First Disney cruise - 5-Day Magic w/Marvel Day at Sea (Completed!)

cadien

DIS Veteran
Joined
Apr 19, 2017
Hello!

I found trip reports so helpful in preparing for our cruise that it seemed only fair to attempt one of my own.

There were three of us on this trip - myself, my husband, and our son, who turned 7 on the second day of the cruise. Along with being our first Disney cruise, it was our first vacation of any kind for just the three of us. We live 1200+ miles away from all family, only get 2 weeks per year of vacation, and have the only grandchild on both sides, so up until now all of our travel has been about going home. This was not our first cruise, however. Both sets of our parents are retired and cruise regularly. My in-laws took us on a Norwegian cruise on the Mexican Riviera in 2014. In the Haven, so we won't be entirely comparing apples to apples.

DH and I both really like to travel, especially to Europe. As a general rule, we didn't see cruises as our style at all. But we recognized their value when traveling with children. I always said we'd never consider a Disney cruise just because of the high price. And we're not Disney people, despite DH growing up 45 minutes from Anaheim. And having a boy does mean avoiding much of the princess thing. But what we are is geeks. We actually met at that big comic-con in San Diego. So between Star Wars and Marvel, Disney is suddenly getting all kinds of our money. And mysteriously, soon after they rolled out the Marvel Day at Sea cruises, they sent me a postcard about them. It took us about 5 minutes to decide to go for it. The fact Marvel had a 5-day option, which was much more affordable than the 7-day Star Wars ones, really helped. Picking the specific date was easy when I saw one happened over our son's birthday. So we booked about 13 months ahead of time, which means lots and lots of planning and Pinterest. And switching from Cruise Critic to here.
 
Our pre-cruise wasn't very normal, especially with sailing out of Miami, so I'll be brief. We flew in the day before, from North Dakota. We always stay at a Kimpton if a city has one. Miami has three and we picked the Surfcomber in Miami Beach. They were even running a 30% sale for loyalty club members. It was a great hotel. Amazing breakfast. We took that beachfront walkway about a mile to Lario's on the Beach (except it wasn't) for very tasty Cuban food. It was a nice stroll there and back, especially after all the flying. DH and I both grew up on the West Coast and have never been to Florida at all.


Arrived!

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I want one of these chairs. They're even more comfortable for adults.

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Amazing brunch menu.

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The one cocktail cut off that photo: Old Fashion'ed Morning: Jack Daniel's Single Barrel, Tia Maria surfs up espresso, the irishman infused cream. We were not expecting ice but it was welcome.

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First time trying ricotta doughnuts. I highly recommend.

That is chocolate sauce and dulce de leche for dipping.

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I was both amazed and impressed by what is considered a side of fruit in Miami. There were blackberries and blueberries along with standard strawberries, pineapple, and cantelope.

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This is pretty much it for food pictures for this trip. I always mean to take a bunch and then forget. Even though the food is usually what most of my family and friends want most to see. The lighting was too low in the Cuban place the night before.
 
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Our original plan was to do the latest possible port arrival time and do some sightseeing in the morning. But we ended up unexpectedly impatient to just get started. Plus I still hadn't managed to get Palo brunch reservations. So as soon as we'd finished eating, we packed up and caught a cab.

DH hadn't believed me about all the matching family shirts until we were in line at security. That was the slowest part of boarding and still went pretty quickly. Very little actual standing.

At one point after security but before the counter, they called DS out of line and handed him gloves for a photo opp.

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We pretty much walked right up to the counter (although it was a long, snaky walk) to get our cards and have our photos taken. Then a few more long hallways to get to the gangplank. The port in L.A. (San Pedro) is much more straightforward. But also gets more backed up.


Obligatory picture with the back of the ship.

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And an official boarding photo.

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Don't tell DH we sort of did matching shirts too. They're all Marvel.

A link to my awesome girl power version : https://www.heruniverse.com/product/marvel-ladies-of-marvel-retro-t-shirt/10883304.html

DH's shirt came from the Disney site but is no longer there.

One thing I'd regretted about our first cruise was that we hadn't gotten any of the embarkation or port photos, since we were with people who had already done them enough times and hurried on past. I think they're fun. I also like the custom borders on cruise photos. We bought the full photo package in advance and crossed our fingers that we'd have better luck finding photographers than we had on our spring 2017 trip to Disneyland. We really couldn't find them! We'd prepurchased the package then to and really ended up with nothing. This time went better but they were still less ubiquitous than expected.
 
