Disney Fantasy Cruise Beginner: First Time Cruise Tips
We just got back from a 7 night Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Disney Fantasy. Not only was this our first Disney cruise - it was our first-ever cruise. I did a lot of research, checked out a lot of blogs, and picked my friends' brains to make sure the cruise was as amazing as everyone says it is.
We had a great time, didn't have any issues. Here are some tips we found helpful for our cruise and some things that we could have don't different to have made the cruise even better.
Dining Preference: If you really have a preference, make sure you change this right away. In many cases, your dining seating defaults to "second seating." This is at 8:30pm, daily. Main seating is at 5:45pm, daily. We found that 5:45pm was a little too early for dinner. We prefer to eat around 6:30. But an 8:30 dinner seating is way too late for us to eat. You can change your dining preference at any time. You don't have to wait until the cruise activities booking opens up to change dining. Go to "My Disney Cruise" and click "My Reservations." There is a Dining Preference setting on this screen where you can click the "Change Preference" link to adjust the seating.
Port Adventures & Onboard Ship Booking: You really need to book these as soon as your available window opens. There are tons of free things to do on the ship, but you must have a ticket for certain activities - Princess Gathering, Anna & Elsa, Character Breakfast. And they do "sell out." If you are a first time Disney Cruiser, you can book 75 days before your departure date. Silver level is 90 days, Gold is 105 days, and Platinum & Concierge are 120 days. You do this again under the My Reservations section. I booked ours just after midnight at the 75 day mark for our first cruise. I was able to get everything we wanted - except for the private cabanas on Castaway Cay. I've heard, that unless you are really really really lucky, and happen to catch a cabana booking right after someone canceled theirs - that only the Concierge people are able to get these.
Kids Club Registration: Make sure you complete the On-line Check In section as well when you are booking your activities. I missed this originally and one of my friends, who cruises Disney all the time, pointed it out. This is where you provide all of your information for the trip. It also allows you to pick a port arrival time (everyone says earlier is better), and it allows you to register your kids for kids club. When we checked in at the main terminal, because we had her pre-registered, they gave her the kids club magic band right away. The only thing extra we did (which wasn't mandatory) was to go to the kids club on the ship and get a lock for the band so it wouldn't fall off of her.
Free Drinks: There are free sodas, coffee, and fountain water in every restaurant on the ship as well as on Deck 11 by the pool. There are several machines on either side of the deck - with cups. The cups aren't very big. We found them fine-enough for hanging out by the pool. But we brought water bottles to fill up for night and for our excursions off the boat. I also used mine when I ran (around Deck 4 and the Castaway Cay 5k). These are the bottles my daughter and I used from S'well. They can be purchased from Athleta here and here.
There is, of course, the option to pre-order a case of water for the boat and have it waiting in your room for you. Water, along with alot of other things, can be purchased directly from Disney's site, but you have to call them or fax to place the order. I know...sooo 1980, right? Anyway, the catalog is under "My Disney Cruise" look at the bottom of the drop down menu under "Before You Go" and you will see a link for "Gifts & Amenities." The bottled water is about half way down the page. Now...if you're willing to pay a 500% markup on water...here you go.
This image is not a joke. It's a straight screenshot from Disney's site:
First of all - it's Dasani. Um, gross. But most importantly is that you would pay $40 for a case of water that would cost you less than $4 at Walmart. I would suggest stopping at the grocery store before port to grab water if you want to have bottled on hand.
AquaDuck (Huge over ship waterslide): There is a line for this thing all day during the At Sea days. We found that the best time to ride it, with < 10 minute wait was embarkation day (all day), any time after dinner, during port days when everyone is off the ship, and especially, your last night on the ship. We didn't attend the See Ya Real Soon party, and opted for the pool, slides, and funnel vision movie instead. We were 3 of like 20 people up there. You do need to ride the AquaDuck during the day and at night - for 2 totally different experiences.
Snacks: Well, it's a cruise - there's food pretty much everywhere. We ate breakfast & lunch most of the time at Cabanas and a bit into afternoon snack time as well :) While the menu changes day to day, it's only slight changes. Overall it's the same everyday. Towards the end of the cruise, we were seeking out something different for a night time snack. We found a "secret" buffet in the adult part of the ship. I don't have any pictures of it - and it wasn't anything amazing, but it was different. Here's a map of where you can find the buffet (circled in red). Again - it's a really small sampling of food. I'm not sure of the hours for the food.
