Guest Trip Report: December 17, 2018 4 Night on the Disney Dream, Day 2

This is a guest trip report written by Elizabeth, who sailed on the December 17, 2018 4 night cruise to the Bahamas on the Disney Dream.  You can start this trip report from the beginning by clicking here.

Day 2:  Castaway Cay

(click here to see this day’s Daily Navigator)

Day two began with a gorgeous view from our veranda.

Our daughter is a very early riser (and has an uncanny ability to wake up between 6 and 6:30 AM no matter what time she went to bed the night before or what time zone it is. It’s impressive and exhausting!), so I let my husband sleep in and took our daughter to Cabanas and to explore the ship.

I had heard that Cabanas has an amazing buffet, but I was blown away by the variety of options and the quality of the food. It was a bit tricky getting our plates and finding a table while juggling the toddler, but a very friendly Cast Member saw me and offered to grab a high chair and some milk for our girl. I gratefully accepted, and I poured the milk into the sippy cup I brought from home as I’d read online that there are no lids available in the dining areas. Another Cast Member walking by gave her a little bell on a string to play with, so she remained happily occupied playing with it while eating her breakfast.

Here is our breakfast (and a little stowaway beach toy that she snuck in the picture):

We brought a plate of food back to my husband, and then we sat on the veranda and enjoyed the view while he ate. The weather was perfect.

We then got ready for our big beach day and headed down to disembark. On our way, we decided that we were still a bit hungry, so we stopped at the Royal Table and grabbed a small second breakfast. I didn’t take any pictures, but we had a gorgeous fruit plate that included mangoes, which I love, the salmon plate, and some Mickey waffles for our girl. Oh, and coffee, of course!

After that, we headed down to deck one and right off the ship. It was about 9:15 at this point. They had the Christmas tree and the adorable display set up, complete with fake snow! It was very festive. There was a long line for pictures, so we skipped it with the intention to catch it on the way back in. We stopped for some of the complementary insect repellent lotion and also put on some sunscreen. I love all of the Disney details on the island, including the really cute little post office where you can actually mail things. Just FYI, it uses the Bahamian mail service (you probably figured this out, but I just assumed Disney mailed it using the USPS or the WDW Main Street post office or something), and the Cast Member told me that they can’t give a time frame for when something will arrive if mailed from the island. I still think it’s epic that you can mail things from there, though!

We caught the shuttle down to the second family beach. I had heard that it was less crowded, and it probably was, but almost everyone on our shuttle got off at that stop with us. We were able to find a shaded spot with three chairs very easily, and it ended up being right by Cookies Two. Here is our view:

We set our stuff down and our girl wanted to head straight for the water. I know it was December, but goodness it was so much colder than I was anticipating! Our daughter didn’t want to stay in the cold water very long, so we sat down right at the edge of the ocean and played with the sand toys that we brought. We had decided in advance to buy a cheap set of toys ($4.50!) from Amazon and then throw them away before we got back on the ship. We wanted her to have something to play with on the beach, but for us, with all the extra things that toddlers need to travel with anyway, we decided it would be nice to have one less thing to have to keep track of and repack at the end of our trip. This ended up working well for us. The set we brought included a bucket, a few shovels, and some little plastic animals that you could use as molds, so we had plenty of things to share with some of the other children playing near us.

My husband wanted to do the big slide, so he headed over there while I stayed with our daughter. He said it was really fun, and the water was absolutely freezing when you plunged into it. After awhile of the three of us playing in and around the ocean, we went back up to our chairs and relaxed for a bit while our daughter played in the sand around our spot. We ended up ordering drinks from the servers walking around. My husband got a beer, and I got a Pina Colava in one of the $7 refillable cups. The server told us that you could use the cup anywhere on the island or the ship and pay the menu price but get this cup filled up, affording you something like 10 extra ounces, so we did that.

