On a recent cruise on the Disney Dream, we were able to enjoy Cabana 25. Cabana 25 is located on Serenity Bay, which is the adults only beach at Castaway Cay. You can read our write up of making cabana reservation, amenities, and pictures of some other cabanas!
On a recent cruise on the Disney Dream, we were able to explore Cabana 26 (we had Cabana 25 and 26 was empty). Cabana 26 is located on Serenity Bay, which is the adults only beach at Castaway Cay. You can read our write up of making cabana reservation, amenities, and pictures of some other cabanas!
Our friends Doug (from Rope Drop Radio) and Michelle McKnight (our favorite travel agent) went on the Disney Dream in August 20 2021, for a 3-Night Bahamian Cruise from Port Canaveral. They managed to grab Cabana 21 on Castaway Cay and were kind enough to send us pictures! You can read our write up of making cabana reservation, amenities, and pictures of some other cabanas!
More about Doug and Michelle…
You can subscribe to Rope Drop Radio via iTunes. Derek and Doug are two dads who love Disney. Their goal is help you navigate all things Disney from the parks to the cruise. They want to share tips and tricks, travel plans, and must see’s to help you have an amazing Disney trip! Make sure to follow them on Facebook and Twitter as well!
We have really enjoyed having Michelle (affiliated with Touring Plans Travel Agency) as our travel agent. It costs nothing to use her services because Disney pays her after we cruise. She was the one that got up at the crack of dawn to book reservations on our booking dates, to make requested updates to our room and dining preferences. We have booked a total of eight cruises with her, as well as recommending her to our friends! Contact her to see if she can help you with your vacation plans. (Note: Michelle does not sponsor Back To The Mouse, we are just satisfied customers).
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints in addition to our cruise trip reports!
Today was Castaway Cay day, one of our favorite stops! We had a lot of plans for the day and were eager to get started. Nancy and our friends were going to run the Castaway Cay 5K and then head to one of the cabanas on Serenity Bay Beach, the adults only beach. My older daughter was planning to spend the day with her new friends from Vibe. My younger daughter and I were going to head to the family beach and then meet our friends for a jet ski excursion late in the day.
Nancy was up and out of the room early to get some food at Cabanas. We were a bit slower to get out, but eventually ended up in Cabanas as well for breakfast. It seemed to me that the ship was a bit late getting to Castaway Cay. Before the ship docked, I received this unfortunate message on the DCL App. We didn’t notice anything bad about the wind or ocean conditions, so we were pretty bummed to miss the jet ski excursion.
Meanwhile, Nancy and our friend met up in the Walt Disney Theater for the Castaway Cay 5K. They were given their race bibs and eventually led off the ship to the race starting line.
The participants are led from the ship, on foot, all the way to the start line. The start line is located down near Cookies Too.
Once the race started, Nancy and our friends decided to just walk over to the adult beach and not finish the race. It was pretty hot. The path to the other beach took them down the runway on the island.
Here is what the water looked like at the adult beach. I would have stopped running and just flopped into the ocean.
There are tons of chairs and umbrellas at the adult beach.
After checking out the beach, they headed back to find the cabanas they had rented for the day. Unlike the family cabanas, there is no separate section of the beach for cabanas guests. The cabanas are set back off the beach.
They were located in Cabana 23.
The cabana was very similar to the cabanas on the family beach. We have discussed the cabanas in a previous post.
It has all the amenities of the family cabana, including sun screen and fruit tray.
The fridge was stocked with sodas and waters.
There is a safe and the cabanas has plenty of towels.
There is a lot of seating (more than three adults could actually use at one time).
There is a hammock as well. Near the hammock is the fresh water shower and a stack of floats for use by the cabanas guests.
Here is the view of the beach from the adult cabana.
Meanwhile, back at the family beach, my younger daughter and I rented a float and grabbed some chairs at the far end of the family beach. We usually setup down here because of its proximity to the bathrooms and Cookies Too. The beach also doesn’t tend to be too crowded down here because it isn’t as wide. There are only two or three rows of chairs in this section.
My younger daughter and I spent most of the day down here until about 2 pm or so. We alternated between resting in the chairs and using the float in the water. The water temperature was fantastic. We took a break for a bit to grab some lunch as well. Around 2 pm, we decided to head over to the rental area to grab an Aqua Trike since we didn’t get to do jet skis.
We got our Aqua Trike and headed out towards the Fantasy.