The first thing we did upon boarding was go stand in the Guest Services line to attempt a Palo brunch reservation. Most of you know that was a mistake. Fortunately a crew member came up to make sure everyone was in the right line and redirected us to the Promenade Lounge, where they were actually making the reservations. There was only one couple in front of us. We had two sea days and the very next day had an opening at 10:00, which I took. That was our Marvel Day at Sea, so we'd need to put off getting into costume, but that was fine. That gave us 90 minutes to eat before our first ticketed character meet.

We then had about two hours until the muster drill, and the Facebook group meet would be right after that. I'd forgotten how soon rooms would be ready, so we wandered up to the pool deck to check things out.


I found the Dole Whip with rum. I've never had a real Dole Whip but this was fine. Unusual texture.

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DS found the soft serve. He was incredibly excited to find out he could just help himself. But what he really ended up making the most use of was the pizza window. He felt super grown up going and getting served pizza all by himself.

No idea how he got ice cream on his ear.

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We went down to check out the room. This would be the big contrast. On Norwegian we had a 2-bedroom, 2-bath suite, and now we had an oceanview room on deck 2. With no butler. But it was great. Unexpectedly, DS commented on how small it was, but it really was enough room for us. And it was really neat being so close to the water. We could even hear it slooshing. I'd say the only downside was that the fact the storage drawers had to be spread out all over the cabin meant we could never remember where anything was. Similarly, I was always going into the wrong half of the split bathroom to find my hairbrush, etc. But it was comfortable.

I had ordered the full set of Marvel room decorations but somehow managed to not get any photos. They were fun, however. I also ordered the blanket/pillow set. It's a great blanket. Very soft and cozy. Important in North Dakota. And since I hadn't expected us to get lunch, I'd ordered the fruit and cheese tray. With their private label sparkling wine. As a surprise, my parents sent us the prosecco and chocolates combo, and sent DS the birthday chocolates box, so we were all set for a while!


I appreciated the little guide telling you about all the cheeses. There weren't any that were new to us, but they were all kinds we like.

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The chocolates. I am kind of particular about chocolate (and thank goodness) but DH and DS enjoyed them.

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Birthday treats. These were huge, and some of the chocolates turned out to have an entire Oreo hiding inside.

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I loved how the tv knew who we were. Definitely not something we saw on any of our five (!) televisions in our NCL suite.

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DH loved watching where we were and how fast we were going. Also keeping track of where the other three DCL ships were, which was a fun touch. This cruise (it was the April 29-May 4 one, btw) was soon after the dry dock, so we had the on-demand service. I was really impressed with just how many movies and shows there were. Especially (dramatic music) when we ended up stuck in the cabin.

Random thing while I'm thinking about it: the one thing our NCL room was significantly better at was the bed. It was so comfortable! The kind you actually notice. And I usually don't think about a mattress one way or the other. The Disney bed was completely fine, but not special. Maybe the concierge mattresses are fancy. I also missed the coffee maker of course.
 
Something I just realized while reading another thread. We never noticed a card slot for the lights. Is that only on some ships or in some types of rooms? We did have trouble figuring out (and remembering) which lights did what, but that's normal for every cabin or hotel room.
 


So the rest of day 1.

We munched on cheese and drank sparkling wine until it was time for the muster drill. It was out on deck in the sun but didn't last long enough to get uncomfortable. From there we went to our FB group meet-up at the Promenade Lounge. One of the organizers had suggested it on sailaway not just for our own benefit but so that the shyer kids could meet each other before being thrown into the chaos that can be the clubs. Our own son is really unpredictable about when he's super social and when he's not but he did find a couple random other boys at the gathering and they went off and had animated conversations the whole time about who knows what. Probably something animated. We chatted with random nice people we never ran into again until it was time for the kids club open house. There were never any waiters circulating to take an order. They might not have any there because it never happened any time we were in that venue.

