Disney Cruise Line Caribbean Cruise - Part 3
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A Dream is a wish...
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If you missed it, Part One and Part Two of this series are still available

The Ultimate Disney Day?

It took only the first glimpse of sunlight to hit my face to wake me for the first of two sea days. Both Lindsay and I were immensely excited about the opportunity to comprehensively explore the ship and relax, a pastime that is exceptionally rare for us. I am rather a fidgety character by definition (I’m sure Doobie, Rebekah, Benji, Fab and Kim will back me up here!) and the thought of an entire day without any plans was daunting to Lindsay!

At the first dinner, each guest is given a Character Breakfast ticket. This is held in Parrot’s Cay and is an a la carte menu. Today, it was our turn, as we joined our other table guests in the restaurant. Unfortunately, the food was as average as that served the previous morning at Lumiere’s. The selection was minimal, but the food still arrived luke-warm, with an appearance that reminded me of the plastic food that sits in glass cases outside restaurants in Japan. However, the atmosphere was excellent. Both Lindsay and I were intrigued as to how our fellow late seating guests would react to the Disney characters, as there were only a handful of children in our seating session. We need not have worried, as the characters moved from guest to guest, table to table with a designated photographer, everyone was entertained by the enthusiasm and individuality of the characters. Mickey, Minnie, Pluto and Chip ‘n’ Dale were superlative entertainers and managed to crack smiles on even the most miserable of Disney Magic guests. A small show in the centre of the dining room had everyone twirling their napkins in the area to a Caribbean-inspired tune.

An Educational Vacation?
Each day, a Personal Navigator was delivered to each stateroom. This guide to the daily activities was invaluable. Even experienced Disney cruisers would require the use of this information tool with its daily listings of events and activities for all ages. The Day at Sea promised to offer the whole spectrum of entertainment and planning required military precision. Timing was critical as the number of events meant that many overlapped.

DCL runs two adult-orientated educational series, Disney’s Art of Entertaining and Disney’s Navigator Series. The former offers instructions from the on-board expert chefs on all aspects of hosting guests, from table layouts to appetizer preparation and dessert showcases. This gastronomic series is split into a series of seminars conducted in the family nighttime bar called Studio Sea.

Disney’s Navigator series began shortly after lunch with a fascinating insight into the development of the Disney Magic. Attendees were shown a 30 minute video showing the planning of the ship with input from Michael Eisner and Wing Chao (the unofficial architectural "guru" for Walt Disney Imagineering with executive responsibility for the Company’s resorts). The video also demonstrated the construction process at the famous shipyard in Venice. However, many guests did gulp hard when they discovered that the ship was actually made in two halves and welded together in Venice!

Afterwards, two officers, one from navigation and the other from engineering arrived for an informal Q&A session that covered such diverse subjects as sewerage destruction, recycling and the funny torpedo-like device attached to the front of the ship! Later in the day, a cast member led a tour of the ship, pointing out the architecture, fixtures & fittings and displayed art of the Magic. This tour is particularly insightful with a great deal of information and attending guests were amazed at the level of detail considered by the Imagineers.