This trip report was written by Gunes, who sailed the Disney Fantasy August 25, 2018, through September 1, 2018. You can see photos and videos from her cruise and other adventures by visiting her travel blog (fotogenictravel.com) or by following @fotogenictravel on Instagram or Facebook. Gunes provides concierge-style planning services as an independent travel advisor affiliated with My Path Unwinding Travel and can be followed on both Instagram and Facebook (@vacayconciergegunes).
You can start this trip report from the beginning by clicking here.
Day 4: Tortola, BVI
You can see the daily navigators from this sailing here.
This was the day that I had been waiting for since I booked this cruise: our first visit to the British Virgin Islands, specifically the Baths of Virgin Gorda. We were docked in Tortola, the first cruise ship to return to the British Virgin Islands since Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which hit a year prior to our arrival. I was hoping that our shore excursion to the neighboring island of Virgin Gorda would be the highlight of our trip (spoiler alert: it was!).
It was an early morning for us, so we had pre-ordered room service breakfast the night before. After our breakfast arrived, we ate and got ready for our adventure. You can read about all the nitty gritty details relating to our excursion to Virgin Gorda here.
We returned back to the ship in time for lunch. We grabbed a bunch of grub from Flo’s Café. I really enjoyed the mozzarella, tomato, and pesto panini that they were offering that day.
After lunch, we relaxed a bit in our stateroom. Here was our beautiful view of the Tortola harbor:
We eventually started getting ready for the Pirate Night festivities. I absolutely love Pirate Night on Disney Cruise Line! It’s a fantastic opportunity to dress up and just have some good ‘ole fashioned, swashbuckling fun.
Our Concierge staff informed us that DCL was testing out a new format for the deck party: there actually would be two different deck parties (at two different times). When we sailed the Disney Magic in 2017, Pirate Night took place after dinner. This time there would be a deck party with the characters before we sailed away (at 5:00pm, when it was still daylight), and after dinner, there would be a different show and then fireworks afterwards.
The first deck party was a semi-entertaining drama involving the characters (looking super-cute in their pirate outfits) and Captain Hook, Mr. Smee, and their villain pals. It was called “Mickey’s Pirates in the Caribbean.” There was a lot of audience interaction, but it seemed to be pretty geared towards kids (which I didn’t necessarily mind). It was a light-hearted and fun celebration (in the hot, humid heat of Tortola!).
Mickey and his pirate pals eventually banished Captain Hook, Mr. Smee, et al., off the stage in a classic good-triumphs-over evil story line. Arggghhhh!
After watching (and sweating), I was ready for a drink, and we needed to hustle over to the Enchanted Garden restaurant for dinner. So, I grabbed a glass of wine from the Concierge Lounge happy hour, and then we went to our designated table at Enchanted Garden.
I love how the kids’ menu is a wearable pirate hat:
Our amazing waiter, Igor, always had toys and puzzles on hand to entertain us while we waited for our food:
Our food for the Pirate Night dinner was really good. We started out with an excellent corn bread (called “Jolly Bread”) that came with a very unique mango dip. The dip had mint in it, which was a surprising and yummy addition.
For an appetizer, I had the “Davy Jones Locker Rock Crab Cake.” It came with chili-Cajun spiced coleslaw and a grilled lime on the side. Simply delicious:
I couldn’t resist a second appetizer, the “Sri Sumbhajee’s Vegetable Samosa.” It was spicy with a lovely tamarind chutney and yogurt raita on the side to balance out the heat:
For my main course, I had the “Barbary Coast Falafel,” which was excellent:
My husband had “Tia Dalma’s Jerk Chicken,” which was very good. For dessert, I had the “Caramel Macadamia Nut Cheesecake Tart,” and it was amazing:
After finishing up our scrumptious dinner, we went back to our stateroom for a breather and were greeted by this:
Arggghhhh (once again)! (Can you tell that I like Pirate Night?)
My husband was ready to call it a day, so my son and I made our way up to Deck 11 for the second half of the Pirate party: “Buccaneer Blast.” It started at 7:45pm, and we arrived a little bit late. The deck was packed with people! We ended up going to Deck 12 to view, but it was very hard my son to see anything, since so many of the adults were taller than him and blocking his view. From what I gathered, the show was very dramatic and focused on the more traditional Pirates of the Caribbean movie, as, for example, they would show Captain Armando Salazar on the big Dumbotron screen. The show seemed geared more towards adults and was somewhat dark (maybe even scary for smaller kids). My son didn’t really like it. I didn’t care for it much either. So, we hung out until the fireworks started, which is always worth it.
Being on Deck 12 to see the fireworks was pretty amazing – everything looked so close to us! My son was even scared that the fireworks would hit us. These photos do it no justice (my video footage was better):
After the fireworks, the deck party continued with “Club Pirate,” which was some kind of dance party with a DJ. We didn’t care much for that either. Call me an old-timer, but I much preferred the consolidated pirate deck party that we experienced on the Disney Magic. It catered to both adults and kids and had a much more light-hearted and fun vibe (and it had 80’s music, which we had a blast dancing to).
Oh well! We still were glad to have seen the fireworks and were ready to go to bed to rest up for our next port: St. Thomas, USVI.
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Up Next: Day 5 – St. Thomas, USVI
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