We recently went on the Disney Magic in April 2023 and were able to enjoy Palo Brunch twice while on board. Here is a picture of the menu as well as various food items we enjoyed on this cruise and previous sailings. We also have our full story on Palo Brunch if you would like to read more.
Our friend Chris (@CHRIS_MAGIC_DCL) went on the Disney Magic for a 9 night Greek Island Cruise and was kind enough to send us an updated menu for Palo Brunch.
Our friend, Sarah Coggins, recently went on the Disney Wonder in May 2022 for an Alaskan Cruise. She sent us a picture of her brunch in Palo. We have an extensive article on Palo Brunch, but wanted to show these fantastic pictures that Sarah took. Follow Sarah Coggins on twitter or check her awesome blog. She has a great article about her trip as well.
Here are her pictures:
Now that you’ve seen the wonderful food, head over to our Booking Palo Brunch post to see how to experience this meal for yourself!
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!
Today was the only sea day that we had on this seven night cruise. We had managed to get a coveted Palo brunch reservation, but that was the end of the planning we had done for the day. We woke up at a respectable 9 am. Since our brunch wasn’t until noon, we decided to head up to the pool deck to relax in the warm weather.
The family pool area was very crowded, so we eventually ended up on Deck 10 to to get a good spot to watch Funnel Vision. We had a fairly decent spot and spent the next few hours enjoying the warm weather.
After a fantastic lunch, we left Palo and returned to the room to change back into our pool deck attire. We wanted to return to the family pool area and lay in the sun to enjoy the fantastic weather while we could. We went back up to find our spot on Deck 10 unoccupied, so we sat back down to spend the afternoon watching funnel vision.
The ship spent most of the day going in circles between the British Virgin Islands and the US Virgin Islands. I don’t think we had that far to go in order to return to San Juan. The weather was fantastic.
We spent most of the rest of the afternoon on Deck 10 enjoying funnel vision. As the afternoon went on, we eventually left the pool deck. We took a quick look through the shops again to see if we wanted any additional souvenirs we wanted before the end of the cruise.
We then headed back to the room to pack up. Unfortunately, we had this letter waiting for us in the room. We were planning to take our bags off the ship with us, but we didn’t want to have to worry about packing after dinner when we would probably already be tired.
Nancy continued to pack while the girls and I got ready for dinner early. We headed to the D Lounge to try our hand at Disney Tunes Trivia (which we did not win). Nancy finished packing the bags, and met us at Tiana’s for our last dinner of the cruise. The dinner theme for tonight was Tiana’s Place Mardi Gras. Dinner was great as always, and our serving team took special care of us. Our waiter even spent some time showing the girls how they put the food orders into the computer so they all came out correctly. Once the meal was over, we handed out the tip envelopes and strolled out of the dining room.
Nancy and I went out onto Deck 4 to look around and discovered we were right off the coast of San Juan. Our cell phones had a full signal, so we took advantage of it to catch up on emails and other things. Nancy didn’t linger too long, she headed back to the room to finish off the last of the packing. She sent me this picture of our towel animal for the night, which was the best one yet.
I spent about 30 minutes getting caught up on emails, then I returned to the room to get ready for bed. Tomorrow, we would be leaving the ship for a tour of San Juan before heading to the airport and flying home.
Planning | Travel | Boarding | Ship Exploration | St Maarten | Antigua | Martinique | Barbados | St. Lucia | Sea Day | Travel Back
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!
The Disney Cruise Line Spring 2019 Itineraries were released at the end of October 2017. While scanning through the list, we decided either the Magic or Wonder 5 night cruises would fit within our budget. The Magic would be on a 5 night Western Caribbean leaving Miami on April 14th, 2019 with stops at Cozumel and Castaway Cay. The Wonder would be on a 5 Night Baja cruise leaving San Diego on April 14, 2019 with stops at Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada.
I asked the family which cruise they would prefer, thinking they would want to go on the Magic again to visit Castaway Cay (we’ve done this cruise four times before). Select here or here to read about it. Much to my surprise, everyone wanted to go back on board the Wonder! We hadn’t been back on the Wonder since our 5-night Western Caribbean on March 20, 2016. The itinerary was a new one to us, sailing out of San Diego. We’ve been to San Diego before and really enjoyed it. We called up our travel agent, Michelle McKnight to get the cruise booked! We requested an Ocean View Cabin on Deck 2 forward.