Embarkation Lunch: You don't get your dining rotation until they give you your Key to the World card after check in. On this card, it has the dining rotation of the restaurants you'll attend each night. We had a few things we were concerned about with the rotation. We had adult dinner booked at Palo (more on that in a different post) for Thursday night, when we were at sea. Everything I read said not to miss Art of Animation meals. So we first had to check to make sure we didn't have a conflict - which we didn't. (Whew!) But we were going to miss our dinner at the Enchanted Garden that night. Which meant we only had 1 dinner in that restaurant. So, we headed there for lunch after we boarded the ship. It wasn't crowded and we got a great seat!
Character Meet & Greet: Characters are available daily throughout the entire cruise. But if you look carefully at the schedule, each session is only 15 minutes. It seems what we found is that they will keep the queue open for the character for 15 minutes, and then they close the line - but the character will stay until that queue then empties. We found that if you arrive 10 - 15 minutes before the start of the character meet that you can score a spot at the front, or near the front of the line. Many characters are near each other, so you can then queue for another character before their line closes. It's a quick way to knock out some of your favorites!
Adult areas: Honestly, we didn't explore a lot of adult only areas. I can't comment on the bars and clubs and what not. We did spend some time at the adult pools while our daughter was in kids club. The adult pool on Deck 11 is obvious. Somehow, we didn't notice a whole additional adult pool section on Deck 13 until the second to last day of our cruise. It was much larger, and not as crowded as the adult pool section on 11. So if 11 is full, venture up 2 more flights of stairs.
Shutters Photo Package: We always pre-order the Disney photo package when we go to Disney World. I knew we needed to do this for the cruise, but was busy and never pre-purchased. If we would have repurchased it prior to the cruise, we would have saved $55. We purchased onboard for $349, but preorder was $295.95. We will ensure to pre-purchase photos prior to our next cruise :)
Rainforest Room in the Spa: This was actually the biggest disappointment of the trip. We read everywhere about how cool it was in the Rainforest section of the spa. You could prebook tickets for $16 a day to enter the Rainforest and enjoy a ton of fun showers, heated tile seats and some hot tubs. It was fine. For a one time experience. We pre-ordered tickets for 2 different days each. We only used the one day. It was very crowded and there were towels and trash everywhere. People would use the facilities and leave their body scrubs and towels on the floor, and then left. The attendants really weren't doing a good job keeping up with the traffic in the Rainforest. The showers were cool to experience once. It wasn't really that big of a deal. We probably won't book this on future trips. I wasn't really thinking and didn't take a picture of the mess. This was after the attendants walked through and finally cleaned up some of the towels and scrubs. It was all over the floor, lining the walls.
Castaway Cay 5k: Well, I'm on the fence about this experience. It was fun to do. It was hot. We did a bad job planning me running the race and then meeting up with my husband and daughter. It was ticketed to start at 9:00. So I thought it would be done and I'd be back on the ship by 10. Wrong. We all met in the Walt Disney Theater at 9. We didn't leave the theater until about 9:20. Then we had to walk to the start of the race, and then they held us for like 15 minutes before it started. The race didn't start until nearly 10. This part would vary based on your racing speed. I clock in a super fast, amazing pace of 40 minutes for a 5k. So it was 10:40 before I was done. (Though I was happy I kept my normal pace considering how hot it was). Then I purchased a race tee right after (right outside the finish line) and that took about 10 minutes, and walked back to the ship. It was 11 before I got back on the boat. It was nearly noon before we made it down to the beach as a family. This wasn't a lot of time when the beach was only opened until 4:30. In the future, unless the race is earlier than 9, or we do a better job planning family meet up - I will likely not run the race again.
Pre Cruise Travel: This is a controversial topic. Nearly everyone I talked to traveled to (or near) Port Canaveral prior to the day of the cruise. We live in Charlotte. It's a 1 hour flight from Charlotte to Orlando. We had a 7:40 morning flight out that arrived at 9:20. We had no issues, everything was on time, and we made it to the ship exactly as planned. However, I freaked myself out when I saw that everyone else was traveling at least a day prior to the cruise. Our next cruise, we are driving. Not necessarily because of this - but because of the schedule it falls in the week, we have the weekend flanking each end of the cruise and have the time to save the airfare and drive.
We enjoyed our cruise so much, we booked another one while we were on the boat. You can save 10% on cruise bookings and get onboard ship credit. We'll definitely take in our lessons learned above for our next cruise.
I hope you find them helpful!!
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