Sailing on Disney Cruise Line over the holidays has always been a dream of mine, but I didn't expect it to become a reality anytime soon due to the popularity of DCL and the astronomical holiday prices. However, we lucked out with a discounted Cast Member fare which actually made the Disney Fantasy our most affordable option over New Year's. I really wish that they had left the Christmas decorations up for the week, but I understand that they have to schedule decoration removal based on the availability of the shoreside teams. Maybe one day I'll get to go on a Merrytime Cruise and experience the ship's Christmas decor!

I first sailed on the Disney Fantasy in 2014, so it was interesting to see how the cruise compares nearly a decade later.

The rating system is based on ten components of a cruise vacation which I find important - itinerary, ship novelties, pools, activities, dining, bars and lounges, service, design and aesthetics, and stateroom.

Glad I Did/Wish I Did posts are a fun way for me to quickly share with others what worked and what didn't. It's been really helpful for us to refer back to over the years when preparing for our next cruise.

Glad I decorated our Stateroom Doors

Door decorations are very popular on Disney Cruise Line, and I'm always glad to partake. In the past, I've printed the door decorations onto magnetic sheets. This time, I made the door decorations out of metallic cardstock because I wanted Mickey's hat and shorts to be shiny and festive for New Year's. To magnetize them, I used super strong Neodymium magnets that I stuck to the paper with double-sided removable glue dots which ended up sticking to the door much better than the magnetic sheets. Because I went with fancy paper, I wouldn't say this is a cheaper way of making magnets than with the magnetic sheets, but at least this way I can reuse the magnets for our next cruise door decor.

We spent our final day of our New Year's Cruise at Castaway Cay, Disney's private island in the Bahamas. Personally, I would much rather have spent Day 6 at Castaway Cay and Day 7 at sea. After spending the day at the private island, it's a little hectic to come back and then have to pack everything up. I also wouldn't have minded a reversed itinerary where we spend the first day at Castaway Cay (that way they could take advantage of the close proximity to Florida).

Our 6th day on the Disney Fantasy was a sea day! Personally, I would prefer to spend Day 6 at Castaway Cay and Day 7 as a Sea Day..... but I suppose due to distances/routes/fuel savings, Day 6 was our final sea day.

We started the morning with breakfast at Royal Court. When you go to the dining room for breakfast/lunch, they always ask you your room number. Stove was at the podium and gave his room number as "eighty-six sixteen." The host repeated back, "eighty-six sixty?" And Stove said, "Yeah!" We all heard the mix-up, but didn't think it would be a big deal.

We had an early morning in Falmouth, Jamaica! The Fantasy arrived in port at 7:30 AM, and our River Tubing excursion departed at 8:15 AM.

I booked our excursion through Shore Excursions Group, which is the cruise excursion booking platform for Cruises Only, which is Marriott Bonvoy's cruise booking portal. As I was searching for excursions, I came across a 5-star review that really sold it to me written by none other than Boyd Shingleton (a.k.a. "Stove").

We went on this exact River Tubing excursion when we were in Falmouth in 2017 on the Norwegian Escape and had such a great time that we decided to book it again.

The Historic Falmouth Cruise Port opened in 2011. It's located 18 miles east of Montego Bay, and 59 miles west of Ocho Rios.


We were in port with Royal Caribbean's Explorer of the Seas.

On Day 4 of our New Year's Cruise, the Disney Fantasy arrived in Grand Cayman. After dealing with tender boats and a mostly closed port the week prior on our Celebrity Summit cruise, I was happy with our decision to stay on the ship today.

We started our day with 10AM brunch at Palo, one of the two adult-only restaurants on the Disney Fantasy. In the past, I've had not-so-great dinner experiences at Palo, but we really enjoyed brunch at Palo on the Disney Dream.

Good morning from Cozumel! Thankfully, the weather was looking much nicer than it had been on our Christmas Cruise just a week earlier.