My husband took my daughter for a diaper change, and the server returned with our drinks while he was gone. I asked him about how he came to work for Disney. He told me they they have DCL recruiters who go to other countries and recruit people for the cruise line. He says it is very competitive and that you must have experience in the industry in which you’ll be working (food service, hospitality, etc). He also said it is a four month contract and you can renew as many times as you want to. He also told me that many of the crew who work on the island come from the ship and leave at the end of the day save for a handful of people who live at Castaway Cay. I found this fascinating!

At 11:15, my husband ran to grab us some ice cream, which had opened with Cookies Two at 11. The flavors were chocolate, vanilla, banana, and strawberry. Our girl enjoyed her first ice cream cone with banana soft serve. She loved it!

The family sitting next to us had two little boys who asked to play with our daughter and our sand toys. We happily agreed, and they had a good time. About an hour later, we decided we were hungry and headed to Cookies Two for some lunch. The buffet was impressive, and I enjoyed that they had so much covered seating. Our weather was still pretty perfect, but I imagine that a shaded lunch spot would be especially refreshing for people visiting in the hot summer months.

Here is a picture of our lunch plates, mostly eaten.

It was at this point that I realized how much work it is to be a blogger and to constantly remember to take pictures of things before digging into them. I have a much higher appreciation for all those blogs I read now! Sheesh!

After lunch, we decided to walk around and explore a bit. We got a refill in our souvenir cup and filled it with a pina colada made with a banana. We stumbled upon a splash pad that was perfect for our daughter, so we stopped to play. She had a blast, and we ended up staying for over half an hour while she ran around having the time of her life.

We chatted with some other parents who were also watching their kiddos play and found a couple who worked as Disney travel agents. What a fun job that would be! We ended up seeing this same family two or three more times on the cruise which made me chuckle because it’s such a huge boat that the odds of continuing to run into the same people seem really small. It was a great joy though!

At this point, our daughter was getting sleepy. We had decided before the cruise that we really wanted to prioritize getting her good quality naps in her crib each day since she would be up later than usual each night. We booked a veranda room for this reason so that my husband and I could enjoy our time each afternoon while she slept. We headed back to our chairs to get our stuff and offered to let the little boys from the family next to us keep our daughter’s sand toys. They excitedly accepted.

We decided to walk back to the shuttle station by the first family beach so we could stretch out our time on the island a bit. We made a couple of stops along the way to explore the shops and see one of our daughter’s favorite characters:

We had a great view of the Dream:

We caught the shuttle back to the ship, and they were playing this fantastic Bahamian-style Christmas music that was really fun to dance to as we walked.

We saw them doing some maintenance on the ship:

And we stopped for some pictures by the Christmas display. There were no lines at this point!

We dropped off our towels, got some of the yummy fruit infused water that they had waiting by the ship, and embarked at the same place that we disembarked. We headed straight up to our room and gave our daughter a bath before putting her down for her nap. She fell right to sleep!

My husband and I ordered a room service snack consisting of a cheese plate and a Greek salad. Yum!

We ordered it right when we got to the room while we were running the bath water, and it arrived within 15 minutes. I grabbed the tray and snuck past my sleeping daughter to join my husband on the veranda. He brought one of our bottles of wine and two of the provided glass cups out there, and we spent the next almost two hours snacking, chatting, and enjoying the phenomenal view of the island. We got to see many of the port adventures leave, and we had some great conversations about the logistics of moving the ships around the world and how much we want to go on the Panama Canal transfer cruise one day (when we don’t have a child younger than 3 in our family so that everyone can use the kids clubs). The time together overlooking paradise was absolute bliss!

When we got back to the room before her nap, we found that these informational papers about traveling with toddlers had been delivered to our room:

They were really helpful, and I thought it was thoughtful of Disney to let us know which things were available for our daughter’s specific age group.

After our daughter woke up, we decided to go explore the ship and check out the nursery so our girl could see it and we could change the time of our appointment to include the show. The nursery cast member, Chloe, was very helpful and changed our reservation. We decided to drop her off halfway through dinner and then let her stay until 9:30 when the show got out. The nursery reservations only operate on a half-hour basis, but they allow a 15 minute buffer on either side of your reservation, after which they charge you for the full half hour (it’s $4.50 a half hour for the first child and $4 for a second one from the same family…expensive but not as expensive as a babysitter on land!). Chloe assured us that we would have time to get up there before 9:45 if we left as soon as the show ended. While we were talking to her, our daughter played on the little boat:

There weren’t any children in the nursery at this time, so they let us walk through it. I wasn’t sure it was appropriate to take pictures, but it was really quaint and whimsical and our daughter looked like she would have a great time.

