FSU Girl
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2016
Welcome!
This is my third cruise trip report so I'm now 3 for 3 on my Disney cruises If you'd like to read them I have links in my signature.
A little background info:
This was my second of three honeymoons. I had a mini mini moon where we spent NYE at WDW. It was an amazing experience. This cruise was the mini moon, a week long cruise on the Fantasy with a Star Wars Day At Sea. Our big honeymoon is going to overlap with my 30th birthday in May. We are going to England and Scotland for two weeks, no Disney elements there so no trip report sadly.
My DH proposed to me on our last Disney cruise on the Dream. I've only cruised on Disney with him and we were married at Disney so a Disney cruise made sense for one of the honeymoons. I've never been on the Fantasy before or experienced one of their themed days so I was very excited.
I had booked this cruise shortly after signing all the papers with Disney back in January 2018. I had never booked a cruise that far out before. For our big honeymoon I changed that trip about 300 times before we finally settled on what we are going to do. For this cruise I never changed it once.
The Honeymoon was finally here! January 4th 2019 we left after work to drive up to the port the night before the cruise left. We live about three hours south of the port and I didn't want to stress the day of in case we hit traffic or anything.
My parents were leaving to go on a five month cruise to Australia the same day as us, so we had dinner with them and didn't get on the road until a lot later than planned. It worked out though, there was almost no traffic. We booked a one night stay at the Country Inn and Suites. It was a five minute drive from the port and they offered free parking at the hotel during the length of cruise, while providing a shuttle to take people to the port. Highly recommend!
The hotel wasn't anything special, just a typical room with a horribly uncomfortable bed. It wasn't exactly leveled and I kept rolling into my DH when lying on it. There was a Star Wars movie marathon happening on the TV, which I thought was pretty appropriate to watch with the cruise we were about to take.
Cruise day had finally arrived! After all the time planning this trip it was so exciting that it was finally here.
A cold front had rolled through Florida and the weather was a bit chilly this morning.
I didn't bring any warm clothes and was freezing until we got on the ship.
Leading up to the cruise I had joined a Facebook group, something I had never done before. It was really great place to ask specific questions for our cruise. We did a cruise meet and greet and I hung out with many of the people on the ship. When I woke up I checked out what people were saying in the group and there was a long discussion happening about a car accident on the bridge leading toward to port.
I felt so bad for whoever was in the accident. Apparently it was really bad, a car had flipped over and there were suitcases everywhere. They were clearly heading towards a cruise, not sure which one. Hopefully everyone involved is okay. Since it happened on the bridge it caused a lot of traffic and took people a lot longer to get to the cruise if they were going that way. We luckily avoided all that since we were at the hotel that was across that bridge.
We had signed up for the 10:30am shuttle to go to the port. In hindsight, we should have signed up for the 10am shuttle. I had thought that would be too early and didn't want to wait around the port before boarding started. Then I woke up at 7am was ready to go way before 10am and the 10:30am shuttle was late. There was a lot of traffic getting into the port that he had sat in delaying his return trip to get us.
The hotel had clearly labeled signs telling us where to go for the shuttle. When you check into the hotel they ask you what cruise you're going to and give you a paper has the phone number for the shuttle and the time you are scheduled for. The room was really full of people when we arrived, but the majority of them were going to the Carnival Breeze ship.
Eventually the driver came and off we went.
It took a little while for him to turn left out of the hotel due to traffic. So I took advantage and snapped a picture of the hotel sign.
We got caught up in the cruise traffic and sat in a really long line of cars getting into the port.
Then we made it!
Forgot to mention, for this cruise we decided to splurge and travel in Concierge. We had sailed in it on the Dream and I was totally spoiled and not sure I can go back to a normal room. With the prices I'll probably have to unless I win the lottery.
We walked through the massive crowd of people standing around and went over to the Concierge check-in room. After a few minutes we were whisked past the line of people and brought right onto the ship. If you've never sailed in Concierge before there are perks of avoiding all the crowds, from having a separate room to check-in to having a personal escort onto the ship.
It was really fun being announced on the ship, although I haven't officially changed my last name yet. I figured with needing the passport for the cruise and the passport for our European trip I would just wait until after that to change my last name. It's a lot of effort!
Once on board we were asked if we wanted to go have lunch or go to the Concierge lounge. They recently started having a concierge lunch in one of the MDR separate from the MDR open for lunch for everyone else. Since it was around 11am we opted to go to the concierge lounge. A lovely woman from South Africa escorted us to the elevator to send us up to the 12th deck. We would be seeing her again later on in the cruise.
On the Fantasy concierge has a private lounge located on deck 12. It was pretty crowded with everyone going over their plans with the three concierge hosts. While we waited to speak with someone they offered us complimentary glasses of mimosas. Normally alcohol is only served in the later afternoon before the first and second dinners, but on welcome day they offer mimosas.
