Our Disney Cruise: Day 1

I think I’ll just hit the highlights of our days on the cruise and then blog some specifics about planning and a few tips and tricks we learned while on our first cruise. While I feel like I could navigate Disney with my eyes closed, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface with the cruise, but I’m happy to share our small bits of wisdom.

Let me preface this by saying, our kids had no idea we were going on a cruise. None. For some reason, Disney Junior has really been hyping the cruises lately,  and BK had been begging to go on one, she knew all about the highlights and had memorized everything she had ever read or seen about the cruise, so we lied a tiny bit and said we’d just have to plan that for next year.

On Thursday, we woke up and had breakfast at Animal Kingdom Lodge, packed up our car (we’d already repacked for the cruise) and headed about an hour east to Port Canaveral to catch the ship! Mickey and Minnie called us in the car and BK answered the phone. I scheduled a call through the website and it worked perfectly. She was SO excited!

The check-in process was a breeze. Seriously. It was so easy from the time we arrived until the time we boarded the boat.

We boarded the boat and found our room and then we had to go down for a practice drill, to get us up to speed on what to do in case of an emergency, you know, like a sinking ship. It was so quick and easy, but the day finally caught up with Jud and he fell asleep sitting in Allen’s lap.

No worries, that didn’t last long. We were off to explore the boat. I think most people recommend changing into your swimsuits and hitting the pools, but we didn’t check-in until nearly 2:00 and we had an early dinner reservation, so we used our time to leisurely explore the ship.

We freshened up and took a tour of the Oceaneers Club, it’s for children 3-11 and completely free. They have fun activities planned throughout the day and we knew BK would love to check it out while we had the chance. I wasn’t too keen on her spending a ton of time there since our time on the cruise was limited, but it was love at first sight for her so we found ourselves checking the schedule all day to see when she could fit in something fun. It was seriously so cool, Jud wasn’t quite old enough to go, we checked out his area, but he wasn’t nearly as impressed.

One of my favorite things about the cruise was the crowd level. I don’t feel like we ever waited in line or looked for a table. It was a huge contrast to the high temperatures and huge crowds at Disney World and I was instantly smitten with cruise life. When people asked why we liked it so much, I don’t have a definite answer, but overall it just felt more like a vacation.

We ran into Cinderella somewhere while checking out the boat and she stopped to have a conversation with Braylen and take a picture. Seriously. How cool is that for a little girl?

That night, we had dinner at Triton’s. The food was amazing! Definitely not your Chef’s Mickey style, and I loved that this was just included with the cruise, not staying up and making reservations, it was all set and I just had to choose an early or late seating.

And BK’s face when she realized she could have ice cream every night?

My face was super similar when I found out about this amazing chocolate cake and coffee…

After dinner each night, there was a show. We had a little time before our show, BK and Jud found some live music and danced their hearts out while we waited. The shows prohibit photography, but I’ll say, it was seriously amazing. I wasn’t expecting that level of performance and theatrics on the cruise.

After the show we headed back to our room >and turned on a Disney movie to end our busy day!

At this point, we were already convinced we would be booking another trip before getting off the ship!