Looking Forward to Sailing Aboard the Fantasy

Our last Disney cruise was in February, 2016 on the Dream.  It was a short, four-night trip to Nassau and Castaway Cay.  I was recovering from the Glass Slipper Challenge and it was the perfect cruise for lots of rest and relaxation with a bit of recreation thrown in for fun.  We enjoyed both dinner and brunch at Remy, dinner at Palo, did the Midship Detective Agency activity, ran the Castaway Cay 5K and skipped Nassau altogether.  Before the ship returned to Port Canaveral, we’d booked anther cruise and the time to sail has nearly arrived!

Looking Forward to Sailing Aboard the Fantasy

Since the Dream and the Fantasy are so similar, we feel like we know what to expect in general.  However, two of the Fantasy’s MDRs (Main Dining Rooms) are uncharted territory for us.  We’re excited to try the Enchanted Garden and Royal Court restaurants – we missed the Enchanted Garden on the Dream due to other dinner plans that night.  I expect Animator’s Palate to be pretty much as it is the other ships. Since we’re old and set in our ways, we requested the early dinner seating.  We prefer dinner before the evening show rather than the other way around.  We also like to turn in fairly early and don’t want to feel like we’re going to sleep on full bellies.   We love the adults-only dining options on Disney cruises.  We’re skipping Remy this time, but have booked both dinner and brunch at Palo.  Remy is fantastic and I highly recommend it, but we’re spending a chunk of our travel budget on excursions this time around and Remy didn’t make the cut, financially speaking.

Our plans by day…

Embarkation Day – We want to kick off the trip by relaxing.  We do have an afternoon meet-up planned with the Facebook group we joined for this trip.  After that and the lifeboat drill, we’ll try to watch the sail-away party from our favorite spot on the upper deck.

Sunday – Day at Sea, Formal Night, dinner at Palo.  We LOVE the fitness center and will certainly visit it this day.  If there’s a spin class offered, we’ll try to make it.  The spin instructors are always great, it’s a good workout, and bonus!  No extra charge involved!  We have a Chocolate and Liquor tasting booked in the afternoon.  This will be new to us.  We tried to book it on the Dream, but had no luck…the tasting was already at full capacity. 

Monday – Day at Sea, Halloween on the High Seas theme, Dinner in our assigned dining room.  Depending on the schedule, we’ll try to catch a movie and also see if we can attend a cooking demonstration of some type.  Those are two of our favorite activities on at-sea days.  Rather than worry with costumes, I bought us a couple of Nightmare Before Christmas-themed shirts to wear this day.  That way we’ll still feel like we’re participating, but won’t have to pack lots of extra stuff.

Tuesday – Tortola and the Wreck and Reef Dive excursion.  This is also Pirate night.  I expect we’ll be exhausted from our adventure, but I would love to make it to the deck party.

Wednesday – St. Thomas Certified Scuba excursion.  No special theme for dinner – I’m sure we’ll turn in early…really early.  By this time on previous cruises, I’ve been known to fall asleep during the evening’s show.  I know I can sleep in the next morning, but I’ve never been good at shaking off being sleepy.

Thursday – Day at Sea.  Brunch at Palo then Raymond has an afternoon massage scheduled at the spa (birthday gift from me).  Hopefully, there will be more movies and/or cooking demos to see!  This should be semi-formal night and we’ll be in whatever dining room is on our rotation. Friday – Castaway Cay!  As of now, we’re planning on doing the 5K before relaxing at Serenity Bay for a while.  We like the 5K because it’s very low-key and is a fun way to burn off some of those cruise calories.  Castaway Cay's Mt. RustmoreAfter lunch we have the “Abaco Rigid Hull Snorkeling Adventure – Adult Only” excursion.  We’ve done this one before back in 2010 and we saw some awesome sea creatures and plant life.  We’ll probably head back to the ship fairly early so we can start getting our suitcases packed.  So sad!  We haven’t even left yet, and here I am talking about the entire trip being over.  If you’ve been on a Disney cruise before, you know how bittersweet that last night can be!

Now there’s still the unresolved matter of Hurricane Irma.  Will she crash our vacation?  Will she move on before we arrive?  Will she maybe force us on an alternate itinerary?  Only time will tell.  No matter what, like every Disney vacation we’ve taken – this one’s bound to be an adventure!

Disney Land and Sea – Trip Recap (Part 2)

DCL-Bus (2)When I left off in Part One, I’d finished the Glass Slipper Challenge and enjoyed Sunday afternoon at Disney Springs.  Raymond and I had decided weeks earlier that it would be best to have a quiet dinner near our Bay Lake Tower studio and make an early evening of it on Sunday.  We could sleep in, pack up, and be ready to board our Disney Cruise Line bus by 11:30 am.

