Guest Trip Report: December 14, 2019 Eastern Caribbean on the Disney Fantasy – Day 1

You can see the daily navigators for this cruise by clicking here.

If you’ve been following along with my crazy story, you know that as our cruise embarkation day arrived, we had two sick kids. Our daughter, Kate, was at home in WI, recovering from Influenza B (she had been diagnosed on Wednesday, so was much better at this point). Our older son, Ryan, was staying at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort with me and had been sick all night. And by the way, it was now Ryan’s 11^th birthday!

Kate and my husband, Keith, needed to leave our house at 5 am to catch a flight to Orlando, which was to arrive at 10:50 am (already risky and something I would NEVER recommend to clients, but we were hoping the later flight would help her get over Influenza B, which seemed to work). However, if Ryan was going to be too sick to travel, then it made sense for Keith and Kate to cancel their flight, so that we wouldn’t get charged for it. After being up almost all night, trying to figure out what to do, Keith and I finally decided to cancel the trip. There were just too many things going wrong and too many sick kids. We didn’t know how to get Ryan to the cruise port, let alone on the ship, what his trip would even be like, if any of the rest of us would get it and if we’d pass it along to any other passengers. We had taken out travel insurance, so we knew we’d be able to switch to another cruise date when we were all healthy. But after 1-1/2 years of planning this trip with our families, we were heartbroken. 

Keith cancelled the flight from his end and notified our families. I worked on finding us lodging for that night, since we couldn’t move Ryan at that point, and figuring out how Ryan, myself and our younger son Matthew would get home. I was also in charge of calling the cruise line, but they were not open at that time.

Then, everything started to turn around. At approximately 8:15 am, Ryan woke up and was perfectly fine! Whatever he had, it was not Influenza B. I asked if he could fly home and he said “sure”. I asked if he could cruise, and he said “sure”.  I called Keith – we had made the wrong decision. Could we possibly salvage it? We both started looking for flights. Keith found ONE flight that would work for Kate and him to get there in time to meet the cruise ship, if all the stars aligned. It flew out of Chicago O’Hare at 10:03 am and landed in Orlando at 1:47 pm. Disney Cruise Line recommends that all day-of cruise flights arrive no later than 1:45 pm, as all-aboard is 3:45 pm. It was risky, but we decided we had to try.

Kate was still asleep, so Keith woke her up and told her she had about 10 minutes to get ready. They were both packed, but had to move their items to carry-on bags, since we were too worried about checking bags at that point.

On my end, I had Ryan help me pack everything up and notified our families. Our port transportation was coming at 9:45 am. I had initially cancelled one car, when I thought we weren’t going, but my mother-in-law was able to work with them to bring another car back for us last minute. En route to the cruise port, I checked Keith and Kate into their flights, found them the closest parking at O’Hare, booked port transportation for them and then booked transportation for us home from the airport at the end of our trip. We would be flying back into Milwaukee, our preferred airport, but our car would now be parked at O’Hare.

Keith and Kate drove from our home in Southeastern WI and made it to their gate at O’Hare in under an hour. Somehow, there was no bad weather in December, no Chicago traffic and no security back-up – if that isn’t a Christmas miracle, I don’t know what is.

Keith texted me once they arrived at the gate and again from the plane, prior to take-off (which was set to be on time). They texted this picture to everyone of them on the plane – we were all praying it would go smoothly.

Meanwhile, the rest of our party made a quick grocery stop and then headed to the port. Check-in went great and we all received our Key to the World Cards. When I checked in, I explained that my husband and daughter would not be arriving in Orlando until 1:47 pm, so they pulled me aside to talk to someone important (I can’t remember her name or her position, but she was my guardian angel that day). She gave me the number for the Disney transportation and told me to set them up with that to ensure they would make it prior to all aboard.

Once we were all onboard, our party headed to Cabanas for lunch. I quickly called the Disney transport to get them set-up, cancelled my original transport reservation and texted Keith so he’d know where to go once he landed. Then I grabbed something quick to eat at Cabanas, since I hadn’t eaten yet that day. I honestly don’t remember what I ate and did not get a picture of it. During this time, I received the text from Keith that they had made it to the Disney transportation and the driver told them they were safe, the ship wouldn’t leave without them. I started to feel better, they were going to make it. I just wanted to see them on that ship!

After lunch, I headed to our stateroom. In the midst of everything going on, I unfortunately did not get any pictures. We stayed in stateroom 8562, which is a category 05B, Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah. The room includes two closets, a split bath, a queen bed, a twin sofa-sleeper with upper berth and a verandah.

