Seven night Eastern Caribbean cruise aboard the Fantasy - June 2018

jayb5

Wearefamilee007
Joined
Jun 13, 2003
Hello everyone,

Long time member but infrequent poster. This site has been so helpful since the beginning of my Disney days when we were planning our first trip to DW. After many trips to DW and DL, we finally did our first cruise aboard the Disney Fantasy for the Eastern Caribbean cruise. I'm in the process of creating a trip report on youtube with reviews and trips for first time Disney cruisers. I posted the first two parts below and am now starting part 3 :earboy2:

Our ports of call includes St. Maarten (Martin), St. Thomas, and of course Castaway Cay.

Part 1


Part 2
 
Thanks for sharing! Great videos! Which website do you use to upload your media to your post?


There’s actually a button on the toolbar when you post. I believe it’s called “upload media” (looks like 2 film reals) where you can enter the url for the YouTube video.
 
Thanks for sharing - Your daughter is adorable and your son looks like he had a blast on the Aquaduck! Looking forward to your next installment. :goodvibes
 


Uploaded part 3 - this video includes our port of call at Saint Maarten. Our original port of call was supposed to be Tortola British Virgin Islands but we got notified by Disney a couple of months before our cruise that due the extensive hurricane damage from Irma last year, our port of call was switched to St. Maarten. The excursions Disney offered here seemed somewhat limited so we decided to do our own private tour through Bernard’s tours. In touring the Island, you could still see the remnants of the devastation from Irma.

The highlight of the tour was hanging out at the Grand Case beach area, which was nice as it wasn’t crowded and the water was crystal clear.

 


Thank you for sharing! We're on this sailing next June! Hoping to return to Tortola by then, but the tour you did looks great! And my son is now really looking forward to the AquaDuck at night!
 
Uploaded Part 4. In this episode, we ride the Skyride cable car up to Paradise Point at our second port of call: St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI).


Audrey rides the Aqua Duck for the first time and we have dinner at the Enchanted Garden. A couple of the girls decide to play the Detective game again!


I give a review of the Oceaneer’s club and talk about whether or not a Disney cruise is a relaxing vacation vs. a busy scheduled vacation like Disney World. I also talk about being rushed during one of our dinners. Finally, I talk about the photo packages available on the cruise, similar to Photopass for Disneyworld and show the price list as of June 2018.

 
These are so incredibly helpful for first timers like myself. Did you find that you could skip things and just lay low at all or did the kids want to keep doing the activities? Also, is everyone pretty spread out for activities or is everyone trying to do the same things?
 
These are so incredibly helpful for first timers like myself. Did you find that you could skip things and just lay low at all or did the kids want to keep doing the activities? Also, is everyone pretty spread out for activities or is everyone trying to do the same things?

I think it depends on the type of traveler you are as well as the ages of the kids and what they’re in to. For us, we always liked doing something so there was always something to keep us busy. There were times however where we did just relax and the kids either watched a movie in the room (there are a lot of on demand movies available) or where our oldest (9) and his cousins would go to the pool and and hang out there watching the outdoor movie by the pool.

While the ship is huge (4,000 guests and 1,500 workers), Disney does a good job spacing everyone out with various activities at multiple locations throughout the day. The only time it felt really crowded was when they would have the main shows in the upper deck like the sailing away party or the pirate night show with the fireworks.

The more popular evening shows can also get crowded too so I would recommend arriving 10 minutes early to the popular shows like Aladdin and the last nights show (Believe)?
 
I am admiring your videos! Your family is quite charming! Thank you very much for sharing your adventures with us. I have just recently been gifted a new go pro hero, still in its packaging. Any tips? What accessories did you find invaluable and Where would I begin to learn about how to make videos?
 
I am admiring your videos! Your family is quite charming! Thank you very much for sharing your adventures with us. I have just recently been gifted a new go pro hero, still in its packaging. Any tips? What accessories did you find invaluable and Where would I begin to learn about how to make videos?

Hi debsters41,

Thanks for watching the videos! As far as accessories go, I would look at the following for a Disney cruise:

- extra batteries
- floating hand grip
- wrist strap band
- GoPro 3 way mount (not necessary)


I have a tendency to get carried away with accessories but the above four are the ones I probably used the most. Unfortunately, the battery life on the GoPro is pretty bad so you definitely need extra. The floating hand grip is handy when swimming in the ocean as it floats in case you let go or drop the camera. I didn’t use the wrist strap too often, however Disney doesn’t allow a camera on the aqua duck ride unless it’s attached to you so that’s how I recorded the video on the slide. The three way mount sounds good on paper, but it’s really just an expensive grip/selfie stick for the GoPro. Having said that, the three way mount is the item I used the most to record all the videos.

The other main thing to look into is video editing software. GoPro has a decent one you can install but I prefer IMovie which is free if you own an iPhone or an iPad. In terms of tutorials, there are many on YouTube, but it helps to have an idea of what kind of video you plan on shooting beforehand so you have an idea of all the shots you want to take before the actual vacation, etc.

Let me know if you have any other questions.
 
Here’s the final part of our trip! My goal is to eventually put up another video with some tips on how to save money on planning for a Disney cruise so hopefully I’ll be able to post it up on YouTube in the near future.

Thanks for watching!

 
Hi debsters41,

Thanks for watching the videos! As far as accessories go, I would look at the following for a Disney cruise:

- extra batteries
- floating hand grip
- wrist strap band
- GoPro 3 way mount (not necessary)


I have a tendency to get carried away with accessories but the above four are the ones I probably used the most. Unfortunately, the battery life on the GoPro is pretty bad so you definitely need extra. The floating hand grip is handy when swimming in the ocean as it floats in case you let go or drop the camera. I didn’t use the wrist strap too often, however Disney doesn’t allow a camera on the aqua duck ride unless it’s attached to you so that’s how I recorded the video on the slide. The three way mount sounds good on paper, but it’s really just an expensive grip/selfie stick for the GoPro. Having said that, the three way mount is the item I used the most to record all the videos.

The other main thing to look into is video editing software. GoPro has a decent one you can install but I prefer IMovie which is free if you own an iPhone or an iPad. In terms of tutorials, there are many on YouTube, but it helps to have an idea of what kind of video you plan on shooting beforehand so you have an idea of all the shots you want to take before the actual vacation, etc.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Thank you so much for your helpful reply! Now I know where to start!
 
Welp, we were supposed to go on another cruise last month but COVID definitely changed our plans for us. It would've been nice to be able to go on another cruise, but now I'm not so sure when we would go again. Even if ships were sailing now with discounted prices, cruise ships are one of the worst places to be in terms of COVID. Re-watching some of these videos sure makes me want to go back though. :surfweb:
 

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