“Please welcome the Healey-Maquette Family!”
With that, the atrium of the Disney Fantasy is filled with thunderous applause.
Okay maybe not thunderous with only 8-9 crew on hand to applaud your arrival onboard the ship, but it was still uplifting, regardless.
We booked this cruise back in Feb 2015 when I was denied a winter vacation due to something at work… which I can’t recall… what it was… I know I was mad and bitter for days after my denial but post-cruise, all that is gone.
During that anger, Disney announced the special Star Wars cruise: Character meet and greets! Special menus! Guest appearances! Horn! Suddenly the money started to burn a hole in my pocket and I rushed to put down the deposit. We were committed.
I can say I never want to book any vacation more than 8-9 months away ever again. The waiting nearly killed me. There is a permanent greasy stain where the Disney Countdown app resides, on my phone’s screen. The worst was around 50 days left to go where time seem to contract and elongate, like Mathew McConaughey diving into an interstellar black hole. But we got through. The day came and we flew out with no issues. More on that later.
Was it worth it?
Hell. Yes.
Look, I love Disney Cruise Lines and I don’t care what people think. Their food may be meh*, their major onboard entertainment may be people running around in foam heads** and their excursions may be pricey, but somewhere after 4 cruises with them, I’ve grown to love the ships and the service. I am sure if I went back to RCL or on to someone new, I’d be judging their service to Disney with a bias
Add the excitement of Disney displaying Star Wars characters up close for interactions and pictures and I’m as happy as a Moof Milker on a Moof farm.
I’ll be adding more later – pics and commentary – as the week progresses. I have to get past this post-vacation blues somehow!
*The main dining rooms tend to get a little “showy” with their plate presentation and that’s great, but nothing can hide the fact that the cheddar soup you just got placed in front of you has a skin on it, created by the time it took from kitchen to table. I do have to say that I’ve never had a “bad” meal on any ship. Forgetful ones, but never Bad.
**Good news! The stage shows are now starting to use the remote animatronic heads instead of the fixed eye/mouth ones. It’s just a puppet head but to have Baloo’s mouth move to the music and eyes blink offers a better performance.