DINKS Cruise Disney – The Beginning
DINKS Cruise Disney – Pre Planning (Mickey and Minnie Called, Pirate Night Prep)
DINKS Cruise Disney – Time to Go
DINKS Cruise Disney – Onboard (Multiple Posts Throughout: Initial Thoughts, Around Disney Fantasy, Answering Reader Questions)
DINKS Cruise Disney – Parting Thoughts
Cruise Review – Parts One, Two, and Three
Last year, MrsMJ and I were invited to join our friends and their kids for a spring break cruise aboard Disney Fantasy. We may be DINKS, but we love Disney…. even though my first visit to Disney World happened to be for my 40th birthday. Long story short, we booked the cruise. Disney Fantasy is Disney Cruise Line’s newest ship, delivered in February 2012. The ship has a lot of features, but one I’m looking most forward to is the AquaDuck water coaster. 🙂 Yes, I really said that. Other than that, the adults only areas are very appealing, and I know we are not the first couple to sail Disney without kids.
I reviewed Disney’s Castaway Club during my cruise line elite status series. As Disney newbies, we have no elite status, and could not book our shore excursions, onboard activities, or check in online until 75 days before departure. Recently, we crossed this window, so I decided to go ahead and get us checked in for the cruise.
The Disney website is pretty intuitive, and once you log in and retrieve your reservation, you have several selections to choose from to enjoy your cruise.
This is just a sample, with other options including standard cruise options like ground transportation, information on how to get to the port, etc. and my personal favorite, Disney character calls. 🙂 Since my focus was checking in, I selected that option. Disney offers a video to walk you through the process, but being a fairly experienced cruiser, I thought I would chance it on my on. The check in process was quite similar to every other I’ve tried with the need to put in arrival and departure plans, passport information, and onboard account information.
At the end, I printed out our signature form which should be taken to the port, and was greeted with this.
Captain Mickey says we’re ready to sail. Now we just have to wait a bit. In the meantime, there are specialty restaurant options and shore excursions to explore. We are very excited to sail with our friends, and to try the Disney experience at sea. More soon
-MJ, January 3, 2013
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As someone with no “status” in Castaway Club, did you run into any issues making reservations for any specialty restaurants, or reserving the check-in time you wanted?
On some message boards people make it seem like those who have never cruised on DCL before get a terrible check-in time, and can’t get the reservations they want. This wasn’t the case for me on my August 2012 cruise on the Disney Dream, but I’m not sure if I was just lucky.
I was able to get the check-in time I wanted. In fact, all but the very earliest slot was available, and I did not want to get there that early anyway.
I was unable to reserve Remy at my first choice of dates and times. One of our fellow cruisers booked us into Palo for an adults only dinner, so we’re good there. I may try again on board for Remy….. I’d like to try it for blog material if nothing else.
Be sure to check out the adult section on Castaway Cay on the private island. The beach is better, the food lines shorter, and overall, more tranquil. If you like to be in the water, take a pool noodle or floater so you don’t have to rent anything.
Looking forward to it, Kareninfl.
So we are going on the Disney Dream in Feb and booked our cruise through Chase, paying with the Chase Ultimate rewards. I noticed that someone people say they transferred their cruise to Costco after ordering through another travel agent, which can get a Costco card as a perk. Any idea if we could do this with the Chase booked cruise?
Chip,
I’m not a Costco person, so I can’t offer personal experience with this. On first blush, I don’t see why not, other than the fact that I believe you are inside the final payment window. But having not done so myself, I can’t promise. Hopefully, another reader who has done this will chime in. And I’m going to do a little research.
In general, it is not possible to transfer reservations after final payment is made. My experiences in transferring reservations are with RCL exclusively, so I can say with 100 percent assurance how it will work with Disney.
Here’s a link to some information from Disney on travel agent transfers.
https://disneycruise.disney.go.com/planning-center/my-cruise-plans/faqs/booking-reservations/travel-agent-authorization/