I spotted a Royal Caribbean ship approaching in the distance. I think they were headed to the International Pier.

We were docking at Punta Langosta Cruise Terminal which is the older, smaller cruise ship pier in Cozumel. Disney ships typically dock at Punta Langosta. The International Pier (where we docked on the Summit) is located farther south.


We were scheduled to dock at 8:45, and planned to disembark immediately so that we could beat the crowds to the beach.

Gooooood morning! The sun was shining, and we had great weather - hooray! This view isn't a bad way to start 2023.

Rachel and I had agreed to walk Deck 4 with Judy at 8:30 AM.... pretty ambitious considering how late we were up, but somehow we made it.

It was very quiet - I think a lot of other people were sleeping in that morning.

Rise and shine, it's Embarkation Day!! (Again!)

I thought that I had allowed myself plenty of time in the morning to get ready and pack... and then I realized that all of Aaron's clean clothes were hanging everywhere since our laundry day and needed to be folded and packed - eek! The careful tetris job of packing everything made it very challenging to repack so it all fit. If I were to do it again, I'd have Aaron pack his own checked bag, rather than us sharing a checked bag. Aaron said that if he were to do it again, he would only pack his suit and brown dress shoes, and not his velvet blazer and black dress shoes, and then he wouldn't even need a checked bag.

Needless to say, everyone was waiting on me.

As we left Central Florida and headed toward the coast, it became very cloudy.

I'm not sure why, but the line of cars for the Disney Terminal at Port Canaveral is always horrendous. It's been like this since our first ever cruise in 2001. I've yet to experience anything similar with any other port/cruise line.

We were in port with the Norwegian Escape. We sailed on the Norwegian Escape over Christmas in 2017.

Ahoy! It's time for another Christmas Cruise.... and New Year's cruise review!

This year's Christmas/New Year's vacation was elaborate in both planning and executions, so in order to set the stage, I'm dedicating an entire post to the story of how our Christmas Cruise - WDW - NYE Cruise vacation came to be.

If you've been following the blog for awhile now, you probably know that it is Shinglebell family tradition to cruise over Christmas. From 2009 to 2019, my sister Rachel and our parents (a.k.a. Stove and Judy) would meet together and set sail to spend the holiday at sea. However, we introduced our boyfriends into the mix, and Christmases became more complicated. Back in 2020, Rachel and I came to the conclusion that we could alternate Christmases every-other-year with our family and our boyfriends' families. Since the cruising industry was not yet open in 2020, Rachel and I offered the first year to our boyfriends' families with the hope that cruising would return by 2021 in time for a Christmas cruise. And it did! (See my Trip Report for our 2021 Christmas on NCL Encore.)

Now on our original itinerary, the Harmony of the Seas was scheduled to be at sea today. However, due to stormy weather in the Bahamas, we skipped Perfect Day CocoCay and sailed south to Cozumel. This was unplanned Cozumel day for which Rachel made last-minute reservations for Mr. Sancho's.

I really enjoy every cruise that I take and consider them an excellent vacation from "the real world." However, people often ask me to compare different cruise lines and ships, and I often find myself at a bit of a loss because I have wonderful memories from all of them. Starting with my previous cruise on the Carnival Breeze, I have created a rating system based on ten components of a cruise vacation which are important to me - itinerary, ship novelties, pools, activities, entertainment, dining, bars+lounges, service, design+aesthetics, and cabin. I have rated the Disney Fantasy 7-Day Western Caribbean cruise taken on May 10, 2014 on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest possible ranking) in all ten categories to come to an overall percentage or cruise rating.

Sometime while on the cruise, Max asked if I was going to be biased towards Disney.  The honest answer is absolutely yes.  I love Disney.  I grew up watching Disney movies and visiting Disney Parks.  I have a Disney Visa credit card, an annual pass to Walt Disney World, and a Mickey Mouse-themed bedroom.  I cannot help but to be biased towards Disney because Disney, in particular, makes me happy.  Sure, I am an adult with no children, but I am a Disney-loving adult.

