We had a Disney December, Bahamian Xmas, NYC NYE and then some!! COMPLETED!

We are going on this cruise in December! I can't wait to read the rest of your report. Now I'm thinking we should get to the port early to ask about an upgrade...
Welcome on board! Thanks for dropping by. :wave:

The upgrade was a fantastic bonus, there is no doubt, though like I said it really was pure luck that we got it. The room was booked, but they must have cancelled at the last minute.

It was the first time that we had been away for Christmas and while being away from extended family was a little sad, we had such an amazing experience and made irreplaceable memories as a family together.
 
Don't take this the wrong way but my first thought - you paid extra for a special brunch ..... and then you ate pizza!!! Sorry. Deserts looked delish.
 
Don't take this the wrong way but my first thought - you paid extra for a special brunch ..... and then you ate pizza!!! Sorry. Deserts looked delish.
haHa! I understand it may seem funny! I love homemade styled pizzas like this so was an easy choice for me and it tasted delicious too ! :drinking1

The rest of the buffet and the desserts were all really delicious. I did wish I took my camera down or at least took some more photos with my iPhone.
 
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I'm crashing the party from America! Lol! I spend most of my time on cruise section. I'm only on day 12 but wanted to jump in and say at universal, interactive wands are around $50 US dollars.

Also, did you see the cool effect going into platform 9 3/4??
 


Oh yes I'd forgotten about the inauguration in late January. I'd presume the Hall of Presidents will probably be closed when we are then while they get the new president ready for it. Gosh we will be in Universal on Jan 20th so I wonder if lots of Americans will stay home to watch the inauguration on TV.

To be honest, I've never watched the inauguration on tv. I saw one live when I lived outside of DC, but never took the time to watch on tv. However, I am just one person lol
 
Love the cruise stuff! I'm usually only in ocean view level lol

I've only been on dcl once, 7 nights on magic but it was best cruise ever!
 
I'm crashing the party from America! Lol! I spend most of my time on cruise section. I'm only on day 12 but wanted to jump in and say at universal, interactive wands are around $50 US dollars.

Also, did you see the cool effect going into platform 9 3/4??

Glad you stopped by gumbypee ! Always nice to to have US Disboard members stop by and check things out down under!

We did see the effect. Though it was difficult for us try capture it because there were so many and with having to have one person hang back to capture it. where people were doing it the lines were bottle-necking so we didn't do it.


Love the cruise stuff! I'm usually only in ocean view level lol

I've only been on dcl once, 7 nights on magic but it was best cruise ever!

Glad you're liking the cruise posts. We were going to be quite happy with ocean view/veranda, we just got lucky with the upgrade. It was an accessible room and the person who had it must have cancelled quite last minute as there was a castaway club gift and card in the room addressed to her, which we returned to the concierge, so the pixie dust just fell our way this time :)

We have been toying with the idea of trying some local cruises, just not sure how they would compare to what we have experienced now . Bit like why we don't go to "Dreamworld" (local smaller scaled theme park) after experiencing DLR, WDW, USO.
 


you know when i was in Brisbane, we went to a theme park....this was back in 2001 so I can't recall the name. I just remember something about Gold Coast.... could this be Dreamworld?! LOL
 
you know when i was in Brisbane, we went to a theme park....this was back in 2001 so I can't recall the name. I just remember something about Gold Coast.... could this be Dreamworld?! LOL

Quite possible, though it's not quite on the Gold Coast, just in the general vicinity!. There are a number of themes parks that are marketed on the "Gold Coast" namely, Dreamworld, Warner Brothers Movie World and Sea World. The latter is actually on the Gold Coast, or at Southport/The Spit to be specific.

I have not been to Dreamworld for over 15 years so i'm probably be a little unfair as to comparing it to Disney & Universal. Thousands of people go every weeks so it must be entertaining.
 
Animators Palate

DS was at Edge while we were at Palo. He is going to post a review of this so I will leave that for him to do.

Later that afternoon we went to La Piazza for some Disney Trivia. These were harder than I thought they would be! Guess we haven’t paid as much attention to Disney movies as we thought had! No winner winners here, but the family next to us did though they were a little fluid with their score. We marked theirs’, they marked ours. They magically got 2 extra points, so unless we marked two wrong that we shouldn’t have, which I found unlikely, they decided to add two more to their score.

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The afternoon was just a relaxing time around the suite and the ship. Before dinner DS wanted to go to Family Fusion. It wasn’t exactly what he thought it was going to be, we thought it would be a little like family feud/ or a trivia contest that the crowd could participate in. It was a bit of a letdown as the participation was pretty limited.