Flights
Once we had the cruise booked, we had to wait to book our flights. Once the booking window opened, I checked through the various airline programs that we had points in to see what was available. We couldn’t have the girls miss too much school, so we had a narrow window to get our flights. The girls would get out of school on a Friday and the cruise left on Sunday.
We eventually decided to book our flights on United using the Mileage Plus miles we have accumulated through work travel and sign up bonuses from the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer card. We love holding this card because of the priority boarding we receive as well as the extra Saver Level (the lowest level costing award) availability. We also receive free bags for up to two people on each reservation, which saves us the cost of the annual fee of the credit card.
United had flights at the Saver level (round trip flights for 25,000 miles per person) available for Saturday, so we booked those. Initially, the flight would leave early early from Dulles at 8:15 am have a long six hour layover at Newark before heading on to San Diego.
In November, our flights got changed to leave Dulles at 8:20 am and fly to San Francisco. We would then stay there for two hours before heading to San Diego, arriving at 2:45 pm. We thought this change was a much better flight for us, because we would arrive in San Diego with a lots time to get some dinner and relax before getting on the ship the next day.
Our return flight wasn’t going to be fun. We would leave San Diego at 7:50 am and land in Houston at 1 pm. We would layover there for seven hours, taking off for Dulles at at 8 pm and landing at 12:07 am. We had to go to work and school the next morning as well, so it would be rough. Luckily, we got an update from United in November that would have us leaving Houston at 4:30 pm and landing at Dulles at a reasonable 8:30 pm.
Lodging
We knew we would need one night of lodging before the cruise and two nights after the cruise. Since we aren’t going to have a lot of time at the hotel before the cruise, we decided to use one of the free nights that come with our Chase Hyatt credit card to just get a room for the night. We selected the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay Spa and Marina. It is close to Mission Beach, where we planned to grab something to eat and watch the sunset before getting on our cruise the next day.
For our post cruise stay, we decided to use our free Hilton Weekend certificates from our Hilton Aspire American Express Card to book the Hotel Del Corando, which is one of the inspirations that Walt Disney used for the Grand Floridian Resort at Walt Disney World. The card also comes with a $250 resort credit that we planned to use for dinner and/or breakfast. We wanted to spend the weekend enjoying the resort and maybe taking some short trips around San Diego via Uber.
Excursions/Activities
As Platinum Castaway Club cruisers, we were able to book our excursions and activities 120 days before the cruise (because we were paid in full). Since we weren’t stopping at Castaway Cay, we didn’t really have to rush in at midnight to try to get a Cabana. Instead, we logged in the next day and looked to see what was available. We decided to try some more of the alcohol tastings. We have previously done Mixology and the Chocolate and Liquor tasting. This time, we added Whiskey Tasting and Rum Tasting.
After we added the alcohol tastings, we moved on to food. We added Palo Brunch on one of the sea days. One of the additional perks as a Platinum Castaway Club cruisers is a free Palo Dinner (which we have used for Brunch before without issue). We later went back and added a Palo Dinner on Pirate night. We thought the Pirate night menu would be ok to miss since we’ve enjoyed it multiple times before.
After booking our food, we moved on to excursions. This cruise stopped at the ports of Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada. We initially decided on a beach excursion at Cabo San Lucas, the Land’s End Coastal Cruise and Beach Break. We eventually canceled it though as the reviews we found weren’t that great. We decided to just walk around Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada and see what interested us.
Our cruise documentation arrived about 45 days before the cruise! It really got us thinking about our vacation, now we just had to wait for the day to arrive!
Planning | Travel | Boarding | Exploring | Sea Day | Cabo San Lucas | Sea Day | Ensenada | San Diego | Home
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 our second sea day. The only thing Nancy and I had for the day was Palo Brunch! Other than that, our only plans were to hang out at Satellite Falls. We started the day by taking our youngest daughter up to Cabanas for breakfast.
We didn’t want to fill up before Palo brunch, but since we weren’t eating until noon, we decided to get a small plate so we wouldn’t be ravenous when we arrived.
Before heading up to Satellite Falls, I decided to check in on the Disney Vacation Planning Desk to make sure that the Crew Member there had received my Placeholder form. Below is a copy of the form.