One thing I really loved about that lounge was how there's actually a nook in one corner for children. It's behind a half wall and has things to sit on and things to climb on and a tv screen with cartoons. So they're not at the table with you getting restless. We didn't take advantage of that but I just appreciated it as a thoughtful detail. If you're sitting at the bar rather than at a table, though, they could totally leave undetected.

We ended up leaving DS in the club and going to 70s music trivia at O'Gills. We got there about 30 minutes early because of the warnings I'd read here about it filling up. So of course we were the only ones there until about 5 minutes before start. A nice waiter came over to chat. He has a good friend from back home who works for NCL and talked (very diplomatically) about the differences between working on the two lines. Nothing like wages came up. I'm happy to go into detail if anyone is interested.

Once trivia started, I think there ended up being about six tables playing. We came in second! And the winners turned out to be a very fun couple from our FB group who we hadn't met at the gathering. (We didn't participate in the fish extender. It's a neat idea but not something we felt we had the time for. Plus we're working hard at decluttering and minimizing our overstuffed house right now.) It turned out they just play a snippet from each song and you write down the title and the artist. You earn a point for each correct answer, so you still get one point if you only know the title and not the artist. There were 15 songs. We're huge fans of trivia (I actually have matches the next two nights) but that ended up being the only one we attended. There was just so much to do! We were disappointed not to see an 80s music night. That would have been a priority. They did have 90s.

We liked the snacks menu and did have the sliders on another day. It was a decent drinks selection too. Especially since we both prefer cider to beer.

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I picked up DS from the kids club and we stood in an insanely long line to meet Captain America. It turned out to be the longest line of the trip, so that's something. DH had realized he'd accidentally not packed a collared shirt, so he spent part of that time buying a really expensive one in one of the gift shops. I don't remember what else he did during that time, but he did miss the photo.

Cap was very in character. Still in the 40s character. He called me ma'am and offered his arm.

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The star-spangled USO show sounded really neat. I even went through a phase in college of listening to tons of WWII popular music. But we never made it to that either.

I just now noticed that DS is copying what Cap is doing even though no one is with him.
 
As a general rule, we didn't see cruises as our style at all. But we recognized their value when traveling with children.

This is so my family.

I loved how the tv knew who we were.

Can't wait to see this in person in a couple weeks!

We never noticed a card slot for the lights. Is that only on some ships or in some types of rooms?

Only on the Dream class ships.

Great start! I can't wait to read the rest.
 
Dinner our first night was in Lumiere's. We rewatched Beauty and the Beast in the week before and DS's favorite character was Lumiere and especially the Be Our Guest number, so he was excited for that. It was a bit dramatic to walk in and have all the waiters lined up at the bottom of the steps looking at you.

We picked late dining. We often eat around 7 and were coming from an hour earlier, time zone-wise. We also wanted to maximize our time before dinner. We never have much ambition after dinner.

Our in-laws started cruising exclusively with Norwegian mainly because of the flexible dining times and the fact you don't sit with strangers. (Starting before the other lines had really expanded the same options.) We were fine, however, with trying out fixed dining and sharing a table. And in fact DH decided by the end of the cruise that he strongly prefers this kind of dining. Having at least one fixed point to schedule around. And one less decision to make. I don't have a real preference either way but I definitely liked getting a variety of restaurants.

Disney did well with the table assignment, we thought. We were a party of three, and were seated with a party of five, including a boy just a month younger than DS. And they got along well. They were also from a flyover state. (This is how I avoid the eternal debate over which states are and are not part of the Midwest.) It was the two kids, mom, grandma, and grandma's sister. They'd all cruised before. I never did figure out the difference between platinum Castaway Club lanyards and silver, and they weren't the type to mention. The adults didn't interact a lot, but not in a bad way. The kids were in between us and the table was a little long, so it was just easier to talk to each other. And nice to have that rare adult-only conversation with your traveling companion(s).

The waiters did a good job of keeping the kids entertained too. They regularly came around with magic tricks and puzzles and made napkins animals. DS actually got annoyed at the frequency of the interruptions, but I still think it's a great service. They were not so great at things like keeping our water glasses refilled or remembering everything we ordered, but it was close enough.

If we did anything after dinner besides unpack, I don't remember it. We tend to go to bed pretty early and then just read. Or simply crash by 10. We're willing to let DS stay up on vacation but he's usually incapable. We went to Disneyland for the first time last April (2017) for just a day and were hoping he could finally see fireworks. He fell asleep right at the dinner table at 8:30.