It was time for dinner now. For those that don’t know how dining works on a Disney cruise, I will briefly describe. When booking, or it might be at a certain number of days out, you can nominate first or second dining setting. First is 5:45pm second is 8:15pm. We chose second. At check in you are informed of your allocated table number and rotation schedule. From what I understand parties are normally seated with other cruising families, though I think you can request a separate table. We were on table 37 with another family of 5, so making up 8 at the table. The rotation part is that from night to night you change restaurants. There were three restaurants we dined at, Enchanted Garden (E ) Royal Court (R ), Animators Palate (A) . Our rotation starting from the first night was E, R, A, E, R, A, E. So we had each restaurant twice and Enchanted Garden three times, well at least the was the plan, it didn’t work out that way for us as we did not always go to the dinner rotation. As a further twist your wait staff rotate with you, so you keep the same waiter, and server the whole cruise which if you get a could combination is good, if you don’t well probably not so good!

Dinner tonight was in Animators Palate. We had read a lot about this experiences, how it all walls and art starts our black and white and turns into colour through the evening. There was TV screens with characters talking to people it was really well done, a bit like Talk time with Crush and the parks.

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Yeah we bought a cruise photo pack. wow ridiculous pricing, almost as ridiculous as their Internet rates!

After Dinner we got to see Captain Mickey

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This was now three days at sea. Next morning, we were docking at Tortola.
 
How could I forget to post our next towel animal that was waiting for us back in our room after our Animators Palate dinner...

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I have not been to Dreamworld for over 15 years so i'm probably be a little unfair as to comparing it to Disney & Universal. Thousands of people go every weeks so it must be entertaining.

We did the wrong thing by doing a Gold Coast Holiday the year after visiting Disneyland. I don't think we'll ever go back to the QLD theme parks. They were a huuuuge letdown. So we went back to Disneyland the year after
 
We did the wrong thing by doing a Gold Coast Holiday the year after visiting Disneyland. I don't think we'll ever go back to the QLD theme parks. They were a huuuuge letdown. So we went back to Disneyland the year after

I think we would be in that camp also!
 
Tortola, British Virgin Islands

Here is todays Navigator

22 December 2015

Today was our first day back on solid land. The port we were stopping at was Tortola which is in the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean .

Tortola/tɔːrˈtoʊlə/is the largest and most populated of the British Virgin Islands, a group of islands that form part of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands.[1]It has asurface areaof 55 square kilometres (21 square miles) with a total population of 23,908, with 9400 residents in Road Town. Mount Sage is its highest point at 530 metres (1,740 feet) above sea level.

We had not booked any port activities prior. We had intended just to make our own way around, see a few sights/shopping that were in walking distance, and depending if anything else took our fancy we may do something else, but otherwise we were more than happy to just relax back on board the ship.

We were certainly greeted with a picturesque port after docking.

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The Disney Fantasy had never sailed to Tortola before so this was the first time. It was clear from pretty much taking a few steps through the local port that they were not quite ready. There was still construction going on, paths being built, areas roped off. We spoke to a few people and it seems they were about couple of months behind where they wanted to be. We made our way into town which was only a short walk. One thing that was really noticeable while the cars were passing as we walked along the footpath and sat other parked, was that pretty much every car that we saw had some sort of panel damage. Not sure if that’s an indication of the drivers, the insurance, repair industry or a combination of all! We wandered through some local markets and various shops, there seemed to be lots of people at various duty free shops. We were approached by a number of people offering tours or rides to other parts of the island, but we chose to decline.

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Some of the local wildlife!
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We thought this was amusing
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We then made our back to the ship and back on board.
 
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Back on board, the ship was quiet, we wandered around and there was so few people around. We went up to the Concierge Sun Deck and enjoyed some relaxing time with some drinks and had the entire area to ourselves. Even the Area forward of this, which is the adults only pool area was basically empty.

We decided we would to Royal Court for lunch. It was the first time that we went to one of the Table service restaurants for lunch. The food on the cruise was really top quality. Not only the quality but the variety and the availability. I really wasn’t sure what to expect but I must say they far exceeded my expectations. I had read some posts over in the Disney Cruise forums where people with lots of cruising experience have commented that the quality is not as good as it used to be. All I can say is that if the quality has dropped, then wow it must have been out of this world before.

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The Cast Members pool and relaxation area
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The Concierge Sun Deck
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Chilling out
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The Adults Pool Area on Deck 13
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House on a hill anyone?
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Random shot of the deck directory
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Star Wars Was premiering on board tonight
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Normally the Atrium Lobby is full of people
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Lunch at Royal Court
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Pirate Night

Dinner was Pirate’s Night in Enchanted Garden. We were given some Pirates bandannas by our stateroom hosts.

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After dinner there were the Buccaneer Blast fireworks on deck 11. I thought I would go and check them out. DW & DS were quite happy to stay in the suite. After the fireworks we had been treated to at Disneyland and WDW, well it’s hard to really compare, but it was something different so here are a couple of the best shots I took.

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And tonight’s Towel Animal… didn’t I tell you they got more and more elaborate

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@Travel Mum We've just gotten a recliner chaise lounge that has taken up the space where Dad's desk was, so we have to find a new spot for it. But my review of Edge is coming up next :D Also he's got a bit of the flu :(
 

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