We had a GoPro with us, so we were determined to get as close to the Fantasy as we could for some good pictures. Despite both of us paddling away, it was taking a long time. I had forgotten how much work the Aqua Trike actually was.
We eventually did get pretty close, although go pro makes it seem like we were farther away though.
As we turned around, we noticed that we were racing a storm back to the beach.
Nancy happened to be headed back to the ship as that time, so she managed to catch a picture of us while we were headed back in. It took us a while to get back to the shore though, that Aqua Trike is quite the workout.
We dropped off our life vests and started walking back towards the ship. We got in touch with our older daughter to make sure she was headed back to the ship. She was almost there as well, so we waited around until she was there.
Before we got back on the ship, I made sure to get a picture of the outside of our room. Our room is the one circled in red below. I actually really liked my friends’ room (8165) that was one deck above us. It was also an obstructed view verandah, but the obstruction was much smaller.
We got on board to begin cleaning up. As always, Nancy watched the sail away from Castaway Cay to see the “wave goodbye” that the crew members on the island give the ship as it leaves.
The kids went off to find their friends while Nancy finished up the packing. While we didn’t plan on putting our suitcases out by 10 pm, she still wanted to get everything done before dinner. We planned to take advantage of Express Walk-Off to leave the ship with our suitcases in the morning as soon as the ship cleared so we could start driving back home. We had found the debarkation procedure letter on our bed when we got back on the ship after our day on Castaway Cay.
Dinner tonight was the Til We Meet Again Menu in Animator’s Palate.
After dinner, the kids went off for one last night in the clubs. We headed back to the room exhausted after being in the sun all day at Castaway Cay.
Tomorrow we would disembark the ship and start the long drive home!
Boarding | Exploring | Sea Day 1 | Sea Day 2 | St. Maarten | St. Thomas | Sea Day 3 | Castaway Cay | Disembarkation
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints as well as our cruise trip reports!
We usually plan our travel 18 months or so in advance. We look at school calendars, compare prices, and then book a trip. In the case of our February 2017 cruise on the Disney Dream, almost none of this happened (we did look at the school calendar). Here is how our cruise came together.
In October 2016, Nancy and I had planned a trip on the Disney Dream for October 7, 2016. I won’t go back over the entire story, but that cruise was canceled because of Hurricane Matthews. Disney immediately refunded all the money for our cruise (including the trip insurance). We eventually received our airfare back as well. Since we weren’t out any money, we started planning for another cruise on the Dream as soon as possible.
We had already planned a cruise for January 2017 and had a Spring Break trip planned for April 2017 as well. After looking over the various itineraries for the Dream and the school calendar, we decided on the 3 day Dream sailing leaving February 3, 2017. The itinerary included a stop at Nassau and Disney’s private island. We decided to bring the girls with us on this trip even though our previously canceled cruise was just for the two of us (a 20th anniversary celebration cruise). They were definitely excited to be going with us since none of us had been on the Dream before.
We had a few items that we needed to check off the list. The first was to book the cruise. I contacted our travel agent at the time and asked her to book the cruise using a place holder booking that we had reserved on a previous cruise. This gave us 10% off the booking, plus a $100 onboard credit. It also allowed us to apply the $250 we had paid on the place holder to this cruise. We chose a Category 5C Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah, Stateroom 7044, which is on the Port (left) side near the forward elevators. We also booked Disney Cruise ground transportation from the Orlando airport to the ship and back again after the cruise was over.
The second item to take care of was the flights to and from Orlando. A quick look at the American Airlines website found four round trip tickets at the saver level (25,000 miles each) that were perfect for planning purposes. We found a flight that would leave Reagan National Airport at 3:00 pm and land in Orlando at 5:30 pm. The girls would miss a half day of school that day, plus one more the next day (it was an early release day). Our return flight would leave Orlando at 3:00 pm and land at Reagan National Airport at 5:15 pm. We had received the 100,000 AAdvantage miles by converting 80,000 Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) points into 100,000 AAdvantage miles. In hindsight, I probably could have found a better use for the SPG points, but live and learn.
The next item was our hotel room for the night before the cruise. Since Nancy and I had planned to stay at the Hyatt Regency in the Orlando airport for our anniversary cruise (and our January Cruise), we just canceled the night from the October cruise and moved it to February. We had read multiple reviews of people who had stayed at the hotel before the cruise and everyone recommended it. We decided that if it didn’t go well in January, we could always find something else for this cruise.
