Disney Fantasy Western Caribbean Day 2- Boarding the ship

Woke up at the Hampton Inn in Cocoa Beach, FL and showered and got dressed for the day.  But I couldn’t find one of my shoes.  Did you put that shoe in the black & white bag, CSP?  Oh!  You wanted it IN the bag?  I just put it ON the bag.

MEN!!!   Luckily I packed a back up pair of shoes so I put those on and we were on our way.  Tip:  I packed a separate bag for the night before and a separate bag for the night after the cruise.  No sense dragging all the luggage in to the hotel when we just needed one outfit each.

We were just 10 minutes away from the port and all the sudden, there she was!  The Disney Fantasy!  The Fantasy is the newest, largest (by 6 whole inches) ship in the Disney fleet.   We parked and were on the ship in less than 30 minutes.  We went straight to the Royal Court restaurant to discuss our dining rotation.  We wanted to make sure that we were supposed to dine in Animator’s Palate on the night that we had Palo reservations.  We also got on the Palo waiting list for another dinner.  Palo is the adults only Italian fancy pants restaurant.  We love it.

Then we stopped by Guest Services and signed up for the Galley Tour (which doesn’t appear on the Navigator so you kind of just have to know to sign up for it).  CSP was really excited about this.  We also signed up for a Mixology class and Beer tasting (for CSP, I don’t like beer).  Then it was time for lunch at the Enchanted Garden buffet.  You could also have lunch at Cabana’s buffet up on the pool deck, but we wanted a quieter atmosphere.    The buffet was pretty nice.  Cocktail shrimp, roast beef, pasta, brie, and fruit found their way to my plate.  I was behind a potato farmer (people will tell me the weirdest things!) and he was pretty slow so it took a while to get through the line, but it was very organized.  Roque (pronounced Rocky) from India was our server and he was really nice.  We saw him multiple times throughout the cruise.

After lunch it was time to go to our cabin! Unfortunately I was convinced that our room was Aft, not Forward.  So we had quite the tour of deck 5!   We went in, checked it out and deposited our carryon luggage.  See the backpack on the bed there next to CSP?  That was the free gift from Disney for being a repeat cruiser.  In the bag was 2 bags of pretzels and a key chain.  We used that back pack all week!

We were SO pleased with our room!  The balcony is much bigger than on regular balcony rooms and we just couldn’t believe how much room we had out there!  Lisa really set us up well!  Lisa is my friend first and also our travel agent.  She told us the stateroom she found for us had a great verandah and boy was she right!  Normal verandahs come with 2 straight back chairs and a small table.  Our verandah has the 2 straight back chairs, the table, and 2 lounge chairs with plenty of room to move about.  More about the stateroom later.

All the sudden it was 3pm.  Time to go to the atrium to meet up with my cruise group.  This is a group of travelers who “met” on the DISboards (an online planning site for Disney fans).  Then I created a Facebook group for us.  It was great to meet in person and we ended up running into a lot of the group members throughout the cruise.  Funny how that happens with 4000 people on board you see the same people over and over.  This is the chandelier in the main atrium.  Amazing.   One of the ladies in our group made lime green Mickey heads for us all to wear in our lanyards.   When you check in when boarding the ship if you’ve cruised with Disney before you get a lanyard with pouch to hold your Key to the World Card.  This card is your room key, charge card for purchases, ID, etc.  The lanyard keeps the card handy because you use it all the time.   After the meet up I went back to pick up CSP from our room and we headed to the Walt Disney Theatre for our life boat drill.  Not too bad, sitting in a theatre for a life boat drill!  Not out in the sun!  We stopped back by our room after the drill and were pleased to see our luggage was already there.  Yay!

CSP was itching to go buy his souvenir beer mug so we went to O’Gills Irish Pub on deck 4.    For $15 you can buy a big glass beer mug.  Then when you fill it with beer (approx a pint and a half) you get it at a discount.  You turn in your mug at each bar if you don’t want to carry it around and they give you a token. At the end of the cruise you ask for a clean mug to take home.  By the time CSP retires he’ll have quite a collection!   Warning- they charge you for any non alcoholic drink in the bars even though you can get the same drink free outside of the bar.  O’Gills is a very cool Irish Pub.  We stopped in here a few times throughout the cruise.  Next thing we knew we were moving!  So we went back to our cabin.

We unpacked and enjoyed a glass of wine (moscato for me) and a beer for CSP on the balcony.  By now the sun was setting.  There’s nothing more beautiful than watching the sun set from your balcony on a Disney cruise!   We thought we’d take a wee nap before dinner but I couldn’t sleep.  I was too excited!  So I got up and got ready for dinner then woke CSP when it was time for him to get ready.

Next up….dinner at Royal Court and Match Your Mate!!!