Disney Dream

Our Disney Cruise

March 3rd - 6th, 2011 Last week we went on our first family cruise aboard the brand new Disney Dream. To say that it was an amazing experience- beginning to end- still wouldn't do the cruise justice. It was seriously the most amazing family vacation ever!

March 3rd we hung out in the cruise terminal in Cape Canaveral waiting to board the ship. Of course, Captain Mickey was hanging out too!
Mary Grace was SO excited that I seriously think she lost her mind! She actually GAVE Mickey her cat!!! Thankfully Mickey gave cat a sweet hug and insisted that Mary Grace take him back.

I really wanted to get a picture of Mary Grace holding her passport open to the picture, but she wasn't in any mood to cooperate. We had quite an experience getting her the passport and we have had several laughs over her picture. She totally looks like a crazy terrorist! Thankfully, children's passports expire in 5 years and she will get a new one (hopefully, with a much better picture!)

Brent spent our terminal time working...which makes me laugh! He was the only person in the entire building working! I think it was stressing him out to be cut off from reality (no cell phones, no Internet!) for such a long period of time- 3 days!

As soon as we boarded the ship we headed straight for lunch at Cabanas. Cabanas was a huge restaurant similar to a food court and open almost around the clock. After you were seated at your table you could go up to all different food stations. Mary Grace was immediately drawn to the dessert section. We figured we were on vacation and it wasn't going to hurt...

So this was lunch on the first day- chocolate moose, jello and 2 chocolate chip cookies.

After lunch we checked out our room and headed to Family time at the Kids Club. For the first couple hours they allowed parents to wonder around the Club and see all of the cool things for kids to do. We also got Mary Grace her wrist band that allowed us to know exactly where she was on the boat at all times (well, theoretically...if your child actually agrees to wear the wristband, which ours didn't. Nice feature for parents and extremely helpful if you were to misplace your child- which, thankfully, we didn't!)

Mary Grace loved the Club! The whole design was amazingly cool and all of the rooms had incredible detail!

One area of the club was Andy's Playroom (from the Toy Story Movies). All of the toys were giant and you could play and interact with them.

Another room featured a huge dress up closet and tree house type theme.

And of course, Brent gravitated to the computers where you could drive cruise ships. Besides having a million cool things to play with in the Club, they had 2 different scheduled activities/crafts all day and night every 30 minutes from 7AM-1AM. It would literally be impossible for a child to get bored in this area!

After touring the club (and prying Brent away from the boat driving game) we headed up to the top deck for our departure party. It was really funny, Mary Grace kept asking us when we were going to get on the boat. I think the size and feel of the boat was not what she was expecting. It took almost the entire cruise for us to keep reminding her that we were actually on the boat!

Mary Grace couldn't wait to get into the pool!

The view from 1 of the pool areas-

After swimming we hit up the ice cream parlor and went back to our room to enjoy it out on our balcony (as if all the sweets at lunch hadn't been enough!)

When we booked our cruise all of the early dinner seating were full and we got stuck with the 8:30 PM dinner. Since Mary Grace typically goes to bed at 8:00 PM I originally assumed that we would just eat at the more casual dining places on the ship and skip our formal dinners all together. In hindsight, I am SO glad we ended up with the later dinner and will book it on purpose in the future! Having the later dinner allowed us to take better advantage of the afternoon and not be rushed to get ready for dinner. We were also able to trick Mary Grace's system and get her to sleep in a bit later in the mornings which worked out really well for us!

Also, another benefit was that we were able to go to the early shows. The boat did a huge Broadway-like show each night. I was really surprised that Mary Grace enjoyed them as much as she did!

This is the first night at The Golden Mickey's (a collection of 'best' Disney moments/songs/characters)

After the show Brent went to The District (the bars) to catch some of the TN basketball game (how fantastic that Disney owns ESPN!) and Mary Grace and I met Princess Tiana.

And ran into Captain Mickey again-

Disney designed their formal dinners to be a rotating schedule of 3 different dining rooms. You are assigned which night you are in which restaurant and the best part is that you have the same waiters each night.

Our first night we at in Animator's Palate. There were huge TV screens on every wall that made you feel like you were inside a fish tank. All of the Nemo characters made appearances throughout the night and Crush, the turtle, actually interacted with the crowd. Of course, Mary Grace thought it was the coolest thing ever!

After Mary Grace's lunch, I decided she needed to eat a better balanced dinner. She really wanted pizza and I preferred that she have meat and veggies. Hearing our debate our waiter stepped in and made a deal with Mary Grace. He promised that if she took a certain number of bites of meat and veggies to satisfy me that he would bring her a pizza! So for dinner the first night she had Fillet with a side of pizza- and she was the happiest child alive!

And, she capped off the meal with a Mickey Bar! And yes, I realize in this picture she is starting to look delerious from all of the sugar.

I had really planned to do the whole cruise in one post, but that isn't going to happen!

Part 2- coming soon...