Note: this review is completely my mother-of-two opinion of our 4 day cruise on the new ship the Disney Dream. We paid full price for our fair and were in no way compensated for writing this post.
I’ll pick up where I left off on our last post. After arriving at port around 10ish, we boarded around 12:30 and immediately went to lunch at Cabana’s on the 11th deck. I don’t know if this was the only food open or not but it suited us fine so we went there. It’s basically a huge buffet with huge variety of food – hot and cold.
One thing that the hostesses here continually stressed upon our first visit and throughout the cruise but that they could never get anyone to listen to seemed to be that there are NO LINES in Cabanas. You’re supposed to spot the food you want and come at it from a 90 degree angle and then leave. However, after being trained so well in the terminal everyone insisted in forming a line at the end of the first section and walking down the serving area in a line – waiting on people ahead of you being served rather than walking around them. This infuriates the hostesses – you can see it in their eyes behind those cheerful smiles -- I think more because people don’t listen than from it being a real problem.
We finished up lunch about 1:00 and went to wander. It was still pouring down rain so we decided to go check out the kids clubs. On Deck 5 we inadvertently ran into a tour group leaving the reception area and was invited to join by Jess, a very friendly cast member, since they were going that way anyway. I’m glad we did as it’s the only time we ended up seeing any of the the adult areas in the District.
But first it was on to Oceaneer’s Club and Lab. This tour would end up being the only time my kids enjoyed themselves there .. ha foreshadowing….
When we finished our tour, it was exactly 1:30 so we went off to find out stateroom 7058 Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah.
Our view from the verandah included everyone we knew… well sorta.
So with no pool to play in and nothing else to do but wander aimlessly .. what else would you do but go get ice cream!
Now this is where with a little different luck I would have started talking about the send off party on deck and there would pretty pictures of our beautiful ship leaving the port and all the kids playing on deck.
Yeah that didn’t happen. It was pouring rain again at this point. Disney did hold a party on the lobby I think. We went back the cabin, made adult drinks with our room bottles, and the kids played DS until time to get ready to go dinner. How was this different than home? Oh yean, dinner at home doesn’t involve men in livery.
Or Chandeliers with Cinderella Slippers…
Speaking of Cinderella, evidently she’s a bit of a snob, her visit consisted solely of a fast paced walkthrough with no stops and no hugs. See how she has that apologetic “I don’t have time for you my peasants” look on her face. She was in and out in a flash.
Princess Tiana however was much more of a Princess of the People and spent a good deal of the dinner time visiting tables, hugging, signing autographs, and posing ~ that New Orleans girl knows how to tell people to “Be Our Guest.”
Let’s see what did we eat in the Royal Place Dining room. I had the Duck appetizer, Green Salad, and Wild Mushroom Pasta. The Dr had the Double Baked Spinach Soufflé, Green Salad, and Wild Boar. (We had all vowed to try and eat things we’d never normally eat)
Both the duck and the spinach souffle were excellent. Salad was well salad. My pasta was just okay – it was a bit rich and I didn’t want to finish it, he said the boar was pretty good, I didn’t taste it but he cleaned his plate.
The kids has kid food, Hamburger and Mac-N-Cheese with fries. What is up with Disney no wanting to leave the ketchup bottle on the table? After about three trips our server caught on to the extent of how much ketchup 8 elementary aged children can consume and started leaving huge blobs though.
At some point at dinner we finally left port. I was glad that Disney had waited everyone who had experienced weather delays.
Afterwards.. Mickey Bar’s reigned supreme for the kids but I won best smelling dessert with the Grand Marnier Soufflé. It tasted as good as it smelled.
After dinner went and got in line for the balcony of the theatre for the Golden Mickeys show and well we watched the Golden Mickeys. It was okay, not bad, not great. The villain section was enough to scare FancyPants into my lap. Would I see it again on a repeat cruise? No. I’d use that time to do something else because what we were just beginning to get a hint of is, free time is kind of precious on the cruise. There is just not a lot of it scheduled in.
After the show we checked the kids into the Oceaneer’s – which they were excited about. Walked back to our room to put down the camera…. and were half way to the bar when the Wave phone texted us to pick up the kids.
I left the group to go see what the problem was. I told the cast member who had 10 minutes earlier checked in our kids that I had a text and she basically popped the gate and tossed a look over her shoulder and told me to go find them.
All but two were sitting there on bean bags looking sad and bored. I asked what the problem was they they said "Mom look, you can’t do anything”. I took a look around and they were right. It was packed to the gills and the only counselor I could see from standing there was the one guarding the bathrooms. It was chaos.
I don’t know if the rain was throwing off the anticipated counselor/kid ratio but basically there was no ratio. It was wall to wall child and not a little bit like Lord of the Flies. No organized activities were taking place at all – it was basically just an arcade with loud music. The only grown ups there were the ones dealing with unhappy kids (I was not the only one)
I quickly took the kids and checked them out. I was chastised for going out the lab rather than the club – a procedure I had not been made aware of. Whatever Disney. At this point I was kind of pissed at you. From that point forward the kids had no interest in the Oceaneer’s area. They went back one other time but still found it boring since at that point there evidently was an organized activity going on but were told they could not participate because they had not been there when it started. They were told to go play video games or color. Nice.
I took the kids to the D-lounge (Thank you Jessie - your tour you saved the night!) and we stayed in there and watched a family game show which was much more fun for them!
After that we hit some rougher water and the ship got a bit lurchy.. time for greenish turning kids to head to bed.
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