getting kicked and swum over by children. There is an adults-only area, but the pools there are also about waist height only – though there is a swim-up bar.
When we wanted to get away from the pool and not have to worry about what the kids were getting up to, we took them to the Oceaneer’s Club/Lab. This is two halves of their kids’ club; from what I could gather the lab had more autonomous time while the club had more structured activity – Shark Boy preferred the lab. There were various alcoves that had different kinds of activities and themes like crafts, or superheroes, and computer terminals and tablets and screens for movies. In some way I was hesitant about all the screen time, but between the pool deck and our excursions, the kids were probably getting enough activity and fresh air. There was even a floor of screens that could run games, straddling the line between screens and physical activity.
My kids seem to prefer free unstructured play to organized, scheduled activities, and this seemed to hold up in the time they spent in the kids’ club. Still, we tried to find special activities onboard that we could book in advance. One of these was the Royal Knight package which is like a Princess make-over for boys (traditional gender roles – whaddyagonnado?). While I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of a photo of the Lightning Kid in an Elsa (from Frozen) gown and wig, I will say that I wouldn’t consider my sons to be good candidates for make-over type activities like you find in the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique. Yet the ‘fairy godmothers’ did such a great job staying in character and selling the whole concept (the hair gel was ‘dragon snot’ that would keep dragons from being able to smell the princes), and of course, the sword and shield part of the costume was very well received by the boys.
Live shows are something that everyone raves about – I believe the Aladdin one was specifically recommended by everyone we spoke to. We only made it to one, and that one took place on the pool deck rather than the indoor theatres. Still, it was a fun spectacle with song and dance, Mickey, Goofy, Captain Hook and Smee as well as one stunt involving a rappel down the ship’s chimney stack! It was part of a whole pirate theme night that everyone dressed up for – our room was provided with bandanas, but I had packed some with eye-patches and ear-rings.
I should mention that I did go to the theatres to watch a couple of movies: I saw Black Panther once alone, then deemed it OK for Shark Boy to watch and saw it again with him. I also got to see Avengers Infinity War on its opening weekend without standing in line! It was too intense for younger kids, in my opinion.
We had 3 port stops, the first on the Dutch side of St. Maarten. We were booked into a catamaran cruise with snorkelling and a beach visit. We disembarked in Phillipsburg and with an hour or so before the Catamaran was leaving got a chance to get in the water a little bit, which I thought was a good opportunity to test out some full face mask snorkels that we had gotten at the Cottage Life show.
While they worked well initially, it seems like Shark Boy struggled with his when it came time to snorkel from the catamaran at a wreck site. I was dealing with the Lightning Kid and I hadn’t gotten a proper life vest for him; the normal vests that they hand out for snorkelling provide some floatation when inflated, but aren’t rated for non-swimmers. In the ensuing chaos, nobody could really enjoy themselves and from what I could tell there was poor visibility anyway. Luckily, the beach visit afterwards was a lot more pleasant and relaxed.
Our second port stop was in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. I went scuba diving at a wreck site that had a sordid history of drug smuggling, and the sunken ship being moved by human action and hurricanes. I got within 5 feet of a sea turtle, and saw stingrays that were at least 5 feet in diameter.