(click on pics to enlarge)

Come sail with us! We sailed on the Disney Fantasy ship on a Merrytime/Christmas themed cruise from Dec 19 – Dec 26, 2021. Disney cruises are magical already, but a Christmas one is extra magical.

Let’s start from the beginning. We stayed the day before at Disney World’s Pop Century resort, so that morning, we booked a Lyft to take us to Port Canaveral about 1 hour before our scheduled port arrival time. You can’t get there much earlier than your scheduled time, so make sure to time your arrival accordingly.

Seeing the ship for the first time as you cross over the bridge to Port Canaveral is always such an exciting sight! It’s finally starting to feel real.

As of now, everyone has to go to tents across from the Disney terminal building first to do your Covid test. We had already uploaded our vaccination cards 15 days prior and were approved, so that part was good to go, but all passengers also had to do a test at port. Once you’re cleared, you can then cross over to go inside the terminal. So relieved when we were cleared!! We took our own at-home tests before we flew down to Orlando and before we left Pop Century that morning for our own little piece of mind, but you just never know, so that half hour of waiting was still nerve-wracking.

Once we were cleared to sail, we were able to finally go into the Disney terminal building, go through the security and ID checks, and take those long escalators upstairs to the boarding area. The big Mickey head at the end was the gateway to the ship when our boarding group was called! Follow Mickey!

That moment when they announce your family and welcome you onto the ship is indescribable! Goosebumps! A few tears may have been shed too. After all those months of planning and uncertainty of whether we would actually be able to do this, we were finally able to step onto the ship! Now, it’s actually real! Happy tears!

As we entered the gorgeous atrium, we were greeted by Captains Mickey & Minnie! Since they couldn’t do the Sail Away Party up on deck right now, they did a little greeting song n dance in the atrium as every few groups came onboard. Still cute, and really, we were just so happy and relieved to finally be onboard!

Since this was a Merrytime cruise, the atrium and other places around the ship were all decked out with gorgeous decorations. There was even a life-sized gingerbread house! We could smell the sweet gingerbread scent everytime we walked by.

Of course, the first thing we had to do was hit the buffet! Cabanas is the buffet on the pool deck that was open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, if you didn’t want to do the table serve restaurants. Granted, with the current restrictions, the servers will scoop whatever you want for you instead and selections were a little reduced from the past due to reduced capacity, but everything was still good. We love grabbing a table out on the back deck and eating by the water. It’s our embarkation day tradition.

After eating, we explored the top decks and had to get the first of many soft serve ice cream cones. These decks contain the all important soft serve machines, the main pools, the big FunnelVision screen where they always play Disney movies, the fast food windows for those between meal munchies, the drink stations for water/soda/coffee/tea, a bar for adult beverages (these cost $), and tons of seating to relax and watch the waves go by.

I tried to take pictures without a lot of people in them so these were taken in the very early morning or late at night, but normally during the cruise days, most of the guests would be up there enjoying the deck activities.

Then, it was time to go find our cabin! They were ready around 2pm. If you had left any suitcases with the porters out by the dock, they would start showing up by your cabin door soon after as well.

We had a standard interior cabin. We’ve always booked this type of room on our cruises since we don’t spend that much time in the cabin. It’s actually very well designed and had enough space for 4 of us – 2 adults and 2 older teenagers. There were plenty of drawers, closet space, and under bed storage for clothes and suitcases. The desk unit had a TV, fridge, plenty of shelves for stuff, and was a good place to set up our charging area for many gadgets. Make sure to bring a USB hub, if you have alot too. There aren’t many outlets in the cabin. The bathroom was on the side right when you come in the main door, but I forgot to take pics of it. It was small, but cleverly fit in everything you’d need – sink, toilet, tub shower, shelves, and mirror, with shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and towels provided.

All in all, a clean and comfy room, and serviced about 3 times a day by our stateroom host, who always left us cool towel animals and yummy chocolates every night.

After settling in at the cabin, we went back out to the top deck to watch us sail away. This is one of many favorite parts of cruising. It’s so exciting to sail out of the port channel and out to the big blue sea finally!

Unfortunately, they were not doing the big Sail Away Party and countdown right now, but they did sound the iconic Disney ship horns when we started moving, which still always gives me goosebumps.

After exploring the ship a little more and taking a bunch more pictures, it was time for us to go to our first sit-down dinner. We love these dinners, not just because they are delicious, but it’s a perfect way for all of us to regroup from doing different activities and sit down to end the day together. We like to do the Second Seating, at 8pm, so that we do all the other fun stuff first.

Our first night’s restaurant was Animator’s Palate. This was themed to Disney animation, so it showed pictures of line drawings and sketches around the walls. There were also big screens all around where Crush would appear and interact with us. We happened to sit right next to a screen this time so he talked to us. It was hilarious!

Something different happened each time we came to this restaurant, but I won’t spoil that yet. We’ll be back on days 4 & 7. Since there are three sit-down restaurants for dinner and this is a seven night sailing, that means we rotated through two of the restaurants twice and one of them three times. Our dining rotation had us doing Animator’s Palate three times this sailing and the other two restaurants twice each, so you’ll hear more about this restaurant in the coming days.

This first night was also when we met our serving team, which consisted of our main server and our assistant server. They would follow us each night to our next assigned restaurant, so even though we were in a different restaurant, we had a familiar serving team who already knew our dining preferences. This is actually a really nice feature that Disney does because if you have any allergies or any dining restrictions, you won’t have to explain them all over again to a new serving team each night. Our team was awesome and entertained us with riddles, magic tricks, and a different origami souvenir each night. They provided fantastic service, including insisting that we try one of each dessert every night! We didn’t object. LOL

Everything was delicious! We were too full to do much more after that. Since it was such a long travel day today (yes, we are still only on the first day of this cruise), we just took a final stroll out on deck after dinner and then made our way back to the cabin to finish unpacking and settling in for the night. It was an awesome first day and great relief to just make it on the ship. The fun continues tomorrow!