Disney Cruise - tips for future cruisers

My husband and I have cruised before, but this was our first round on a ship with little ones.  It was a far different experience.  We travelled on the Disney Dream in May 2013 with an almost 5 year old and an almost 2 year old.  Here's a few things we learned that may make your trip a bit smoother.

Road trip / Check-in / Boarding
We had 550 miles of car travel in front of us, but fortunately the drive down went pretty smoothly. 

- I bought a Mickey Mouse and a Minnie Mouse gift bag and filled it with road trip presents for each stop.  One stop we gave the kids a dress up Minnie Mouse and a little stuffed Mickey.    When we made it to the hotel the night before we left, the bags held Mickey & Minnie PJs.  Another stop on the way home held toys we bought on the ship.  I reused the bags and tissue paper for each round.  The excitement provided entertainment for the long ride and build enthusiasm for the trip.

- I bought new DVDs for the ride and of course, we were armed with tons of snacks. 

- Make sure you do the online check-in with Disney AT LEAST two weeks before you depart.  I waited until about 5 days before and many options were sold out.  These options include adult dining, nursery childcare, excursions, and the most important - check-in time.

- You are NOT required to wait until your chosen check-in time to arrive at the terminal.  However, after completing your paperwork at the terminal, they will assign you a boarding number based on your check-in time.  Even though we were processed by 10:30am before most everyone else, our boarding group was #39, so we had to wait about an hour before boarding the ship.  Others who arrived after us were allowed to board first because they had registered for an earlier boarding time.

Waiting patiently to board the ship

- You will drop your luggage at check-in and won't see it again for several hours.  Pack a day bag with your valuables, passports and swimsuits.  Once you board, there is a huge buffet available for lunch and then you can hit a restroom and change into your swimsuit before your luggage arrives at your room.

- You will have an option to change your dining time on this first day if you got stuck with a time you are unhappy with.  The options for our cruise were 5:45pm and 8:15pm.

- The nursery and other children's areas will be open to browse on this first day.  The nursery (children 3 and under) requires reservations and is $6/hr.  You may reserve up to 10 hours online before you board, but may reserve more time once you're on the ship.  Space is limited so make sure you grab a spot, especially for adult only dining time.  You will be charged 1/2 price if you have reserved time in the nursery and do not show up, but you can cancel at any time.  They are pretty flexible.

Staterooms
The staterooms are lovely and very space efficient.

- Unpack your suitcases, even if you're only on board for 4 nights.  The drawers and closets are spacious and living out of a suitcase on the floor would drive me nuts!  The space under the bed is empty and high, plenty of room for your suitcases to tuck underneath.  There are hangers available in the closets.  Laundry facilities, including irons, are also available for an extra charge. 

- We opted for a small, collapsible umbrella stroller for our youngest.  Fortunately, he loved it and rode in it everywhere, and it was easy to get through crowds and it folded up nicely and tucked under the bed in the evenings.  We saw lots of people with giant baby strollers and I have no idea what they did with those bulky things in the tight rooms. 

- There is a full size, high quality hairdryer available in the room, so don't waste space in your suitcase bringing yours. 

- While there are several hooks available in the bathrooms, we brought some Command hooks to stick to the bathroom walls for wet bathing suits.  This proved to be very helpful for us.

- There is a mini fridge in your room.  It's the perfect size to chill that pricy bottled water you'll buy or the bottles you snuck onboard.  ;)

- When you first arrive, the top bunk is stowed away in the ceiling.  During dinner, your stateroom host will straighten your room, lower the top bunk and convert the sofa to a lower bunk.  There are also pack-n-plays and diaper pails available to borrow, if you need them.  Just ask your stateroom host. 

So proud of my little ones for sleeping like big kids in the bunk beds

- As with any good hotel, Disney provides shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, body soap bar and face soap bar.  We're not bar soap people, so I can't speak to those, but the others were awesome.  The bottles were plenty big enough to last the whole cruise, and they were of very high quality.  As in produced by Disney's Spa line and a "small" bottle of product from the gift shop would set you back $25.  So use theirs and save your packing space.

- While there is bar soap provided, we also packed a little bottle of pump hand soap - in a Ziploc, of course - for hand washing in our room.  Also, Disney does a great job of cleanliness, including handing out wash wipes as you enter every dining facility, but it is still an enclosed space with over 5,000 people onboard.  We brought our own bottle of hand sanitizer, but I wasn't as diligent with it as I should have been, and sadly I think those strange germs were the culprit to my kids' upset tummies.  So, bring your own hand sanitizer and scrub up often. 

- Bring some plastic grocery bags and gallon ziplocks.  These will be great for packing wet swimsuits or sandy beach toys for your journey home, securing important travel documents while onshore for your excursions, and I'm sure you could come up with plenty of other uses. 

- There are only two power outlets in the staterooms.  We let our cell phones die on the first day and chose to be unplugged for our trip.  We didn't recharge them until the last night.  If your family, however, has a high demand for chargeable electronics, you may want to bring along a small power strip to maximize the outlets.  (Sidenote - This was one of the greatest things I appreciated about the cruise...I saw people more engaged with their families than their smart phones, myself included.  Very refreshing.)

Dining
Disney is focused on making your vacation wonderful for everyone - grown ups and little ones.  They have taken many different measures to make things simple for the children.

- We packed pop top thermos containers for our kids and they lived with them all week.  There are free soda fountains on the pool deck, and we kept their drinks full from there.  Wish we had taken some cups for the hubs and me, as there are no drinks available in the staterooms.  You may buy bottled water to be delivered to your room, but it's quite expensive. 

