I realize it may be weather dependent, but what level of motion sickness can be expected on one of these Disney cruises assuming no bad storms, etc? My wife has it fairly badly and is convinced she wouldn’t enjoy a cruise despite going on one when she was a teenager. We’re probably a year or two away as our kids are 3 and 1 and I don’t want to pay a bunch to take them just yet, but curious what everyone’s experience has been if you have a family member who was worried.
Barely noticed it on the wish but I also have never gotten motion sickness. only time I ever seem to notice is if I’m sitting on a barstool
Zero concerns on our first cruise. 2nd cruise we hit some bad weather and went through some massive swells to the point that they made an announcement and the bartender we were talking to said it was some of the worst he had experienced. My whole family was fine but I was feeling it during dinner and had to walk up to the open air. I was fine at that point. One of our friends daughters threw up. My understanding from talking to a few crew members that is rare.
Only cruise I've been on was 20 years ago and out of Galveston, so I wasn't how the Caribbean waters typically are. I remember a few times having to grab hold of something going through some big swells. Glad to hear it's a rarity where the Disney boats are traveling.
Finishing up our last day on the Treasure. What a trip. About to watch the live Moana musical. Will share more later.
Moana was good aside from the most bizarre casting of Maui you can imagine. Tall, skinny white dude with a high pitched voice. It really threw me. The puppeteering was excellent and really cool. Beauty and the Beast was the better production on the ship and on par with the Broadway version we saw.
I get motion sickness, and its hit or miss on board. When we did a Canadian cruise on the Magic, we dipped in the Atlantic ocean, i threw up bigly the next morning. You'll get rough seas in hurricane season as well, and there's time's that's made me feel unwell (didn't make it to Remy on our Fantasy cruise because the motion was so bad on Deck 13). Go to the doc and get a script for Scopolamine, and aggressively hydrate leading up to your cruise, that has worked for me in the past.
I did epic today. Was great, but they gotta figure out a better system for ministry of magic immediately. The amount of time people spend around that park on their phone trying to refresh that queue in hopes of getting a spot and seeing no one in sight booking it...ridiculous. its harry potter, everyone wants to ride it but it's locked behind the dumbest system I've seen. Did go in atrium for it though and it was very cool.
Watched someone do it on TikTok, idk if they ever got a spot cause the video was so long I stopped watching. What a miserable experience. Reminds me of my wife trying to get Eras tour tickets.
I had better luck pre-ordering a switch 2 if that helps illustrate what a crappy experience it is trying to get a spot. Not to mention we had a group of 6 all trying to get 6 spots at the same time. If we all succeeded that's 36 spots for 6 people since app isn't tied to tickets. I'm sure that isn't helping with ensuring as many people possible get to ride it, probably several groups going multiple times while others come up disappointed.
It’s awful and no one really explains it to you either. They’d be better off just opening it when park opens and dealing with the line. Instead they don’t even open it until 3pm. overall I thought epic was amazing to look at but they have a ton to work on to make it a great experience. For example, They ran out of half the food options at the toad stool quick service place and our food took 40 minutes to get to our table. This is with crowd limiting like 25% of expected capacity I think. I would wait to go for at least 6-12 months to let them work out kinks.
yep. i don't plan on going back for a year or two (and they gotta fix that ministry ride queue first). let the hype die down, it's not gonna get better than yesterday once it opens it'll be slammed.
i do want to say as well though, that nintendo world is awesome. i had seen pictures and videos over the years of this park and other nintendo parks, but actually stepping into it was pretty awe inspiring. not to drop too much hyperbole but it reminded me of the grand canyon. you can see pictures of it but until you actually see it you won't quite understand it. just a cool experience walking in there.