If you don’t want to wait in the line there, you can use the Disney Cruise Line App to place yourself in the line. Once your place comes up, the app will notify you to head to the Vacation Planning Desk. I don’t know if I would try this from the pool deck, but I would imagine it would work even there.
The App also includes all the benefits of using a placeholder.
While I was checking on the Placeholder, Nancy took my youngest daughter to the Spa for pedicures. They had originally had just booked pedicures, but the upsell pressure was pretty high, so our youngest ended up with a manicure as well. In the overall spirit of the cruise, it was fine. She ended up loving it.
Nancy and I met up to Satellite Falls to read and relax. We spent two hours there until it was time for Palo Brunch. Some of these pictures are from later in the day, when the weather turned a little bad.
Our lunch at Palo was outstanding. I’ve talking about Palo Brunch previously, so I won’t go over it again other to say it was great. After lunch, I actually went back to the room for a nap. After my nap, I decided to take another tour of the top deck to see if we could get some different pictures.
My stop at the adult pool was a bit disappointing. There were a few people traveling together that decided they didn’t like the Disney provided music, so they brought their own speaker and music. And they played it really loudly. None of the crew members would address the problem, so my stay here was short lived.
I decided to stop at the drink station to get a picture of the different flavored sodas that are available on board.
The back side of the drink station has a beverage that some might refer to as “coffee”. I think that is a generous term for it.
The machine has regular and decaf available.
Creamer and Milk are available as well.
There is also a nice selection of tea as well on this side of the drink station.
We met up with our friends in O’Gills for some 70’s music trivia. The amazing Teesa was hosting music trivia during our cruise, which meant the sessions were always hilarious and very crowded. While we really did well in the competition (and by “we,” I mean Nancy and one of our other friends) — we didn’t win. The husband and I tried to help, by offering suggestions like “yeah, I’ve heard that song”. That apparently didn’t propel us to victory.
Dinner tonight was in Royal Court. I’ve covered the menu previously. The head waiter tried to help the service out a bit after I spoke with him the night before. He also delivered champagne to our table as well as a few other tables that were having the same problem. The drink problems didn’t really get solved during the cruise, but the gesture was really nice.
After dinner, the kids went off to their clubs and the adults headed to The Tube again. We decided to watch Majority Rules and Match Your Mate. Majority Rules is a game show made up of different voluntary teams. Each team gets a chance to guess what the other teams’ opinions will be about a topic. It usually is slightly risque, but really funny. Match Your Mate is like the old Newlywed game. We always have a great time watching both of these.
After our long day, it was time to head to bed. Here was our towel animal for the night.
Next up, we stop at St. Maarten!
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!
You’ve heard of the wonderful food available at Palo on board all of the ships of Disney Cruise Line. You may have even seen some of our photos as well. How can you book this on your next Disney Cruise? Follow along as I add a Palo Brunch reservation to an upcoming cruise!
Head over to the Disney Cruise Line web site.
Select “My Cruise Activities” from the My Disney Cruise Menu Option.
You should see something similar to your reservation below. Note: your cruise must be paid in full before this screen will be filled out.
You can then select the “My Plans” tab next to Cruise Details. On the day you would like to book Palo Brunch (or dinner), select “Add Activities”. One of the options that will appear is “Dining”.
Once you have selected “Dining”, you will be given the option of Palo Brunch or Dinner. If you are sailing on the Dream or the Fantasy, you might see offers for Remy as well.
Selecting “Palo Brunch” will bring up a listing of everyone in your sailing party. Palo is only available for cruisers who will be 18 years of age or older. My understanding is that there are no exceptions to this. Select the diners that wish to go to Palo, then choose a dining time. In our case, we selected an 11:00 am brunch time.
One you select “Save”, the saved reservation should be available in your “My Plans” tab on the cruise activities page.
Hopefully, you now see how easy it is to add one of the best dining experiences on the ship. You can also see our Palo Brunch pictures if you are still on the fence.
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!
Planning | Travel | Boarding | Key West | Nassau | Castaway Cay | Sea Day | Disembarkation
Today was our only sea day of the cruise. As you can see by the white board above, we had already mapped out our activities. Nancy and I had an early reservation for Palo Brunch, one of our favorite meals. We headed there at 10 am. We originally had a later brunch reservation, but we asked to change it so that we wouldn’t miss the Character Dance Party and Jack Jack’s Diaper Dash. We were given a wonderful seat next to the window and offered a complementary drink. This is an abbreviated review of Palo brunch. I have a much more extensive one from our Christmas trip.