Reached my picture limit, continued next post...
This is my third cruise trip report so I'm now 3 for 3 on my Disney cruises If you'd like to read them I have links in my signature.
A little background info:
This was my second of three honeymoons. I had a mini mini moon where we spent NYE at WDW. It was an amazing experience. This cruise was the mini moon, a week long cruise on the Fantasy with a Star Wars Day At Sea. Our big honeymoon is going to overlap with my 30th birthday in May. We are going to England and Scotland for two weeks, no Disney elements there so no trip report sadly.
My DH proposed to me on our last Disney cruise on the Dream. I've only cruised on Disney with him and we were married at Disney so a Disney cruise made sense for one of the honeymoons. I've never been on the Fantasy before or experienced one of their themed days so I was very excited.
I had booked this cruise shortly after signing all the papers with Disney back in January 2018. I had never booked a cruise that far out before. For our big honeymoon I changed that trip about 300 times before we finally settled on what we are going to do. For this cruise I never changed it once.
The Honeymoon was finally here! January 4th 2019 we left after work to drive up to the port the night before the cruise left. We live about three hours south of the port and I didn't want to stress the day of in case we hit traffic or anything.
My parents were leaving to go on a five month cruise to Australia the same day as us, so we had dinner with them and didn't get on the road until a lot later than planned. It worked out though, there was almost no traffic. We booked a one night stay at the Country Inn and Suites. It was a five minute drive from the port and they offered free parking at the hotel during the length of cruise, while providing a shuttle to take people to the port. Highly recommend!
The hotel wasn't anything special, just a typical room with a horribly uncomfortable bed. It wasn't exactly leveled and I kept rolling into my DH when lying on it. There was a Star Wars movie marathon happening on the TV, which I thought was pretty appropriate to watch with the cruise we were about to take.
Cruise day had finally arrived! After all the time planning this trip it was so exciting that it was finally here.
A cold front had rolled through Florida and the weather was a bit chilly this morning.
I didn't bring any warm clothes and was freezing until we got on the ship.
Leading up to the cruise I had joined a Facebook group, something I had never done before. It was really great place to ask specific questions for our cruise. We did a cruise meet and greet and I hung out with many of the people on the ship. When I woke up I checked out what people were saying in the group and there was a long discussion happening about a car accident on the bridge leading toward to port.
I felt so bad for whoever was in the accident. Apparently it was really bad, a car had flipped over and there were suitcases everywhere. They were clearly heading towards a cruise, not sure which one. Hopefully everyone involved is okay. Since it happened on the bridge it caused a lot of traffic and took people a lot longer to get to the cruise if they were going that way. We luckily avoided all that since we were at the hotel that was across that bridge.
We had signed up for the 10:30am shuttle to go to the port. In hindsight, we should have signed up for the 10am shuttle. I had thought that would be too early and didn't want to wait around the port before boarding started. Then I woke up at 7am was ready to go way before 10am and the 10:30am shuttle was late. There was a lot of traffic getting into the port that he had sat in delaying his return trip to get us.
The hotel had clearly labeled signs telling us where to go for the shuttle. When you check into the hotel they ask you what cruise you're going to and give you a paper has the phone number for the shuttle and the time you are scheduled for. The room was really full of people when we arrived, but the majority of them were going to the Carnival Breeze ship.
Eventually the driver came and off we went.
It took a little while for him to turn left out of the hotel due to traffic. So I took advantage and snapped a picture of the hotel sign.
We got caught up in the cruise traffic and sat in a really long line of cars getting into the port.
Then we made it!
Forgot to mention, for this cruise we decided to splurge and travel in Concierge. We had sailed in it on the Dream and I was totally spoiled and not sure I can go back to a normal room. With the prices I'll probably have to unless I win the lottery.
We walked through the massive crowd of people standing around and went over to the Concierge check-in room. After a few minutes we were whisked past the line of people and brought right onto the ship. If you've never sailed in Concierge before there are perks of avoiding all the crowds, from having a separate room to check-in to having a personal escort onto the ship.
It was really fun being announced on the ship, although I haven't officially changed my last name yet. I figured with needing the passport for the cruise and the passport for our European trip I would just wait until after that to change my last name. It's a lot of effort!
Once on board we were asked if we wanted to go have lunch or go to the Concierge lounge. They recently started having a concierge lunch in one of the MDR separate from the MDR open for lunch for everyone else. Since it was around 11am we opted to go to the concierge lounge. A lovely woman from South Africa escorted us to the elevator to send us up to the 12th deck. We would be seeing her again later on in the cruise.
On the Fantasy concierge has a private lounge located on deck 12. It was pretty crowded with everyone going over their plans with the three concierge hosts. While we waited to speak with someone they offered us complimentary glasses of mimosas. Normally alcohol is only served in the later afternoon before the first and second dinners, but on welcome day they offer mimosas.
Reached my picture limit, continued next post...