- Small utensils are available at each dining location.  When you arrive at your main dining room each evening, the table will be set for your family - small utensils where needed, and glasses with lids and straws for young children.  We brought plastic toddler utensils and throw away sippy cups, but ended up not using them as what Disney provided and our pop top containers were sufficient. 

- You will be scheduled for rotational dining in one of the 3 main dining rooms each night.  You are not required to dine there, but it's polite to let your server know your plans the night before.  There is a buffet available on the pool deck for 3 meals a day, and a burger/hotdog/chicken finger joint is also available on the pool deck for lunch. 

- Attire for the main dining rooms is "cruise casual" which basically means no swim suits or blue jeans.  Anything else is suitable.  Other cruises we have been on held a high dress code, but here shorts and a polo shirt are more than acceptable.  Disney knows they are catering to families, not executives. 

Dinner at the Royal Palace

- Adult dining is available at Palo and Remy, but require a reservation, an additional charge, and a dress code.  The charge for Palo is $20/person and I would highly recommend it!  The food and service were wonderful.  Our table overlooked the edge and we pulled out of Nassau at sunset, just as we sat down to enjoy our meal.  If you get a chance to dine there, take it.  Remy is $50/person and did not get the chance to dine there, but I'm sure it's wonderful.

Dessert at Palo

- If you have little ones like mine, bring some small toys or entertainment for the time they are waiting for their food.  Each dinner will include 3 courses, with significant lag time between each course.  There are color sheets available, but that doesn't entertain a tired 2 year old very long.  We snagged two packs of tiny animals (one set of underwater animals, and one set of zoo animals) from Michael's for about $6 each (Hobby Lobby has them as well) and kept each set in it's own little zip canvas bag.  We left these toys in the car at port, and that was my biggest regret of the whole trip. 

- Everything outside of alcohol and specialty drinks is free on the ship, and the servers are very generous.  If you can't decide between two appetizers, order them both.  No problem!

Entertainment
Between swimming, shows, movies, excursions, character visits and the kids' clubs, there is no reason for anyone to be bored!

- No reservations are required for the kids' clubs, except for the nursery.  Just drop them off whenever you're ready.  They have programs going all throughout the day and we usually had to pull our kids out because they were having so much fun.  The counselors are great and do a really great job of making your kids feel at home and loved.  There is even a kids area on Castaway Cay for the kids to run and play while mom and dad relax. 

- There are more towels than you will ever need available on the pool deck, so don't waste packing space on beach towels. 

- The AquaDuck is an awesome water slide that travels all around the pool deck, but the wait can sometimes be 20 minutes or more for a ride.  We found that the best times to hit the AquaDuck were while everyone else was either off the ship during port stops or in the evenings when everyone else was at dinner or a show. 

- The Walt Disney Theater hosts an amazing show every night of the cruise.  They are Broadway quality and you don't want to miss them.  They run twice each night during the dinner rotations, so if you have early dinner you'd eat, then see the show or visa versa.  There are treats (candy, popcorn, canned sodas) available for purchase outside the theater, but we snagged some $1 boxes of candy from the store at home and stashed them in our suitcases for the shows. 

- At Castaway Cay there are tons of little shops with Bahamas souvenirs and sand toys.  The toys they have available will set you back $20 and are nothing special.  The mesh bag they come in says "Disney Castaway Cay" but the toys are not distinctly Disney.  If you have the space in your luggage, bring some cheap sand toys from home.  If they're nasty or you don't feel like toting them home, you can always chunk them on the island. 

Castaway Cay

- For us, Pirate Night fell on the day we were at sea.  Disney provided us with 4 red "Pirates of the Caribbean" bandanas in our stateroom and we saw many people on the ship wearing them that night.  I had planned some simple costumes for our family from home.  Thanks to Hobby Lobby we dressed the whole family for about $10-$15.  Jake the Neverland Pirate had a white tshirt with a "V" cut out, and blue tshirt cut into a vest (cut off sleeves and slit down the middle and ironed on gold rickrack), and white pants I cut up and dyed brown.  Lizzie the Pirate was simply a pink shirt with puffy sleeves (found at Hobby Lobby for around $4) with purple pants we already had on hand.  My husband and I wore solid colored tshirts that I "roughed up" and matching bandanas.  It was suitably fun for me.  Some people went all out, others did nothing.  It's up to you.

Pirate night

- On our trip, the Princesses were available as a big group in the mornings (9-930am) and Mickey and the Gang were available in the afternoons (3-330pm) for pictures and autographs in the main lobby.  Once they show up, a lengthy line will form pretty quick, so I would recommend getting there about 20 minutes early to snag a good space in line.  The characters were also around the ship sporadically, but the big groups are the most "efficient" in my opinion.  My kids were curious to watch them from a distance, but were not overly interested in getting too close.  The characters and the staff were so sweet and fun about the shy ones. 

A brave pose with Minnie Mouse

- There are tons of autograph books available for you to buy in the gift shops for character signing, or you can bring your own from home.  Since I knew my kids wouldn't be overly into the characters and I'm not sentimental enough to hang onto an autograph book, we opted for the picture frame idea.  I bought a frame from Hobby Lobby and a mat to go with it.  I brought the mat with me on the ship and left it with the Guest Services desk on the first day of the cruise.  They took the mat and had all of the characters sign it and then they returned it to our room on the last day of the cruise.  Easy as can be and now we can put a picture from our trip in it and keep it out to enjoy. 

- Be sure to study your Personal Navigator each day.  It is the daily newsletter that will be delivered to your room during your night turn down service.  It will detail everything happing on the ship the next day.  There are tons of hidden treasures, so make sure to read it through.


Have you been on a Disney cruise and have some helpful tips to share for cruisers?  Feel free to leave them in the comments below, or email me and I'll be happy to add them.  Happy sailing! 

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