Disney Land and Sea – Trip Recap (Part 2)

Disney's-Wave-Entrance

We chose The Wave in the Contemporary Resort for its proximity to our room and the fact that while we’d enjoyed wine and lunch in The Wave’s lounge, we’d never eaten in the dining room proper.  Our dinner was very nice and the service was notably excellent.  I felt so drowsy by the end of the meal, I ordered coffee and determined to stay awake long enough to watch at least a little of The Wonderful World of Disney: Disneyland 60 that was airing on ABC that evening.  I managed to stay awake for about 3 minutes.

Monday morning felt glorious!  No early alarm!  No running!  We’d gotten nine hours of sleep and felt like new people.  Plus, we still had the entire second half of our vacation ahead – four nights on the Disney Dream!  We packed in record time and decided to hit Kona Café for breakfast before shopping the resort loop boutiques.  Polynesian's-Bou-tikiWe ended up back at the Contemporary when I realized that I’d forgotten to pack any stateroom door decorations.  I couldn’t stand the thought of a plain white door, so Raymond helped me find some magnets, a magnetic clip and Minnie and Mickey postcards we could use to set our door apart from our neighbors’.  Total rookie mistake, but I think our door turned out alright in the end.Disney-Dream-Door-Decor

We knew we were going to miss our kids like crazy on this trip.  This would be our seventh Disney cruise, but the first one without Megan and Joseph.  We’d had such a spectacular time on the Disney Magic on the Norwegian Fjords cruise in 2015, it was hard to imagine what it would be like for Raymond and I to be all alone.  We decided to do things on this cruise much differently than we had on any cruise in the past with the hope that it would make sailing without them easier.  And it did…a little tiny bit…maybe.Disney-Dream-Sail-Away

First of all this cruise was short!  In 2010 we sailed on a Castaway Cay 5-night double dip and the next three cruises after that were all 7-nights.  We couldn’t believe how fast the trip went by even though we packed in a lot of activities while still making time to relax.  The ship was new (to us) and much larger than we were used to, so everything was different and a little bit foreign (but absolutely beautiful!).Disney-Dream-Royal-Seating

We’d booked dinner and brunch at Remy as well as a dinner at Palo.  This meant we planned to eat in our regular, rotational dining restaurants only twice and we wouldn’t be getting off the ship at all in Nassau.

Mostly our plan worked well.  Very uncharacteristically, we skipped all the evening shows on this cruise in favor of either special dining experiences, exploring the ship, or relaxing.  If you’ve never been on a Disney cruise before, I DO NOT recommend missing the shows!  They’re excellent, spectacular, amazing (and many other glowing adjectives as well)!Disney-Dream-Sail-Away-Selfie

After we attended the lifeboat drill and Sail Away Party, we ate the first night at Animator’s Palate with our assigned tablemates – a couple from Pennsylvania celebrating their 25th anniversary.  DCL-Server-OldairOur servers, Oldair (from Colombia) and Merrick (from Jamaica) were excellent and, except for the butternut squash soup I ordered (after Oldair told me not to), our food was good.  The special effects in Animator’s were completely different from what we were used to on the Magic and the Wonder, but still fun.  That meal ended up being the only time we saw our tablemates, Oldair, or Merrick (except on the last night when we stopped by to leave tips).

Here’s how the rest of our cruise went…

Tuesday was Nassau day.  We started with breakfast in Cabanas before hitting the fitness center where we intended to spend about an hour, but actually spent two.  We ran on treadmills (with awesome views!), worked out with weights, I had a foot/posture consultation (yes, I did buy the shoe inserts they were selling) and then it was time for spin class, so we stayed around to participate.  Disney-Dream-Fitness-Center-Spin-ClassSophie was her name, I think, the spin class instructor, and she was a pretty young lady from Australia – very deceptive!  Sophie was a devil in disguise!  I thought I was going to die.  The only thing that kept me going was thinking about the calories I was burning and the food I would be eating later.  After all that, we found a couple of deck chairs and drank recovery beverages called beer.  Feeling much better, we decided to get cleaned up and see about some food.Disney-Dream-Royal-PalaceDisney-Dream-Key-Lime-Pie

We had a nice lunch in a gorgeous restaurant called the Royal Palace (delicious key lime pie!!!) and then decided to solve a mystery with the Midship Detective Agency (an interactive ship-wide adventure that deserves its own post later).  This was lots of fun (to me…not sure Raymond would agree).  After successfully executing our super-sleuth assignment, we reported to the Senses Spa for our 4:30 appointment – the massage for two.  Very relaxing and tranquil, but we had to hustle once the appointment was over to get ready for our dinner at Remy.  Disney-Dream-RemyAgain, this experience deserves its own article, so I’ll just say we enjoyed our meal very much.  After six courses ordered from the menu, a cheese course, and at least three “surprises” from the chef, we were done for the day.  So full and sleepy, we headed to bed looking forward to spending the next day on Disney’s private island, Castaway Cay.

