NOTE: There are 13 photos in this post. Photos by me (Bruce) taken with a Google Pixel 6 Pro unless otherwise indicated. (Photos by Linda taken with a Google Pixel 6.) Photos are chronological and captioned, but are interspersed with some narrative.
FRIDAY 23 February (T3-C1) — Disney Cruise Line (DCL) DREAM, Embarkation and Sail Away
It’s around 1 PM; we are all on the ship and busy doing things. Meghan helps Sadie figure out how to play the who-dun-it/discovery game while Marilyn looks on. Clues were hidden in electronic pictures. Displaying a game badge would “open” (change) the picture and reveal a clue. (Photo by Linda)
I was up early and met up with our daughter (Meghan) in the elevator on our way to get coffee. I rarely get to chat with her alone, and enjoyed a relaxed conversation over coffee. Linda joined us a bit later. Meghan eventually took coffee and muffins back to her room for Chris. Linda and I got breakfast and chatted until she went back to our room to take a shower. I returned to our room after finishing my meal, got my shower, and got dressed for the day. We then repacked our suitcases before Linda went back to the lobby to join Meghan, and others, who were having breakfast.
Brendan helps Sadie with the who-dun-it game in the lobby of the ship with the Golden Mickey statue in the background. Having been to Walt Disney World several times, the look and feel of the interior of the ship was familiar and pleasing. (Photo by Linda)
Everything up to this point had been fairly routine travel—planes, taxis (ride shares), and hotels, with some walking thrown in, either to find food or just because—but with a certain added anticipation of things to come. Today started in the usual way, but was soon new and different for most of our party. Indeed, even for us, as we had never sailed on a Disney cruise ship and so had not experienced a ship with soooo many children. Not that we have never been with large numbers of children; we presumed that it would be similar to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, and there is a certain positive energy associated with so many children having such a good time. Indeed, it even seems to bring out the child in many of adults.
It didn’t take long to discover the self-serve soft-serve ice cream station on one of the upper/open-air decks. This turned out to popular with everyone in our party and, apparently, most of the other guests on the ship. L-2-R: Meghan, Sadie, and Brendan. (Photo by Linda)
When we arrived at the Hyatt Place hotel on Wednesday, we signed up for a shuttle to take the six of us staying here to the port at noon today. We did not get a shuttle at exactly that time, but they were scheduled to arrive at the hotel approximately every 10 minutes. It was at most a 10-minute ride to the port, and only that long because of traffic, so we were still there ahead of the 1 PM check-in time for us (the rest of the group had 1:15 check-in times). It turned out that these assigned times didn’t mean much. We dropped our checked luggage with the porters at the curb and then walked some distance into the cruise terminal building. But the line moved along at a reasonable pace, and various adults took turns keeping Sadie occupied, which is the key to a happy life.
Linda on the main top deck. (There are additional small decks at the front and rear of the ship.) Camera is pointed aft. The enclosed water-slide is prominent, with the main swimming pool to the right and down one deck.
Looking forward, the large screen on the forward exhaust stack tower, indicates that the ship is “Sailing Away.” “Sail Away” is a big, festive deal on cruise ships. Many guests gather on the upper/open decks, while others go out on their stateroom balconies, to watch the ship pull away from the dock and head out to sea. In some ports, there are crowds on-shore waving to the ship. The time-stamp on this photo is 4:29 PM, but I don’t think the ship has left the dock yet.
Two other cruise ships are visible from the port side of the ship. ABIR, the larger one is a Royale Caribbean ship (emblem on the lower rear hull). The smaller one was from one of the luxury or ultra-luxury cruise lines, but I don’t recall which one. Note that our ship is in its berth bow first, with the dock on the other/starboard side. Our ship had to back out of its berth and make a 180-degree turn (pirouette) before heading out to sea. The maneuver was precisely and smoothly executed. The maneuver was very smoothly and precisely executed.