After booking those three items (cruise, transportation, and hotel), we simply had to wait till our check-in time to arrive. Since we are Gold Castaway Club members, we could check-in 105 days before our cruise to book excursions. Once the day arrived, we logged in at midnight to see what was available. There was a Cabana available on the family beach, so we reserved it right away. The Cabana are expensive, but we really enjoy them. We didn’t manage to get one for our January cruise, so we were looking forward to enjoying one again. The Cabana was the only excursions that we choose to book for this cruise since it was only a 3 night cruise. We’ve been to Nassau previously, but had always decided to stay onboard and enjoy the ship.
I thought that would be the end of our planning, until some friends of ours decided to join us at the last minute. They ended up booking the same flights, hotel and a nearby stateroom! We had our travel agent link our reservations so they could have the same dining room table. The only thing she wasn’t able to do was to add them to our Cabana. We would have to wait until we were on board the ship to sort that out.
Planning | Travel | Boarding | Nassau | Castaway Cay | Disembarkation
Day 5 of our cruise was Castaway Cay, which is one of our favorite stops. Imagine if Disney had taken an entire Caribbean Island and turned it into a water park. That’s basically how I describe Castaway Cay to people. We aren’t beach people, but we love this port stop more than any others. As usual, Nancy had signed up for the Castaway Cay 5K, so she got off the ship before the girls and I did. She had her cabana wrist band, so she could meet us there once she was done.
We took our bag for the day (complete with Nancy’s change of clothes for after the race) and headed off the ship. Normally, we would have grabbed towels at the end of the gangway, but we knew there would be plenty of towels in the cabana.
The first thing you will encounter when leaving the ship is the Bahamian Inspection Station (I think that’s what its called). I believe they want to make sure you aren’t bringing alcohol onto the island and they check your id when you get back onto the ship. I don’t quite understand it, since the 99% of the people on the island are the people that just got off the boat (there are only a handful of people that stay on the island overnight).
Once you clear the inspection station, you will see a post office (yes you can mail items back to the US) and the excursion shack (known as Marge’s Barges and Sea Charters Dock). You can check in here if you have boat related excursions.
Our first stop was the tram stop. Yes, Disney runs a tram just like at the theme parks. There are three tram stops for the family beaches. You can also get a tram to the adult beach, but you have to transfer at the last family beach stop. We got on the first available tram and headed to the last family beach stop, known as Pelican Point Tram Stop.
The Cabana check-in shack is located right next to the last tram stop. We let them know we had Cabana 19 for the day. They checked our names and loaded us into a golf cart. The driver took us onto another road and drove us down to our cabana. Cabana 19 is at the very end of the family beach, with only the large Family Cabana #20 past it on the end.
We had rented Cabana 6 on a prior cruise. It was interesting to compare the locations of the two different cabanas we’d experienced. Cabana 6 is close to the regular family beach, near the rope barrier that separates the family beach from the reserved beach that is limited to cabana guests. Cabana 19 was farther from the family beach. However, the lower number cabanas (which I believe are the original cabanas) are spaced farther apart than the higher number cabanas. We felt like we were much more on top of our neighbors in Cabana 19 than we had in Cabana 6, especially when we were sitting in the hammock or beach chairs. The other big difference between these cabanas is the beach experience; the beach near Cabana 19 is narrow and the lagoon is not as wide or deep as other parts of the beach.
As you can see from the pictures below, the Cabana rental comes with a few things. The first is a cabana host. They will take you via the golf cart around the island (mainly to get lunch or to a tram stop). There are a ton of towels in the cabana for your party to use that day, including cold washcloths in the mini-fridge for you to use when you want to cool off. There are snacks (chips and granola bars), fresh fruits, sodas and water. I’ve heard you can request certain sodas beforehand, but we’ve never done that. There is also sunscreen (spray and lotion) included with the cabana. You have a large number of chairs, a hammock, and beach chairs/loungers. The cabanas also have sand toys you can use, as well as a huge number of rafts and floats. Cabana guests also have use of snorkel equipment for the day.
We decided this time to use the snorkel equipment (the girls and I), since we figured it would be a safe learning environment for us. Well, I don’t have any pictures of the experience. My youngest daughter and I didn’t like snorkeling at all. We either weren’t doing it correctly, or just don’t like it. She couldn’t get her mask on quite right and I spent a lot of time helping her with it, while sucking in way too much water. We tried it, but probably won’t repeat it.
I’ve included a video of the cabana as well. I’m really sorry I took the video in portrait mode. Big fail on my part.