This is my personal reflection on decisions that I am happy I made and things that I wish I had done differently on my May 10, 2014 sailing on the Disney Fantasy 7-day Western Caribbean cruise from Port Canaveral. Please note that these are my own opinions, and I am in no way affiliated with any cruise line.

Glad I Did / Glad I Did Not

I'm glad I booked a Disney cruise.  Disney cruises are expensive - more so than other mass-market cruise lines.  We could have stayed in a suite on the nearly identical 7-Day Western Caribbean itinerary of the Carnival Sunshine for less than the price of our family ocean view room on the Disney Fantasy.  That being said, I found that Disney Cruise Line offers a great product.  The ship is the most beautiful I've ever sailed.  The stateroom was perhaps the best I've ever had.  The entertainment was wonderful and and by far the most talented theater cast I have seen at sea.  Castaway Cay is the nicest, most extensive cruise line-owned private island I've ever been to, and it's the only one with an adults-only beach.  So yes, Disney Cruise Line is expensive, but I am quite happy in my choice of graduation present.

May 17, 2014 - Port Canaveral

Disney's disembarkation breakfast is the most organized I've seen.  Disney assigns all guests a dining room and time for breakfast on disembarkation day.  The time correlates with guests' assigned dining time that week - main seating (6:45 PM) guests eat at 6:45 AM the final morning, while late seating (8:15 PM) guests eat at 8:15 AM the final morning.  The assigned dining room is whatever rotational dining room you dine in on the previous night at the same table.  What was really neat is that we were also served by our same wait staff, so we had one last opportunity to say good-bye.  Guests who do not wish to dine at the assigned time may eat a buffet-style breakfast in Cabanas.

We had breakfast (late seating) at 8:15 AM in Animator's Palate. We brought all of our carry-off luggage with us, and our waiters helped us find places to put it so that our bags were out of the way.

Starting on the  Royal Princess over Christmas, I've made it a habit to bring my tripod and remote so that I can take long exposure photos in the late evening or early morning around the ship.  Between 11 PM and 6 AM, most guests are in their staterooms which allows for the opportunity to take photos of large public spaces without people.  Not only that, but the lighting design on the latest cruise ships has become quite beautiful, and taking photos after dark allows you to really showcase the light both indoors and out on deck.

I was especially excited to photograph the Disney Fantasy because the ship is so beautiful.  On the first night of the cruise, Max and I were walking back from the hot tub late at night, and he even admitted that he was excited to photograph the ship because the lighting on the Disney Fantasy is so incredible.

Well.... in all of the fun that I was having with my family, enjoying activities that the Disney Fantasy had to offer, I put my long exposures off until the last night.  This was a mistake, and I will never be so careless again because on our way from Castaway Cay to Port Canaveral, we sailed high winds, rough waters, and periods of rain. I was really upset with myself and concerned that I wasn't going to be able to take the photos I wanted.

Cabanas

We started in Cabanas because I absolutely love this mosaic and wanted to make sure that I photographed it.

May 16, 2014 - Disney's Castaway Cay

Castaway Cay is Disney's private island in the Bahamas, and all Caribbean itineraries visit the island at least once.  It is rated the most popular port of call by Disney cruisers and is arguably the best cruise line-owned private island in the industry.  When Disney first purchased (actually leased from the Bahamian government for 99 years) the island, the requirement was that they could build a pier so that the ship would be able to dock right on the island so that they would not have to tender passengers ashore.  Disney was the first cruise line to be able to dock on their private island (Royal Caribbean has since built a dock for their private island, Labadee).

