Guest Trip Report: July 27, 2019 Southern Caribbean on the Disney Fantasy – Getting There

This guest trip report was written by Cynthia, who sailed the Disney Fantasy on July 27, 2019, on the 11 night Southern Caribbean itinerary. You may remember her as the guest blogger who shared her previous experience with the medical center on the Disney Fantasy, which you can read about here. She has now graciously offered to share her adventures with us!  This is a unique itinerary not often offered on the Fantasy so I am very excited to get to share this with you!

Getting to Orlando

Our travel day to Port Canaveral had finally arrived.  Needless to say, we were all anxious to get up and start our adventure – 11 glorious days in the Southern Caribbean aboard the Disney Fantasy.  This was our first cruise sailing as Gold Castaway Club Members. Aboard for the adventure with me were my 17 and 15 year old daughters. Our previous cruises were either 7 or 8 days, so we were all looking forward to experiencing a longer cruise with 4 sea days.  

Even before we set sail, Disney made a change to our 11 day itinerary.  Originally this cruise was scheduled for stops in Aruba, Martinique, St. Kitts, Barbados, Puerto Rico, and Castaway Cay.  However, a few days before we were scheduled to sail, Disney cancelled the Puerto Rico stop because of the ongoing civil demonstrations.  In place of Puerto Rico, Disney added a stop in St. Thomas. This change was no big deal. Most of the chatter I saw on our cruise Facebook page was pretty positive – safety first was the big theme.

Being that we live in Las Vegas, my philosophy has always been to travel the day before embarkation as early as possible and on a nonstop flight.  This allows us as many options as possible if there are travel delays. This trip was no exception. We were up bright and early at 4:30 a.m. (with smiles on our faces and a spring in our step) for our 7:00 a.m. nonstop flight on Southwest Airlines to Orlando.  When we arrived at our gate, the plane was ready to go.

Unfortunately there was no time to “hit the slots.”  I always get a chuckle out of the slot machines in the Vegas airport. 

Everything was smooth sailing.  The girls and I were able to find three seats together on the full flight.

We actually arrived forty-five minutes early into Orlando.  Good thing because about 30 minutes after landing, the airport closed because of lightning.

I heard from numerous fellow cruisers that there were a lot of delayed flights into Orlando that evening and people were arriving at their hotels several hours late.  Luckily most people were arriving the day before the cruise, so they were not stressing too much.

The Orlando airport had not changed a bit since our visit last year.  I love the brightness and airiness of MCO. 

For this trip, we decided to stay the night in Cape Canaveral instead of Orlando.  We booked private van transportation ($100 for three people) from the airport to our hotel – the Residence Inn in Cape Canaveral.  Usually we book Happy Limo for our transportation, but this trip I decided to try Cape Canaveral Transportation based on their TripAdvisor reviews (Happy Limo’s price was about $45 higher that CCT.).  Most of my pre-cruise contact with CCT was via phone with the owner. Our overall experience was good, but CCT is a little bit behind the times in their booking process/web site and their vans appear to be older than the vehicles used by Happy Limo.  If you like to do all your own booking and have the ability to modify your reservation via a website and travel in newer model vehicles, CCT may not be for you. However, if you are looking for reasonably priced, friendly, on-time service, then you will be happy.  I would definitely consider using CCT again. Our driver was waiting for us in baggage claim and escorted us directly to his van. We were heading out of the airport about 30 minutes after landing.

The drive to the hotel was smooth – we arrived about 5:00 p.m.  Our driver was very friendly and took the time to give us pointers for heading to the port the next morning.  The Residence Inn is five minutes from the port. From this picture you can see how close we were to the port.  The directional sign on the right shows the turnoff into the port.

The hotel itself was very nice.  Our room was ready for us when we arrived, so we went directly to our room to rest and decide what to do for the evening.

We decided to head out to do some exploring and find a dinner spot in Cocoa Beach.  Because it was raining a bit, we chose to order a Lyft to take us to the main shopping area.  The ride cost us about $12 for the 4 mile trip. Our driver dropped us off at the perfect spot – Ron Jon Surf-Shop.  We looked around and picked out a few t-shirts and other souvenirs.

By the time we finished shopping, we were starving.  One of the Ron Jon employees recommended a small Italian restaurant – A New York Pizza House – that was within walking distance.  The pizza and pasta were very good. Servings were very big, so if you check out this place, consider sharing a dish! We had lots of leftovers that we had to leave behind.  

After dinner we headed back to the hotel (via Lyft) and spent the rest of the evening organizing our luggage for the following morning and making sure all the cruise luggage tags were placed on all the luggage we were going to check at the port.  We were all pretty tired, so we decided to head to bed early so we would be well rested and ready to go for our 10:30 a.m. assigned port arrival time. We cruise tomorrow!

Up Next: Day 1 – Boarding the Disney Fantasy