Castaway Cay!  Raymond and I had registered for the Castaway Cay 5K, so we got up, ate at Cabanas, and met in the assigned location (Evolution lounge).  The Cast Member issuing race bibs and instructions was overwhelmed with the number of participants (over 300) and declared it to be the biggest turnout for the race EVER.  Raymond and I had a great time!  I even made a friend along the way.  Her name’s Julie and she’s from Cape Canaveral…Hi Julie!Castaway-Cay-5K-Finish

After the run, we headed for Serenity Bay (first time for us at the gown-ups-only beach!) and found it to be indeed quite serene (and a bit surreal with the complete absence of children).  The weather at the beginning of the day was very windy with occasional sprinkles.  When we arrived at the beach, the wind had calmed and the sun was shining.  We found lounge chairs and ordered fancy drinks before settling in for some serious relaxing…at least I tried to relax.Castaway-Cay-RelaxingI’m not good at sitting still, so I made friends with Tammy and Stan (sitting near us) and spend most of the time wading around in the water until lunchtime.  Tammy, Stan, Raymond and I hit the beach-side buffet before heading back to the bay for more wading and “relaxing”.  Castaway-Cay-BeachThat didn’t last long…I was getting sunburned and was ready to go back to the ship.  Raymond and I  stopped at the Conched Out Bar for a few minutes and enjoyed a Guinness to break up the walk back.  We were supposed to go to the Royal Palace for dinner that night but opted instead for room service and called it a day.

Last Day – Sea Day!  To start the day, we grabbed a quick bite at Cabanas before letting Sophie torture us again in spin class.  We then enjoyed a champagne brunch at Remy for which I will write a complete review, but let me say now that this was an especially excellent experience.  Disney-Dream-Sea-Treasures-ShopAfter brunch we browsed the ship’s gift shops and watched a cooking demonstration for lobster ravioli.  Disney-Dream-Cooking-DemoThen we attended a reception for gold and platinum Castaway Club members (Disney Cruise Line’s repeat guest rewards program).  Disney-Dream-Castaway-Club-ReceptionSomewhere during all that we also visited the future cruise desk to book a placeholder cruise (to keep the onboard booking discount without selecting a specific sail date) and we also bought the only pictures taken of us by a Disney photographer – our post-Castaway Cay 5K photos.  We ate dinner at Palo that night and were very pleased to find the restaurant exactly the way we wanted it to be.  Disney-Dream-Palo-Place-settingWe’d enjoyed Palo on both the Disney Magic and Wonder and hoped Palo on the Dream would be just as good – it was perfect.DCL-Goodbye-Sign

Watch for more reviews on the restaurants, the running events, activities, and the Disney Dream itself coming up in the near future.  If you have any questions about a Disney land and sea adventure, I’d be happy to help.

Have you sailed on the Disney Dream?  How was your experience?

 

 

 

 

Disney Cruise Food – Palo’s Chocolate Soufflé

In my non-vacationing life, I rarely eat dessert.  When I’m on a Disney cruise, though, I tend to order dessert with dinner.  It’s expected.  In fact, on the occasional evening I’ve attempted to pass on dessert, our server seemed genuinely saddened by this and vowed to find something to tempt me.  I’ve ordered plain vanilla ice cream or a Mickey Premium ice cream bar from the children’s menu just to feel less guilty about my lack of a sweet tooth.Chocolate Souffle Presentation

When we dine in Palo, our favorite adults-only restaurant on the high seas, it’s a completely different story.  Palo serves THE Chocolate Soufflé – a delicious work of confectionary art that makes me inordinately happy!  Made-to-order, if you want this particular dessert, it’s best to let your server know early in the meal so the 20-ish minute cooking time can be taken into account (while you’re enjoying Palo’s amazing Italian dishes).Chocolate Souffle

Hot, straight from the oven, the Chocolate Soufflé is served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and two small pitchers of sauce, one chocolate, one vanilla.  You get to choose how you’d like to combine the separate components to make the perfect blend of hot, cold, chocolate, vanilla, crispy, gooey fabulousness that is this dessert!Chocolate Souffle Closeup

After I pause for a moment to admire the beauty of my dessert, I take that spoonful of ice cream and smoosh it right into the center of the soufflé.  That blend of hot and cold is SO perfect, but won’t last forever so I immediately drizzle a little bit of both the chocolate and vanilla sauces right into the cavern I’ve made with the ice cream spoon and start eating.  Oh, boy, this is just the best dessert!  The crust on the outside, the gooey filling, the delicate powdered sugar topping – the blend of textures and subtle flavors really defies description, but trust me when I say it’s one of my most favorite treats in the world.  If you find yourself dining at Palo, save room for dessert and order the Chocolate Soufflé – you won’t be sorry.

Have you taken a Disney Cruise?  What was your favorite sweet treat?

Want to try Palo’s Chocolate Soufflé at home?  Here’s the recipe!