Yes- Nintendo world is unbelievable. They knocked that out of the park. But mine cart is a kind of meh ride. It’s cute, but I’d never spend a ton of time in line for it. Analogous to seven dwarves mine train ride. But man- the immersion in Nintendo is fantastic and the Mario kart ride is fun. dark world is similarly an amazing immersion. We were there late to see it at dusk and man is it cool. Super disappointed Frankenstein was closed all day. The park design and immersion and layout is something Disney should be very worried about but they need to button a lot up to get it where the product matches the design and look of the place. And I’m sure they’ll get there at some point because the other parks run well.
got lucky in those two areas. we went to dark universe right when park opened, did curse of werewolf which was a blink and its over roller coaster...pretty meh. then went to frankenstein and did it. saw it broke down shortly after but thankfully got to experience it. 9.5 out of 10. saved donkey kong for last, hopped in single rider line with 95 min wait at 8:20 pm. ride broke down at 8:40, people left line, and it reopened at 9 pm (park close) and took 15 min to get to front from there... id say worth it for the hour wait i had vs. what would've been likely 2 hours if i had gone throughout the day. none of the nintendo rides really blew me away but the park in general was very cool. mario kart was an onslaught to the senses. the virtual queue thing for the parks is going to be super rough i feel and while i get trying to keep from overcrowding the areas, imagine all the people that will be unlucky getting in anywhere after paying full price for tickets... they gotta do something smart with how they handle that or they're looking at a ton of unhappy customers.
I’m fairly confident it’s VQ bc of all the downtime it has. And apparently most of the downtime is due to the sensors being overly sensitive. The last time I went they changed the boarding procedure to tell people to uncross their legs and sit way back, which didn’t happen my first three rides. This is because if it detects someone out of the seat back or off the floor then it sets off the sensor.
yeah i don't know the whole story behind any of it, it's just annoying as a paying customer to not see something. and they're pretty close to opening so i'd hope they can work these kinks out prior.
Just got off our Disney Cruise a few days ago. Went on the Dream. Honestly I went into it thinking I'd sorta make good of it, but really it was a trip for our daughter. She ended up loving it and my wife and I enjoyed it more than I think we expected. With a 3.5 year old, the cruise was so much better than dragging a kid through parks in the heat of the day. Booked a placeholder for next year and working on booking it now. Thanks for all the tips and suggestions Sub-Zero Palo was good, but the Remy brunch was a highlight for us. The food in general surprised us both for cruise food in the main dining rooms.
yeah if they’re running at 1/4 capacity and these issues are already really bad, they’re in bad shape. Maybe this is why Disney is so resistant to opening another park in the current environment of everyone has a camera and is an influencer. They really are a protect the brand at all costs company. Much easier to renovate and reopen with similar enough logistical issues.
Virtual queue is a disaster because virtual queues just suck in general. The way it currently works is at 11am, 3pm, and 6pm, you tap the ride and then switch back and forth until you can hit the virtual line button then select how many are in your group and then which time slot you want. Most are not getting a virtual queue, that's why it sucks. If 90% of people got one, then people would be fine with it. But the ride has very low capacity due to the amount of downtime it has. People are mad because it's one of the premiere rides in the park and you aren guaranteed a ride. Alternatively, I suppose if they opened up lines, someone could wait 4 hours and still never get a ride.
VQs are good in theory. Gideons at Disney springs for example so at least you can eat dinner while “in line” but when supply exceeds demand and VQ becomes a competition it just becomes stressful
Reminds me I need to write up my Wish comments. Glad you loved it. You think it’s a trip for your kid but when you kid is that well taken care of, it quickly becomes a trip for the parents. We had great food on the wish which I was going to mention and we didn’t even go to the adult restaurants this time.
I don’t even miss the casino (and I am a casino person). Honestly by the time the kids go to bed (late) I just maybe want to walk around for 20 minutes and then turn in. As far as feee time during the day it’s to the “quiet” cove.
One big miss on the new class of ships is the lack of a swim up bar. But I’m with you. Don’t even miss the casino.
We would try take her to characters in the morning, by the pool and slides early afternoon, then nap for her while I drank beer on the balcony, then kids club at 5ish and we'd go and chill at a bar or whatever. By the end of the night we'd be about ready to all crash. There was actually a Bahamian bartender at Currents bar and so we ended up there chilling with him a good bit. Told him about how I used to play poker with the guy that owned what's now Castaway Cay back in the 80s and he was like "yeah, I've definitely heard rumors about what used to happen here." Kinda funny going ashore there now and it being a Disney property juxtaposed with knowing the history of it.
Right, in theory. But the supply is way too low due to downtime which is why it sucks. That's why I said "If 90% of people got one, then people would be fine with it."
