This is from a webcam of our sail away!

Welcome to our epic Christmas 2021 vacation! We went on a Disney Cruise and Disney World Parks trip!

We spent one day at Disney World first (didn’t want to fly down the day of the cruise), then went over to Port Canaveral for a 7 night Very Merrytime Western Caribbean cruise on the Disney Fantasy ship, then spent 3 days back at Disney World (would’ve been too sad to go straight home from the cruise). We had an amazing time!

Since it was right around Christmas, the parks were super crowded (no social distancing there), but it wasn’t the shoulder to shoulder crowds that I feared. Granted, we weren’t there on the actual Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They are still requiring park reservations, presumably with lower capacity still, so that probably helped. We still managed to do a good amount of big rides and tried Genie+ for one day (more to come on that). We also tried several new to us restaurants – Steakhouse 71 (our new fav), Space 220 Lounge, and Kona Cafe. The parks and resorts were also beautifully decorated for the holidays. It was fun to be back there, as always.

The cruise ship was also gorgeous and supposedly sailed at about 50% capacity, so that was great! No lines or crowds anywhere! They couldn’t do the big deck and atrium parties but there were still plenty of activities, the shows were Broadway quality still, the dining was always delicious, the ship was kept immaculately clean as usual, and the crew members were fantastic, as usual. Everyone who was eligible had to be vaccinated and everyone was tested before boarding, masks had to be worn indoors, and many other changes to activities n dining were made for social distancing and reduced contact, but everything was fine. It was no big deal. We totally felt safer there than at the parks or anywhere else back home. We loved roaming the gorgeous ship with so few people around and always being able to sit and watch the waves go by. We’ve sailed DCL several times before and it was slightly different, but still magical and great! We would absolutely sail Disney cruises again, even during these times, and especially during these times. 

I won’t necessarily do a detailed play-by-play recap for all of it, because that would be 10,000 pages long, but I’ll summarize best I can such that you can still get a good feel of what things were like. I’ll especially point out any new stuff we did that you may not have heard about in past trip recaps and any new things we may have learned that can help you with your trips. If there’s anything specific that you want me to elaborate on, please comment below.

I’ve also posted alot more pics on my Instagram (adventures_by_anne), so check that out too.

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