Of course, the highs of being on the cruise always come crashing down on Disembarkation day. We decided to carry our bags off the ship with express walk off, but still enjoy breakfast. We left our room and headed towards Animators Palette, which is where we had dinner the night before. Since we had late dinner, our breakfast was at a reasonable time.
Day 3 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. We had managed to grab the last Cabana on the family beach (Cabana #20) when we checked in for this cruise, so it was going to be a great day. We invited our friends to enjoy the Cabana with us, since there was no additional charge for six people versus four people.
The day started early with the Disney Dream pulling into Nassau. We’ve been to Nassau on previous cruises, but we had always treated it like a sea day and stayed on the ship. Because we were traveling with friends, we came up with a new approach. Nancy and our oldest daughter wanted to get off the ship and walk around with our friends, while I would stay on the ship with our youngest daughter.
We were very excited to get on board the Disney Dream as this was our first time on the ship. As they called our boarding group, we walked through the giant Mickey ears and had our Keys to the World cards swiped for the first time on this cruise. We skipped the initial photo since we never buy the photos on board.
The travel day for our Disney Dream cruise finally arrived! We had decided to leave really early so that we could join our friends at the airport. We could easily kill time in the Admirals Club lounge at Reagan National Airport. We were going to get the girls from school around noon, then leave for the airport at 12:30, which should get us there at 1:00 pm. The flight didn’t leave until 3:00 pm, so we should have plenty of time to get lunch as well.
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.
We recently went on the Disney Dream for a 3-Night Bahamian Cruise from Port Canaveral. We stayed in room 7044, which is a Category 5C Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah. It is located on the forward (front) port (left) side of the ship on Deck 7, just in front of the forward elevators. The room was in a great location. We only had to go up a few decks to get drinks and we were very close to the forward elevators.