We started our meal with a plate each from the buffet. Mine was a selection of cheeses, meats, shrimp, and a warm sticky bun.
Nancy had a similar plate, but added some more bread products and no shrimp.
After selecting some items from the buffet, we ordered some items from the menu. Nancy ordered Celery Soup and Roasted Red Snapper.
I ordered a flat bread as well as the lasagna.
We were really full, but refused to quit! We had to go through the dessert portion of the buffet to pick up a few items. I take the full plate approach and Nancy took the multiple visits approach.
After we rolled out of Palo, we headed straight to the Character Dance Party. We caught this on a recent cruise and loved it. We make a point of finding it on the Navigators to not miss it. The characters show up and lead the audience through some outstanding dance moves. Each character takes a turn on the stage while the rest of the characters enter the audience to dance with the audience. The music is generally semi-current, family friendly pop songs.
After the excitement of the character dance party, Nancy and I quickly changed and headed back to the atrium. It was time for Jack Jack’s Diaper Dash. We arrived early so we could get a prime overhead spot.
The entertainment staff had setup the atrium for the event!
The participants lined up and they were off.
It didn’t take too long before the racers arrived from all corners of the ship. Spectators are encouraged to cheer and clap for their favorite racers. Parents can encourage their racers with whatever they would like (food, toys, Mother, etc). The participants are only allowed to crawl. If they rise up and take steps, they are disqualified.
As you can see, the race wasn’t even close.
After the Diaper Dash, we headed off to the adult area to enjoy our remaining time in the sun. We spent a few house there before heading back to the room so Nancy could take her time packing up the room. Normally this has to be done in a hurry on Castaway Cay night. I spent my time watching movies on the TV.
Dinner tonight was back in Animator’s Palate featuring the ‘Til We Meet Again menu. After dinner was over, the girls headed out to their clubs. Nancy and I stayed a bit longer to talk with our server team, then headed back to the room. We had decided not to put our luggage out, instead choosing to take it off with us in the morning. We had a long day ahead of us tomorrow. We planned to grab our rental van from the parking lot and head to Walt Disney World for five days in the parks using our annual passes.
Our next post will talk about leaving the ship and heading to Walt Disney World!
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!
This was the second sea day for us on our Very Merrytime Christmas cruise! Everyone was really tired, so we slept in late. The girls eventually got dressed and went off to the Edge and the Vibe. Nancy and I had plans for Palo brunch at 11 am, so we decided to skip breakfast so we wouldn’t be full. We headed up to Cove Cafe for some morning coffee.
The Cove Cafe is located on Deck 9 in the adult only area of the Magic. The Cove Cafe offers different types of coffee related drinks for an additional charge. They are also more than willing to add alcohol to your drinks (with corresponding up charge). Note: These pictures of the Cove Cafe are before it was updated in a recent dry dock. You can order other alcohol related drinks as well.
Cove Cafe also offers complementary pastries and snacks as well.
Here are a few pictures of the menu. We have ordered several different coffee drinks, but never the mixed drinks.
They had several seasonal drinks they were offering as well. Nancy got the Gingerbread Latte while I selected the regular Cafe Mocha. The drinks weren’t quite Starbucks quality, but they were still pretty good.
One nice aspect of Cove Cafe is that they have a free drink card that will give you a free drink after you purchase five drinks. We bring our cards back from previous cruises as well so they don’t go to waste.
After finishing our drinks, Nancy and I returned to the room to get ready for Palo Brunch! Palo is the adults-only restaurant on Deck 10 aft on the Disney Magic. Disney describes the menu as classic Northern Italian cooking “with a modern twist.” Palo serves brunch and dinner for an additional charge of $30 per person. The brunch consists of a combination of a buffet and a limited number of a la carte items.
Nancy and I arrived a few minutes early for our reservation. We were seated at a nice table by the window after checking in.
Our waiter arrived and brought us each a drink as well as the entree menu.
He walked us to the buffet and explained all the food choices, including the a la carte items. Due to Nancy’s shellfish allergy, the food service staff is always careful to explain what is safe to eat and what should be avoided, which is very helpful.
Nancy and I each selected a number of items from the buffet and returned to the table to enjoy them.
