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 5: Disembarking & WDW
We woke this morning bright and early. We were transferring to Walt Disney World this morning (!!!), so all of our plans for disembarkation revolved around getting to our WDW resort as soon as we could to maximize the day. We’d spoken with our head server John last night about the best thing to do with our bags since we wanted to get off as soon as we could while not wanting to carry more than necessary since we had our toddler. Due to my previous research, I had assumed going in that we should do express walk-off; however, he had suggested letting DCL carry our bags off of the ship since they have them ready to be picked up around the time that we’d be allowed off. We took his word for it and put our bags out the night before.
I forgot to mention in the last part of the report that we had gotten this adorable certificate in our room the night before:
I don’t know if they give this to every kiddo, but Chloe was the crew member whom we got to know the best during our daughter’s time at the nursery, so this felt really special!
Once we got ready for the day, we gathered up our belongings and our daughter and said goodbye to room 6688 and our amazing view. We left our room in time to make our 6:45 breakfast slot at the Enchanted Garden. Our old tablemates were at the table, and sadly they were behaving pretty awkwardly toward us. We smiled and tried to be kind and just enjoyed our breakfast.
Here is the menu:
I didn’t get any pictures, but my husband got eggs for the road, I got the lox and bagel, and we got our daughter some fruit and one last Mickey waffle.
After we ate, we headed out to the main lobby where they were already letting people off of the ship. We took one last family picture in front of the big Christmas tree and disembarked.
We picked up our luggage at 7:38. I took an illegal picture in the luggage area before I saw the sign that said not to do that. Oops! A kind porter helped us load our bags onto a trolly. Then we went through customs really quickly (maybe 10 minutes max) and then walked out to the area where Uber picks up.
When we booked our land and sea trip, I did a bunch of research on transportation between Walt Disney World and Port Canaveral. In the end, it came down to how much money our time was worth to us. We were told that the Disney transportation left from Port Canaveral at 9 AM and then would be stopping at the resorts to drop people off. The paperwork did not include a schedule of the order of the resorts, so we couldn’t count on being at the resort at 10 AM (after the normal hour-long ride) and needed to assume it would be later. Even though we were spending the entire weekend at WDW, we only had one day park tickets that had been graciously given to us by a Cast Member. Since we were meeting a dear friend in Epcot on disembarkation day (Friday) because that was his only day that his schedule allowed him to join us, we decided we wanted to maximize our time in the park. The price for the Disney transportation was $35/pp ($70 total for our party), and an Uber estimate that I did before I left home was around $100. We decided that it was worth the ~$30 to get to the park ASAP. So that’s what we did! The drive to our resort, the Yacht Club, ended up being a little over $100, and I’m sure it varies based on the particular resort where you will be staying. We did look into private transportation, recommended by Diana, which would cost $180 for the trip. When we have more people in our family, this will likely be the most economical option and probably the one we would choose.
Anyway, our porter walked us out to the Uber pickup area where he unloaded our luggage for us. I was glad we’d remembered to bring cash for tips. Our Uber driver was there a few minutes later, and we loaded up and headed out.
Bye, Disney Dream!
I loved that we could see our veranda from this view!
We pulled out of Port Canaveral around 7:55 AM, and arrived on Walt Disney World property at 8:50!
This sure helped ease the pain of disembarkation day! It was such a treat to get to stay in the Disney bubble for a little longer!
Since this is a DCL blog and not a WDW blog, I won’t give a recap of our Epcot day. I will say that we got all checked into our resort, had left our bags with Bell Services (who dropped it in our room for us after we got back that evening), and were walking to the International Gateway by 9:35 AM. Had we taken the Disney shuttle, we would likely have only been halfway through our drive from the port. When we realized this, we knew that, for our family this trip, it was well worth the extra cost of the Uber.
And they even made us a towel creation that night! 🙂
Thank you so much for following along! We had a phenomenal experience with DCL, even and especially with our toddler. If you are in the season of life where you have little ones and you are nervous about traveling with them, I really encourage you to try out DCL. They were so helpful and accommodating and gave our family the ability to have an amazing trip that all three of us could enjoy! What a gift!
Thank you Elizabeth for sharing your family’s cruise with us! If you want to read more guest trip reports, as well as my own, they can be found here.
Wonder what was going on with your tablemates?
My review of debarkation day:
Because we did the early dining that meant we had to wake up very early just to make it to breakfast. We arrived a little late but we managed to get our food. We said our goodbyes to our team, gave them their tip envelopes and even gave a couple of crew members gifts that we had brought with us that we didn’t mind giving away since we got them for the cruise.
Going through the customs area was pretty fast and easy so we got through and onto the shuttle in about 30 minutes.
If there’s one thing I would change it would be doing the later dining. It’s not ideal to eat dinner that late for my family but I really didn’t like having to get up by 5, washed, clothed and out of the room and get to Animator’s Palate before 7 when theres 3 adults in the room trying to get our morning routines done and make sure we’ve got our toiletries packed away into our carry-ons. That final day just feels rushed when you have to do that and I don’t like that rushed feeling when on vacation.
At least on the upcoming trip in November we won’t be as rushed since we’re doing a back to back so we can eat that breakfast without worrying about our stuff on the first leg. Did make the mistake of not booking the trip on the ship and only decided on it once we returned home a couple weeks later, but now we know better.
You can always go to Cabanas on the final morning at whatever time you wish. That is what we typically do when we have early dining.
Remember, on DCL you can do a “hold my place”, go home, then decide on the cruise you want. That way you get the book on board discounts and 2 years to do the cruise and time to figure out what cruise, when. It’s great and we have done it many times
That’s the problem Deann, we didn’t do a placeholder while on the ship. We’re going to remedy that this time though.