Other than Battle at the Ministry being closed, Epic delivered yesterday. The theming and detail throughout the park is incredible. Each portal stood out in its own way, and celestial park is beautiful, especially when it’s all lit up at night. Stardust is an elite coaster. Right there with velocicoaster for me Hiccups was a nice surprise. I thought it was a Hippogriff-esque kiddie coaster going into it, but that wasn’t the case at all. Monsters Unchained is awesome. Fantastic queue, awesome pre-show, and the ride itself was wild. Some REALLY impressive animatronics. we stayed at Stella Nova. The rooms and amenities are nice but the location is great if you have a trip focused on Epic. The walk is only 10 minutes and you only have to cross one road. Obviously Helios is an even better location but costs nearly three times as much as Stella Nova/Terra Luna. Can’t wait to go back in November
My oldest daughter is turning 8 in October. We are currently building a new house and promised her we would throw a big birthday party at the new house for her. Also, we recently started planning next years big Disney trip that will coincide with her birthday and we will be bringing our then 4 year old daughter for the first time. This will be probably a week there with a split between Disney and Epic. Really Jonesing for a Disney trip this year though so the other day I threw out to her the option of doing either the big birthday party at the house or we could do a 3 day weekend trip to Disney. She chose to do the party at the house because she will get the Disney trip next year and she's ok waiting for that. Impressed with the delayed gratification on that but I was really hoping she'd take me up on the quick Disney trip this year. A big party at the house, while fun, will probably be pretty stressful and I'd have a better time down in Disney.
Had that thought too, we did one in February and had a great time. Actually came up last night but we might be going to Anaheim for a 4 days in December. Starting to figure out logistics of maybe doing that and a couple days in Disneyland.
I’m overdue for notes on the Wish. My short summary is that I like this ship better than the fantasy for a couple of reasons. The deck 11/12 design including The pools. I was a big fan of the 5 smaller pools vs 2 bigger ones. Plus the pools have varying depth from 1 ft to 4.5 feet. This left more space on the deck for chairs and area to walk around. I also loved how they didn’t waste top deck space on the basketball hoop or mini golf which are virtually useless when the ship is in motion. Instead the basketball is indoors and that space was really cool. Casual food is a step up. Whereas most ships have a grill and pizza always available, the wish adds Mexican and BBQ. both were great. Restaurants theming was a huge step up. And I like how they are going to vary that for other ships even with the same layout. My kids loved the avengers dinner especially. Some other general notes: A lot of online reviews complain about the layout becusse it’s a bit different from other cruises. But I thought this was all pretty smart. The relation of the bars to kids club I thought made sense. Kids club down on 2 opened up higher decks and made the club massive. They designed the ship for Disney, not just any cruise. Kids club was amazing. Kids loved it of course. It’s cool that the magic bands can detect where in the club they are (just to staff, not to parents). Just smart. They also loved the slide that goes from deck 3 and into the kids club. Just a cool thing all kids seemed to love. Character interactions were top notch (especially the Marvel ones) but there were not random roaming characters like we experienced in the fantasy. Pretty much all interactions we had were standard scheduled ones with queues. No extra costs for soda and fountain drinks continues to be the bees knees. Gotta do the beer mug deal on any Disney cruise. People complain about the layout of the adult area. I liked it honestly. There is one side that is underneath aquamouse which is loud but the back of the ship with the infinity pool is pretty nice. Aquamouse is neat. They need to continue to build on that idea that feels like a park attraction. Star Wars bar I thought was cool. Not over the top but just a neat little space. Drinks in there were GREAT though. Could it be more immersive? Sure. But it’s just a neat space. That said I’ve heard great things about Haunted Mansion on the newer ships I’ll always appreciate that Disney minimizes shops on board. They have a couple but it’s not like a shopping ship like being on Royal. Castaway Cay was a great day. 4 nights not enough. Gotta go 7 on Treasure next time. Didn’t bother getting off the ship in Nassau to have more time on the ship and I highly recommend that.
Appreciate all of that and great timing. Just booked the first week of August for our first Disney cruise
As a first time Disney cruiser there’s a lot to know. Look up what fish extenders are. Also if you really want to get deep into thingsf to know, join your sailings Facebook group. (This is also how you get involved with fish extenders) go to Facebook and literally search for your ship and sailing date. A group will show up.