It turned out we were right under Lumiere's, apparently the kitchen part. There was a lot of noise that sounded more like prep than cleaning. Mechanical noise. It didn't keep me awake, however, so I can't say how late it lasted.
 
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Day 2 (or the first full day) was Marvel Day at Sea. And what turned out to be our only Cabanas breakfast. It was an impressive buffet, but other things happened. And DH really dislikes buffets unless they're pizza or sushi.


We let DS have a doughnut in addition to the usual breakfast starches because it was his birthday!

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We kept it much lighter because we only had a couple hours until Palo brunch! DH actually ended up regretting eating what he did because it left less room for Palo. I just had one yogurt and some bircher muesli (the kind with grated fresh apple). Yes, those are yesterday's clothes, but that's because we're all changing soon. You can see we did stop at Guest Services for the birthday pin. The phone rep when I had ordered our room decorations had said that she would note the birthday on our file but that we would still need to get our own pin. But they ended up leaving one in the room with a note anyway. The woman at Guest Services who gave us the pin, after customizing it with his age, also gave him a fancy Rice Krispie treat. Mickey head-shaped on a stick, with some decorative frosting to boot.

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It was super bright out and pretty humid, so we moved inside after not too long to finish eating. I thought the outdoors theming inside was really fun with the trees and birds. It made it strange that the carpet was something other than sand-related. I've already forgotten what it was, other than unrelated to the rest.

I kept my key card and DS's in a small purse the whole cruise but you can see DH decided the Marvel themed lanyard was too fun to pass up. And we go to comic cons, so we're used to lanyards.
 
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We dropped DS at the kids club and returned to the cabin to spiff up. Since we still had some time, and were on the right deck, we went to the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique to make DS an appointment for Pirate Night. The online spots had been all taken but they were able to get us in. We'd also looked at online photos of the Knight makeover, because he's recently gotten into having his hair styled with product, but he didn't like the looks of the confetti so it didn't seem worth it.

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You can tell that's the shirt from the gift shop. Not really his normal look but the texture was very cooling and comfortable. (He wears tons of buttoned shirts, even on the weekend, but they're usually striped and never pastel.) I'm in a dress. Without a full skirt because I learned that the hard way on our first cruise! There were many women on Pirate Night constantly struggling to keep their dresses from blowing up.

My browser keeps crashing so I have to keep these posts shorter.
 
So Palo brunch was wonderful. No surprise there. We are definitely foodies. That was one of the toughest things about moving out to North Dakota. But it's gotten better lately. We actually have sushi and a little Thai now, if still no Indian. And oh I miss Trader Joe's.

Even anti-brunch DH was happy, because he is a big fan of small plates. We both are. We got lucky and had the famous Sylvester as our waiter. DH loved him. My idea of great service is a little more unusual. I don't like being brought things we didn't order. It's wasteful. And it wasn't adorable that he told us the gorgonzola grape pizza was no longer available even to be requested, we were given bad information, and then ta-da big show of managing to get us for it after all. Sorry. I know he's much loved. And I still had a great meal.

And what's with Disney's reluctance to let people drink? I mean, I love that they don't have the packages. We don't like being around "partying" in the middle of the day and especially with kids. But we were never once asked about a second drink in any restaurant. And pool deck servers were practically imaginary.

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I didn't take any photos of DH's plates.
 
In the first photo, that's some kind of vanilla pastry (vanilla almond?) behind one topped with half an apricot. The thing that looks like a slider bun. Balsamic onions in the glass. Deviled egg. Pureed roast eggplant in the ramekin with a feta stick. Gravlax. Crab legs. Smoked trout mousse.

Second photo: Assorted cheeses with quince paste. One of those fresh baked parmesan sticks. That was amazing. Not as simple as it looks. I'm glad Sylvester emphasized that in his tour. Smoked salmon mousse, which made me think of Monty Python. Super fresh mozzarella on a tomato slice. There's a seared scallop in the lower ramekin under the red onion. Ham and cheese roll. Walnut bleu cheese bread.

And then the pizza. Which really was fantastic.