Castaway Cay 5K

Rachel and I had signed up to run the Castaway Cay 5K.  The 5K is complimentary and is offered on all cruises to Castaway Cay, weather permitting.  I had read that this started as a casual event when cast members invited guests to run with them in the morning, but has become so popular that it has been taken over by runDisney, the same branch of the Disney Company that coordinates the Walt Disney World Marathon, Princess Half Marathon, and so many more races in Walt Disney World and California Disney Parks.  To register, visit the Port Adventures desk during operating hours up to the day before your stop in Castaway Cay.

I am not a big runner.  In fact, I hardly run at all.  But I take all of Rachel's indoor cycling classes, so I would say that I'm in fairly good physical shape.  Rachel runs charity 5Ks all of the time, usually to get credit for her sorority.  I actually ran my first 5K the month prior when The Color Run came to Clemson.  And I'm not sure if that counts because I'm fairly certain that the route wasn't actually 3.1 miles, and they don't keep up with the runners' times.

We were scheduled to meet in The Tube at 8:00 AM.  Rachel and I got up and ate a light breakfast in Cabana's before heading down.  We arrived about 10-15 minutes early which was before the long line accumulated.  To check in, you just need the Port Adventure ticket that they give you when you register, and they give you a bib.  They also asked to make sure that we had our Photo IDs before exiting the ship.  We did not, as we were just walking straight off the ship and going to Disney's private island, but we ran back to the room and got them, anyway.



After everyone had checked in, the entertainment team discussed the route with us, showing us a map of it on a projector.  We would run the bike loop once, then run down the airplane landing strip, then run back down the airplane landing, then do the bike loop a second time, then head back to the finish line.  We were cleared to leave the ship around 8:30-8:45, and two members of the entertainment team guided our group to the gangway, asking that parents who were checking their children into Scuttle's Cove leave first.  However, the entire group had to wait about ten minutes in the stairwells before we could actually leave the ship.  Looking around, I noticed several Disney Marathon shirts, and even a guy wearing a Goofy's Race and a Half challenge shirt (that's 39.3 miles over two consecutive days!!!).

May 15, 2014 - At Sea

Just like I start to get a little sad on the last few days of vacation, knowing that it's soon over, I start to get a little sad when writing the last few days of a trip report!  Thank you to everyone who has been reading along!

Our blackout curtains allowed us to sleep in late that morning! Rachel and I woke up and were talking, and Max announces from the other side of the room, "No one is trying to sleep over here." "Max, it's 10 o'clock." "10 o'clock!? No way!"

Breakfast - Enchanted Garden

We caught up with my parents to go to Enchanted Garden for a late breakfast. When we arrived, we requested to be seated in one of the circular booths. The hostess told us that the table only seats four, but then another host walked up and said that we could fit five in the booth. So we did. But I should note that while the booth can seat five adults just fine, the table is really only intended to be set for four... there isn't much room for an additional place setting.


Breakfast in Enchanted Garden is buffet-style. A server brings your drinks and takes your omelette order, but there is a buffet for all other food.



It's not a Disney vacation without Mickey Mouse waffles.

May 14, 2014 - Falmouth, Jamaica

This was the first time that the Disney Fantasy had ever visited Falmouth, Jamaica.  The Disney Magic had visited before, and we were told that passengers had rated Falmouth 3rd place as overall cruise port.  The Fantasy had been visiting Costa Maya, Mexico, which passengers had only ranked 10th.

Falmouth, Jamaica was a first for us, as well.  I had been to Jamaica once before with my family, visiting Ocho Rios on Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas in 2008, years before the port of Falmouth had opened.

Max has always wanted to visit Jamaica.  In fact, I learned years ago that it was his number one place to visit because Jamaicans have dreads, and Jamaica just sounds awesome.

When we had visited Ocho Rios, Royal Caribbean instructed us not to take any cabs outside of the cruise port and encouraged us to take their excursions.  This was a warning that we remembered when going to Falmouth and assumed it to be the same (note: we received no warnings on the Disney Fantasy about crime in Falmouth, so I think I assumed wrong).  Therefore, this was the one day that we actually booked an excursion in advance.  We selected Chukka Beach Express for $32 per person which included transportation to and from a nearby beach, as well as beach chairs.

