Happy Holidays! My name is Jason, and along with my wife, daughter, and mother, I will be traveling on this 7-night Eastern Caribbean NYE Cruise. Thank you, Scott, for inviting me to guide you along with our journey. This week, we’ll be sailing on the Disney Fantasy on what will be its final 7-night itinerary for the foreseeable future. With the arrival of the Disney Treasure (maiden voyage December 21, 2024) this past week, the 7-night Eastern and Western itineraries will be passed over to her, while the Fantasy turns its focus to shorter 3/4/5-night itineraries that will take it primarily to Nassau, Disney’s private island Castaway Cay, and its newest addition—Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point.
Later this summer, the Fantasy will make the transatlantic voyage and host its European schedule before a stop in dry dock and return to Cape Canaveral in the fall. A few quick facts about the Disney Fantasy:
- Maiden Voyage: March 31, 2012
- Tonnage: 130,000
- Crew: 1,400
- Capacity: 4,000 guests
Getting to Port Canaveral to Cruise on Disney Fantasy
As locals, we begin our day with an hour drive to Port Canaveral. Disney assigns a PAT, or Port Arrival Time, to assist in the flow in and out of the port. This practice was adopted post-COVID and looks to be here to stay. When doing your online check-in approximately a month before departure, you select a time, in 15-minute intervals, that you can arrive. You then pull up to the curbside and drop your luggage off with attendants before heading into the parking garage to search for an open space.
One of my few gripes with this has always been that the parking spaces within the garage are extremely narrow and generally involve multiple maneuvers to get centered and straight, while still barely having enough room on each side to open the doors to exit the vehicle. We’ve learned to have all passengers hop out before pulling in to make this a little easier. From there, it’s into the terminal to your designated check-in line for PAT times. A brief wait to complete the boarding and security scan, then into the terminal itself. Along with the PAT, you are assigned a corresponding boarding group to take the final walk onto the ship.
For this cruise, we had a PAT of 11:30 and boarding group 9. In all, we pulled up to the curb at 11:35, entered the terminal at 12:00 after final check-in, and were onboard by 12:15. It’s important to remember that once inside the terminal, you can log into the Disney Navigator App (more on that later) and sign onto the ship’s Wi-Fi. This allows you to begin viewing the daily activities and, most importantly—your dining rotation and menus!
Welcome Aboard!
Our traditional first stop is Cabanas Buffet for lunch while waiting for our rooms to be ready. While the buffet is a staple on all cruise lines, I personally love the spread that Disney offers, particularly the shrimp and crab legs that are available every day on the lunch buffet. Other embarkation day options include one of the main dining rooms for a sit-down service, along with Flo’s Café on the pool deck, which features the standard pizza, burgers, chicken tenders, wraps, fruit, and all the fries you could ever want.
Disney Fantasy Family Verandah Staterooms 8038
Our rooms were ready at 1:30, so let’s take a look:
Since we are traveling with four, we got adjoining Family Verandah Staterooms 8038 and 8040. This allows our daughter to stay in the neighboring room with Grandma for some quality time, but let’s face it—it’s more about Mom and Dad getting some peace and quiet. As with most cruise lines’ adjoining rooms, we not only have the interior access door between them but also a partition on the verandah that opens to extend the outdoor space as well.
Our 11-year-old daughter’s favorite feature of the staterooms is the drop-down bunk. This is her bliss. Our room host puts the bunk up each morning and sets it back each evening during turndown service.
As Platinum Castaway Members, our boarding gifts were waiting for us when we entered the room.
The current gift set includes our Mickey lanyards, a wet/dry bag, a Castaway Club shoulder bag, and a beach towel. Since we’ve received all of these before, we’ll likely gift everything except the beach towel—you can never have too many of those!
Disney Navigator App
Now back to the Disney Navigator App. It’s imperative to download it prior to boarding the ship, as this is your guide to all daily activities, character greetings (it’s Disney, after all), entertainment, dining options, and to-dos. Prior to the COVID days, the stateroom hosts would place a paper navigator in your room each night for the following day. However, this seems to be a thing of the past and is unlikely to return.
There are pros and cons to this change. On the plus side, it allows you to see the entire week’s activities and prioritize what and when you’d like to do certain things, as many are offered multiple times throughout the week. However, at times, you may feel attached to your device in a way that many prefer to avoid while vacationing. Ultimately, it’s all about what you make of it.
We often look ahead a bit and “favorite” the things we want to do, then set it and forget it. Anytime you favorite an activity within the app, it gives you a 15-minute reminder prior to the start so you don’t have to keep double-checking the schedule or clock-watching. One of my favorite features is that the dining menus are all available in the app, allowing you to scout out your meals for the entire cruise! We’ll take a deeper dive into all things DCL dining on one of our sea days.
Dinner in the Royal Court
Our dining rotation begins this evening with Royal Court and one of my favorite menus. Upon being escorted to our table, we were met with hugs from our server, Ida. This will be the fourth cruise we’ve had Ida take care of us, and we know it will be another great week with him.
Our appetizers include: Iced Lobster and Jumbo Shrimp, Breaded and Deep-Fried Brie, and Gaston’s Escargot Gratinée.
The fried Brie is always one of my favorites—a mild, creamy cheese lightly fried and served with a cranberry chutney. The perfect combination of sweet and savory. The shrimp dish included three good-sized shrimp with a slice of lobster and a subtle dill dressing. Not too overpowering and a nice complement. The escargot was enjoyed by my mother—I took her word for it.
Soups consisted of Potage Parmentier (my daughter’s absolute favorite) and French Onion.
The Potage is a creamy leek and potato soup that is smooth and creamy, paired with a pretty standard French Onion. The broth had a solid flavor with thin slices of onion, but neither was too strong.
For our entrées, we went with Chateaubriand Roasted Filet Steak, Crispy Roasted Duck Breast, and Slow-Roasted Breast of Chicken.
I had the Chateaubriand, which consisted of two thick slices of steak cooked to a perfect medium-rare, along with steamed green beans and new mashed potatoes. I like my mashed potatoes chunky, and these never disappoint. The green beans were undercooked for my liking but were fresh and checked off the vegetable staple to make me feel better about all the rich foods I’ll be feasting on this week.
The roasted chicken was from the “lighter fare” section of the menu. This alternate section appears on every MDR menu in case you’re not feeling any of the featured items. It was a generous portion and included the same sides as the Chateaubriand.
While Donald may not approve, the roasted duck got a solid thumbs-up, along with the cabbage. The honey parsnip mash earned the biggest rave with an “excellent.”
To finish it all off, we loaded up on desserts with Grand Marnier Soufflé, Tahitian Vanilla Crème Brûlée, Classic Opera Gâteau, and Apple Tart Tatin.
Tonight’s dessert menu is also one of my favorites, which makes it difficult to choose. So I didn’t and got the crème brûlée and the Classic Opera Gâteau to take back to the room. My wife can never pass up the Grand Soufflé, which is very rich but heavenly. My daughter gave the Apple Tart a thumbs up.
Evening Entertainment
The featured show in the Walt Disney Theater this evening is Moana 2. Since we saw this over the Thanksgiving holiday, we decided to relax in our stateroom and watch the football games, as it was a bit cool and rainy out. Tomorrow, we’ll do a deep-dive tour of the Disney Fantasy and get familiar with everything there is to see and do.
As we spend the next two days at sea, we’re on our way to our first port of call—St. Maarten. From there, it’s off to San Juan, Puerto Rico, then another sea day before arriving at Disney’s Castaway Cay.
I look forward to sharing the week with you on this holiday adventure.