From the menu, but not photographed, we ordered the eggplant and the veal. Which were both nice but we didn't finish either. We were also brought the famous chicken parmesan and the lasagna because we just weren't allowed to miss out. But we only took a bite or two of each. They were both definitely above average versions of what they were, more so than the two dishes we ordered, but in the end they still weren't a priority for us.

We asked for the check without getting dessert. We'd chosen to have extra savory instead of leaving room for sweets and we were running out of time because of our ticketed character meets. Sylvester brought a couple small things anyway, after we said no thanks, and we took a couple bites to be polite but didn't feel the need to finish either one of those either.
 
We picked up DS from the kids club and went back to the cabin to change.

I was really stepping out of my comfort zone with my costume, since I don't otherwise own leggings, even for around the house. But at least there was also a coat for coverage. We got even more self-conscious when we realized how few adults had dressed up. When we were in Animator's Palate for the Groot meet, for example, we saw NONE. But all the kids were costumed and adorable.

DS picked his own character and was somehow the only Rocket on board. He received many compliments. (He also did have lots of staff wishing him happy birthday because of the button. And even some fellow passengers.) He has seen all of the Marvel movies. We stopped pre-screening them for him about a year and a half ago and now we just all go together. Same with the Star Wars movies. But I did regret that with Guardians II. That one was uncomfortably sadistic, although he wasn't affected.

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Okay, so our costumes.

I went for a deep cut. The Nextwave version of Elsa Bloodstone. Awesome (British!) character and there was a whole storyline where she wore a t-shirt instead of the de rigueur bustier. Nextwave is a hilarious mini series but it's a very inside satire of the regular Marvel universe. I wasn't being deliberately obscure. I just really love the character. And the outfit seemed reasonable. I did buy inexpensive high boots on Amazon to wear both for this and on Pirate Night but they were just too difficult to get on and too scrunchy once they were on. In an obviously not-as-intended way. Because thick calves.

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DH actually picked a well-known character. With comic fans. Kraven the Hunter is a long-time major Spider-Man version with the disadvantage of not yet appearing in the movies. But the crafty friend who was making his vest got sick and couldn't do it so we had to improvise at the last minute. So he went with a summer fun on-vacation version that our comic fan friends found awesome but everyone else was just confused. In fact, halfway through the day he started really worrying that fellow passengers figured that's just how he really dressed and we both changed back into civilian clothes.

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We never did have a real lunch of the ship. There are so many things that just didn't happen because there were so many other things. We never saw a show! And intended to. We're big Broadway people. Just didn't happen.

One challenge I run into on vacation, and even more so with a child along, is pacing. We don't traditionally relax. It's more important to us to experience things that we can't get at home. That's the point of travel for us rather than staycations. But although DS is probably now old enough to not get sensory overload, and he certainly doesn't melt down, we try to keep things mellower and flexible with him.

Anyway, we grabbed food at some point up on the pool deck. Or I'm guessing just DS had pizza because of the brunch. I did have shawarma up there at some point during the cruise. And I know DH got salads from Daisy's De-Lites a couple times. Although DS eats a wide range of things at home, this was the second straight cruise where he picked one meal and insisted on sticking with it. On Norwegian, it was a hot dog and orange juice for dinner. Here, it was cheese pizza for lunch. It's vacation.

Our second set of ticketed character meets was at 2:00 or so. We really underestimated how long that would take. It was the New York characters up in D Lounge. I saw that they were setting up for Loki right around the corner, and had already missed that a couple times, so I decided to skip New York, get in line for Loki, and then DS and DH could join me in line when they were done. Ha.

As you've heard, Loki is fantastically in character. Including bluntly telling me he had no idea who I was supposed to be. When I explained I was a monster hunter, he tried to convince me his brother was a monster. And he got really nervous when I mentioned Thanos. We had not yet seen the movie, but I was feeling uneasy about his chances.

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Once I finish, I go looking for DH and DS and they're still in line! They've barely moved. And it's been easily 45 minutes. Groot went so much more quickly, so that had given us inaccurate expectations. I ended up just hanging out in a lounge chair on the deck right outside for at least another 30.

They did enjoy the process once it was their turn. And there were a lot of photos and a lot of conversations with the characters. Like actually initiated by the characters. Which of course isn't an option with Groot.

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Iron Man's suite malfunctioned and they had to just give up on him. That was part of the delay.
 
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