Soon enough we were all checked in and were headed onto the ship a bit before 1 PM. There were a couple of things about the check-in that were different from our previous experience. For one, they did NOT issue us our cruise cards and said they would be waiting for us by our cabin doors. For another, they checked every page of our passports, at least for the adults. I asked why and was told “because there are children on board” but the boarding agent could/would not tell me anymore. Our presumption is that there must be something in passports for individuals who are not allowed to be around children. Further research, however, did not provide any additional information.
A view looking NNE of the Intra-Coastal Waterway (ICW) and a bridge to a barrier island, as seen from the starboard rear upper deck of the Disney DREAM.
Some of the adult members of our travel party, L-2-R: Chris, Marilyn, Meghan, Linda, and me (Bruce). Not shown are Brendan, Shawna, Katie and the munchkins (Madeline and Sadie). I do not know who took the photo with Linda’s phone. The previous photo was taken around 4:33 PM and this one was taken around 5:22 PM. This and the next photo indicate that the ship is backing out of its berth. Thus, logic tells me that we must have departed at 5 PM (cruise ships tend to keep a tight schedule) or we departed at 6 PM and all of my photos are off by one hour (but I don’t think so), or we departed at 4 PM and I have no idea what’s going on.
Our staterooms (on Deck 9) would not be available until 1:30, so some of the adults went with Sadie on an exploration to solve a “crime” while I stayed with Madeline, who needed to sit and get off her injured foot. (She strained or stressed a growth plate in her left foot a week ago while ice skating, and got fitted with a boot yesterday morning before flying to Fort Lauderdale.) DCL uses a system to control room access that we had not seen before. When Madeline and I tried to use an elevator to go from Deck 5 to Deck 9 around 1:20 PM, it would not open the doors at Deck 9. Clever Disney.
The Disney DREAM is definitely underway as it has backed out of its berth into the Intra-Coastal Waterway (ICW) where it backed around to port (behind the camera) into a “turning pool” and swung around to point into the channel leading to the sea, as shown here. Cruise ships have both bow and stern thrusters, smaller propellers in tunnels that go through the ship sideways. Besides moving the front or rear of the ship to the left or right, their coordinated use can move the ship sideways, such as towards/away from a dock, or turn it around its mid-point, such as it will do here. Many cruise ships, especially newer ones, also have “Azipods,” a steerable propeller mechanism, for propulsion rather than aft-facing propellers and one or more rudders.
Our first dinner together in the Royale Palace dining room aboard the DCL DREAM. We had a table for 10 every evening for dinner. Our table number was 81, and remained so for all of our dinner meals, regardless of which dining room we were in. Shown here is our son’s family, L-2-R: Shawna, Brendan, Sadie, and Madeline. I think Sadie was just tired, not unhappy, as she really enjoyed the cruise. (Photo by Linda)
L-2-R: Cousins Madeline and Katie at the dinner table. (Photo by Linda)
Once in our room, we scoped out the available storage and started unpacking. Our balcony stateroom had plenty of storage; hanging closets, drawers, and shelves. It also had the usual safe, and our wallets and passports went in there right away. We used to turn our cell phones off and put them in the safe as well, but these days we put them in airplane mode (to turn off the cellular radio) and turn on the wi-fi radio to connect to the ship’s wi-fi system. On the DREAM, this allowed us to use the Disney Cruise Line Navigator app, which was our access to any/all information about the ship’s activities, including menus for the restaurants, reservations (if needed), and our account. (Most cruise ships now operate this way, so you really cannot go on a cruise these days without a smartphone.)
Linda poses with a statue of “Captain Duck” in the main lobby of the Disney DREAM. Or perhaps it was “Commodore Duck”? (I presume this is Donald Duck. I have no idea what the name of the statue is, if it even has one. Nor do I know the context of this particular outfit.)
We watched the safety information on the TV in our stateroom. At 4 PM we went to our assigned assembly station (DCL does not call them muster stations) for the mandatory safety check-in and presentation. Unlike our other recent cruises, where our muster station was on an outside deck near the lifeboats, we were seated in the large Walt Disney Theater.
Marvel Day at Sea was still to come, but this display was already up, and Chris is a big fan of the Marvel series. Disney has a way of bringing out the kid in all of us.
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