After this, we basically put our girl down and followed her around. 🙂 We walked up and down the hallways and the stairs and found ourselves in the empty movie theater, which she thought was really fun.

We went outside and saw a gorgeous sunset over the water as we had already sailed away from Castaway Cay:

And then we headed to dinner in Animator’s Palate. Our girl is a huge Dory fan, so she delightedly screamed “Dory” anytime she or Nemo popped on the screen. The interactive show was really enjoyable.

Our girl ate some pizza for dinner, which Bertram thoughtfully brought out pretty quickly, and then I took her up to the nursery. We have only taken her to a nursery a couple of time at church, so I was nervous that she wouldn’t respond well to it. Well, I needn’t have been! While I was signing her in, she went running up to the little door, which the nursery worker opened for her after attaching her name tag, and our daughter sprinted in. The worker announced her name to everyone, and everyone yelled “Hi!” and she was off! My mama heart was so happy that she was excited and also a little sad that she didn’t even say bye! Haha! When I relayed this story to my husband after returning to dinner, he assured me that this is a good sign.

They told me that I needed to have the wave phone on me, so I returned to the room and got it before going back to dinner.

Here is the menu:

This is the Smoked Salmon Tartar (very good):

Sliced Serrano Ham (excellent):

Black Truffle Pasta Purseittes (excellent):

The Great Reef cocktail (good):

As I was trying to artfully take this picture, my husband goes “you’re spilling it!”…and sure enough:

*insert face palm emoji* haha! Again, my respect soared for those food bloggers who can pull off these fancy shots without ruining their supper!

Creamy Butternut Squash Soup (excellent):

Grilled Tuna Steak (good):

The Bertram recommended Ginger-Teriyaki dusted Angus Beef Tenderloin (very good):

The dessert menu:

Lemon Icebox Pie (very good):

Cookies ‘n Cream Sundae (very good):

After dinner, we we wandered around ship and explored adult areas. We grabbed some espresso (my husband) and one of their featured specialty flavored decaf lattes (me) to take into the show.

I really liked this display because I’m a super Disney nerd and love the Walt Disney quote “I hope we never lose sight of one thing—that it was all started by a mouse” and I like that they changed it for the cruise:

We liked walking around the front of the ship and talking about all of these devices and what they’re for:

We saw a ship in the distance which we thought was another cruise ship. It was fun to watch it moving along the horizon as we stood there chatting:

And then it was time to head to the show, Disney’s Believe. I thought it was incredibly clever! One funny thing happened that I want to share. At one point early on in the show, the Genie’s hair popped off his head right in the middle of a scene! The actor played it off really well and then went on with the script, but a couple of minutes later, a man dressed in black walked out of stage right and the curtain began closing. An announcement came over the loudspeaker that they were having some technical difficulties and would resume momentarily. Sure enough, the curtain went back up after a few minutes, and the Genie stood grinning at the audience, hair attached, and said “well, that was a hairy situation!” So funny!

I tried to take a picture of the cute confetti on the ground like I did the previous night:

But then realized that my husband, excellent father that he is, had followed our original plan and bolted up the stairs to get our daughter. I ran to catch up with him, but of course everyone was filing out of their seats and I got stuck down near the stage. Oops! I finally made it out and ran up to the nursery where he was signing our girl out. She came running and giggling to the door when she saw us. A very successful night. On our way out, we ran into Cinderella who was coming to spend some time with the kiddos. We took a picture with her, and she greeted our daughter by name and told us that she had already been to play with her earlier that night. What a precious touch!

We headed back up to the room and went to sleep pretty quickly after that. A peaceful end to an amazing day! Here is our towel animal:

Up Next: Day 3 – Nassau