Last year my family participated in the gingerbread house making activity on the Disney Wonder. I wrote about it in my trip report here, but I also wanted to dedicate a post to it so that it would be easier for people to find if they are searching specifically for information on this activity.
This activity seems to be pretty standard on all 4 ships during Very Merrytime sailings. There is no extra charge for it, but space is limited and it does require a ticket (per family) that you get from guests services. The tickets go quickly, so I suggest going immediately to guest services after boarding for your best shot at scoring a ticket. We were sailing concierge, and our concierge host already had a ticket waiting for us in our folder at the concierge reception right after boarding.
We were assigned the first session on the second to last sea day of our cruise. We got to Studio Sea and saw this image on the tv screens:
All of the tables were all set up with supplies, so we chose one and sat down.
There was a sample house already made and on display at the front of the room.
The cruise staff were looking very festive!
Once it was time to begin, we received basic instructions from the cruise staff as well as a pastry chef.
I will caution you that this activity felt a bit rushed. I know there was another session after ours, so it was obvious that they were watching the clock and hurrying people along so they could have time to clean and set up for the next one. I think it would be better if they scheduled more time for this activity, and maybe they have by now, but I don’t know. After some brief instructions, they encouraged us to get to work.
I think my husband did most of the construction work while the girls did most of the decorating. As usual I did most of the photographing!
We had pretty good luck with our house, and it stayed together for the most part. I noticed that some other tables were having trouble with their houses falling apart, and the cruise staff and chef were trying to help them.
Our finished product:
As we were finishing, the staff were trying to hurry everyone along as nicely as possible. I think we were some of the first people done. They also reminded us that we would not be allowed to take the house off the ship as it is against customs rules. We took ours to our room where we enjoyed the smell and a few tastes for the remainder of our cruise.
Overall we enjoyed it, but I don’t know that I would go out of my way to do it again. It really wasn’t any different than doing it with a kit at home, and there are other things on the ship that we can’t do at home, so I think next time (if there is one) we will probably do a different ship activity.
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I’m kind of glad that you said you wouldn’t necessarily do the activity again. They offered it during our cruise, but because it was our first, we were too busy doing all of the “other things” to stop and participate. I have to say that the whole experience seems wasteful if you can’t take it with you, not that many people would be able to transport something like that home on a plane anyway. I love the look of gingerbread houses and the act of making one seems fun, but with all of the other food, etc. available, eating gingerbread would be very low on my list.
Do you get only 1 per family? Is the gingerbread fresh baked on the ship?
You are only supposed to make 1 house per family, but if you have a large family in more than 1 room, they should allow you to split up as long as each room has a separate ticket. This is a very high demand activity with very little availability which is why they limit families to 1 house. I didn’t ask if the gingerbread was made on the ship, but if I had to guess, I would guess that it was. It seemed very fresh.