We really like this location, as it’s mid-ship, making it convenient to most entertainment options. We also enjoy the higher deck level, as we spend the majority of our time on Deck 11. And since Deck 8 is nestled between two stateroom decks, there is no noise above or below us. Between the 15 family members, we had four staterooms reserved in total – and had them all in a row. They were able to open up our verandah walls, so that we had one large verandah for all of us to enjoy!

My sister-in-law had purchased the Christmas package for the room, and I did get some pictures of that – it was very cute!

Right around this time, we were also introduced to our Stateroom Host, Christopher. He did a great job, you’ll see some of his towel animals in upcoming pictures. The little kids absolutely loved him, and were always hanging around when he was near our rooms (and since we had four rooms in a row, he was there quite often!).

I then went to the lobby to get a picture of the award-winning gingerbread house (the gingerbread house on the Disney Fantasy won the contest between the four ships in the Disney Cruise Line fleet).

As I was checking out the gingerbread house, I heard my name, and turned around to Keith and Kate walking in! They were the last to board the ship, so the grand announcement committee was pretty low at that point (I think there were still two cast members there to welcome them). With everything that had happened, I just started crying. I was so happy to see them both and ran over to give them hugs.

Once we got them up to our room, Keith and I started unpacking and I started laundry. With Ryan having been sick the day before, I wanted to wash as many of our clothes as possible. There is a laundry room on Deck 8, fairly close to our stateroom, so it was pretty convenient. Since it was the first night, I was able to use all of the machines at once, with no wait! Then it was time for the muster drill.

After the muster drill is the Sail Away Celebration, which the kids all wanted to attend. It was really crowded, so neither Keith, nor I, were able to get any decent pictures. But, Matthew (our 7-year old) was able to go on stage and had an absolute blast!

At this point, Keith and I just wanted to rest until dinner, since neither of us had much sleep the night before. We rested for a little bit and then our kids came over to tell us we were pulling back into port. We went out on the verandah, and sure enough, we were back at Port Canaveral, with multiple emergency vehicles outside.

We heard some rumors on the ship that there was a medical emergency. After the sailing, the daughter of the gentleman that had the emergency posted on the sailing Facebook page that he was fine and had made it home safely. If they had not turned around, he would not have made it, so fortunately, the medical staff on the ship was on top of the situation and did what was best to save this man’s life. Unfortunately, this would not be our last medical emergency of the trip.

It was now almost time for the Christmas Tree Lighting, so a few of us headed to the atrium for that. The atrium was extremely crowded for the ceremony, but it was very cute! Several favorite characters performed and we all got to sing. Then there was a countdown and poof – the atrium was lit up for Christmas!

After the tree lighting ceremony, we rushed back to the room to change, switch over the laundry and head out for dinner. Our first restaurant was Royal Court. Ryan was not feeling up to dinner, given that he’d been sick the night before. My mom was tired and offered to stay with him. We were planning to sing to him that night and get him a birthday cheesecake (his favorite dessert), but we figured we had the rest of the cruise to do that. And really, the kid was getting a pretty amazing birthday, just being on the ship! My mom ended up going to Flo’s Café and got cheeseburgers for her and Ryan for dinner. 

The rest of us headed to Royal Court, where we met our servers for the week, Dipo and Nei Nei, as well as the Head Server, Witt. On Disney Cruise Line, your servers follow you throughout the week. And they are amazing! They do not just take your order and bring you food. They entertain your kids, cut up their meat, proactively get your drinks or anything else you may want and more. As soon as we sat down, the servers magically knew our names. They immediately asked where Karen (my mom) and Ryan were, introduced themselves and called us all by name as they took our first order.

For my dinner photos, I am just keeping it to my husband’s and my orders, as I think going over 15 people’s meal selections and opinions would be an awful lot! 

The bread service that night included an olive spread. I don’t care for olives, but Keith enjoyed it.

The appetizer choices were duck confit, Gastons escargot gratinee, iced lobster & jumbo shrimp and breaded and deep fried brie.

I remembered the deep fried brie from our previous cruise and chose that, as it had been my favorite appetizer for that week and it did not disappoint this time. The fried brie comes with an orange and cranberry chutney and the combination is amazing!

My husband got the iced lobster & jumbo shrimp and was in heaven. Living in WI, we don’t get a lot of fresh seafood of that type, and it’s his favorite thing to eat.

Somehow, I missed photographing all of the soup and salad choices for this evening. I did not get anything from this course, but Keith got the French onion soup, another one of his favorite foods, which he really enjoyed.

For the main course, the choices were conchiglie pasta, oven-baked salmon royale, crispy roasted duck breast, roasted rack of lamb medium and chateaubriand-roasted filet steak.

I chose the duck and Keith chose the steak. However, by the time this course came around, I was just exhausted from the day and needed to excuse myself.

I grabbed my finished laundry, took a quick shower, and then went to bed. I was able to snap this picture of our cute towel animal before I fell asleep.