Here is one of the famous warm sticky buns! We each got only one but would have returned for a few more if it weren’t for the wonderful entrees that we knew would follow.
While we were enjoying the buffet, the waiter returned to take our entree order.
I selected the Lasagna Bolognaise and Nancy got the Artichoke Ravioli. I had debated on the Parmesan-Crusted Chicken Breast, which is my favorite. The waiter brought one out for us to share.
Despite the fact that we were really full, we knew we had to get some dessert! Here are the items we selected from the buffet. It is funny that we selected almost the same things.
Palo does have a full service bar should you wish to order a drink.
The other nice aspect of Palo is the open kitchen. It is a bit difficult to look into when you are seated (since it is behind the buffet), but you can definitely see it when you are up at the buffet.
There is a private dining room in Palo that they will seat larger groups in. It is decorated with this mural.
We paid the bill ($30 per adult plus tip) and managed to walk out of Palo. Nancy needed to sign up for the Castaway Cay 5K, so we headed towards the atrium. The Port Adventures desk is opposite Guest Services on Deck 3. Signing up for the Castaway Cay 5K was really easy, just a quick stop for Nancy to register and receive her event ticket for the race (it’s like the tickets you receive when you register for a Port Excursion). We also decided to take some more pictures of the gingerbread house in the lobby.
We returned to the room to change. Unfortunately, the tip envelopes were waiting for us. That means the cruise would eventually end. (Cue the sad music).
Since this was Tangled night on the Magic, we decided to go checkout the Snuggly Duckling takeover of O’Gills Pub.
Here are some of the decorations!
There was also a special drink menu.
We didn’t hang out for the Snuggly Duckling activities because we had somewhere special to be. That’s right, it was Jack Jack’s Diaper Dash. The Diaper Dash is held in the main atrium and is a crawling baby race! The babies get to race for glory against each other. We picked an overhead perch to watch all the activity.
The number of competitors was low for this race. Fortunately for the large crowd, there was a ringer that entered. She spent the entire warm up time crawling everywhere. She swept this race in less than 15 seconds. The crowd loved it.
Following the diaper dash, Nancy and I headed back to the adult area to hang out again. We had about an hour or so to kill before the Tangled show. It was a must do for us as we hadn’t seen it before. We grabbed some drinks and headed to the Walt Disney World Theater. We only took a picture of the opening screen because pictures aren’t allowed during the show. The show was really good though, especially the effects with the floating lanterns. We won’t spoil it further, but we really loved it.
Dinner tonight was in Animator’s Palate with the standard menu.
Here are a few shots of the dining room before the lighting starts to change.
Here is the standard Animator’s Palate Menu.
My younger daughter ordered the Tiramisu Mocha again.
I ordered a double order of the Black Truffle Pasta Purseittes, which is one of my favorite appetizers on Disney Cruise Line.
Nancy and the girls ordered the Butternut Squash Soup.
Nancy ordered the Grilled Tuna Steak.
My older daughter ordered the Black Bean Chipotle Cakes, but I don’t think she liked them very much.
The rest of us ordered the standard Ginger Teriyaki Dusted Angus Beef Tenderloin, which I really enjoy.
The show in the dining room continued as the room slowly filled with color.
We did eventually get around to ordering dessert. Nancy enjoyed the Lemon Icebox Pie. I ordered a Mickey Bar, because I always order one if the other desserts don’t interest me. I’m not a fan of the chocolate and sprinkles on the Mickey Bar, but forgot to ask them to leave it off this time.
The girls headed off to their clubs which we waited around for the rest of the dinner show.
We stayed a bit longer to talk to Viand and Debbie, our wait staff. We really enjoyed getting to know both of them. We ended up requesting Viand for another sailing, but sadly Debbie wouldn’t be on board for our next sailing. We spent some time talking to Debbie about her work at Epcot at Rose and Crown, which we really enjoy as well.
Nancy and I headed back to the room. Our room attendant had the room ready for us to go to bed, but left us this guy along with the navigator for tomorrow and instructions for Castaway Cay!
We had a great day at sea, enjoying the fresh air and a wonderful meal at Palo. Tomorrow we would be headed off to enjoy Castaway Cay, Disney Cruise Line’s private island in the Bahamas.
Full Trip Report: Planning | Travel | Boarding | Day At Sea | Cozumel | Day At Sea | 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 in addition to our cruise trip reports!