Chukka Beach Express

The downside to booking a beach excursion through Disney Cruise Line was that we had to get off the ship early in the morning and returned to the ship in the early afternoon, while on our own, we would leave the ship around 10 or 11 AM and return later in the afternoon.

We met at 8:45 AM in the Buena Vista Theater which is where first-run movies are shown throughout the cruise.  This was actually the only time that we went in that theater.  It seemed that Disney had given us an early meeting time so that everyone would be there on time.  Because when it was our scheduled time to meet, there were 20 guests still missing!  When our excursion was called to leave the ship (about 15 minutes after our scheduled meeting in the theater), there were still guests who hadn't checked in, yet.  We ended up on the last bus to leave which ended up waiting for the late guests.

May 13, 2014 - Grand Cayman

Rachel had gotten up early that morning to run laps around the promenade deck and do her own yoga.  I was waiting for her to come back, but she had been gone for over two hours, so I figured that she must have gone to Mom and Dad's.  I called their room to see if they had her, and then asked them if they wanted to go to Disney Animation class with me.  Rachel was still nowhere to be found, but we went on to the D Lounge for animation class.

Disney Animation - Persistence of Vision

There was a series of four animation classes offered throughout the week, and I had missed the first two (that's okay... I can draw Mickey Mouse on my own time).  The class we attended was entitled Persistence of Vision and covered how Disney animation has evolved over the past 85 years.  We learned how to draw Buzz Lightyear.  The cast member (on the entertainment team... I forget his name, but his slogan was, "Whoop! Whoop!" which you were supposed to call out to him whenever you saw him on the ship) prefaced the lesson by making us swear that we would not judge our own drawings or anyone else's - his included.  Buzz Lightyear is also a very challenging character to draw, especially since he is a three-dimensional character that we were drawing two-dimensionally.

Throughout the class, the instructor draws on a giant sketch pad with a black marker, and his sketch pad is projected onto a large screen, much like at Animation Academy at the Magic of Disney Animation at Disney's Hollywood Studios.  However, unlike Animation Academy, the characters change between each class (unless it is a repeat of the class later that day) and progress in difficulty throughout the week.

My annoyance with the Disney animation classes is quite similar to my annoyance with my freehand drawing class (which I took last semester in architecture).  It frustrates me to do step-by-step drawings.  In freehand drawing, I wanted to draw the landscape/building in the order that I wanted.  And in animation, I really just wanted them to flash up the final drawing of Buzz so that I could draw him.  I think that also may be why I much prefer written tutorials as opposed to video tutorials... I can just scroll to the bottom of the page and see the final result, then go at my own pace.  Now, that being said, there is great value to step-by-step instruction and breaking down drawings into little steps.  I learned a lot of great technique, as well as method, in my freehand drawing class.  As painful as it was for me to wait for the next step, drawing (what felt like) blindly, I'm really glad that I endured it (it was an elective I chose to take that I considered dropping) because now I have a new perspective on how to construct a drawing.... just like I now know how to set up the guides for Buzz.

I know I promised not to judge, but I don't think that my Buzz Lightyear looks much like Buzz.  I mean, maybe there is a slight resemblance.  But his mouth is far too large and crooked.  I was also really wishing that I had a thick pen... like a Pentel sign pen... to draw with.  But in all honestly, I'm not the best in drawing characters or anything that is supposed to look how it actually is, for that matter.

May 12, 2014 - Cozumel, Mexico

We docked that morning at the Punta Langosta pier in downtown Cozumel.



That morning after eating breakfast in Cabana's, Rachel and I realized that it would be the perfect time to ride the Aqua Duck.  Sure enough, there was no wait (wait time was listed at 10 min).  After each round we'd look at each other and say, "Just one more time!"