Trip Report A Fantasy Trip To Disney

I’m finally getting around to sharing last November’s trip to Disney. This was another mother/daughter trip but this time with a different daughter, Sophie, the oldest of the four. She’s six years older than number two so we had a few trips with her as an only child before the others came along, but she was missing from a few family trips when she was a teenager because she went through a too cool for Disney stage. Luckily she’s outgrown that now though.

I’ll try to include some throwback photos, I’ll need to go through some boxes because most of the early ones were before digital cameras.

The earliest digital one I can find. She’s a huge Stitch fan, Lilo and Stitch was her first ever trip to the cinema aged three.

And the last time she was in Disney World in 2018

The plan for this trip was:

November 3rd: Depart Southampton on the Disney Fantasy sailing across the Atlantic Ocean
November 4th: A day at sea, crossing the Bay of Biscay
November 5th: A Coruña, Spain
November 6th: Vigo, Spain
November 7th: A day at sea
November 8th: Funchal, Madeira
November 9th-15th: Seven days at sea
November 16th: Arrive at Port Canaveral

And then the parks portion of the trip was five nights at All Star Movies with the UK park tickets and Christmas party tickets on November 20th, then flying home on November 21st.

But not everything quite went to plan

 

[littleroo]

 

[Baron Von Capybara]

 

[MinnieM123]

in line . . .

 

[riverside]

Wow!! What a long trip!! How exciting!!

 

[k8einwdw]

Looking forward to hearing about your trip!

 

[cgersic]

Woot woot!!! Let's go!!

 

[Piglet_the_brave]

View attachment 910654

in line . . .

Looking forward to hearing about your trip!

Woot woot!!! Let's go!!

Welcome aboard everyone

 

[Piglet_the_brave]

Pre-trip

I didn’t have the best build up to this trip. About a week after my Norway cruise I started feeling ill and tested positive for covid. I felt awful, barely left the house for two weeks. As I was getting ready to go on this trip I was still dealing with left over symptoms, I still had quite a bad cough, got tired very easily and struggled a bit with my breathing. And the brain fog while trying to get myself organised wasn’t fun. Packing was chaos, I didn’t even have a list, I mostly just repacked what I’d brought back from Norway and threw in some extra evening outfits and shorts and T-shirts. Luckily I didn’t forget to bring anything

The socks while packing

I did almost forget park tickets, I remembered the morning we were leaving. And I did forget to put in a server request for the cruise, I had wanted the same servers that I had for Norway

 

[Piglet_the_brave]

Sunday 2nd November: Day before the cruise

Like my Norway cruise I’d decided to stay the night before the cruise in a Disney partner hotel and then take Disney transport to Southampton. Last time I’d stayed at the Gatwick Hilton and there’d only been a few of us, this time it was the Heathrow Sofitel and there were hundreds of us going on the cruise

The rooms were lovely, Piglet and Stitch got comfy straight away

Huge bathroom

I’d booked one of the hotel restaurants for dinner that evening

Hidden Mickey

Sophie started with a mimosa

The food was pretty good

But the service was appalling. We were sitting waiting to order for ages and were only given food menus at first with no drinks on them, and then waiting longer once we got the drinks menus. Then waiting to pay at the end, and despite asking a few times I never got a glass of water. And the bill came to around £100 for two bowls of pasta, the mimosa and a glass of wine including a 10% service charge. I probably could have made a fuss and asked for the service charge to be removed, but at that point I just wanted to leave. As the Sofitel is connected by walkway to Heathrow Terminal 5, we should have just walked over there and bought some snacks. So while I would recommend staying at the Sofitel the night before a cruise, I would not recommend eating there. After that meal I was really looking forward to Disney Cruise Line service

 

[Piglet_the_brave]

Monday 3rd November: Embarkation Day

The luggage pick-up procedure was slightly different at the Sofitel, cases had to be left outside the room first thing in the morning. We were one of the furthest rooms from the elevators and our luggage was some of the first to be picked up. I went down to the lobby to find out where we needed to go for our bus, most rooms had DCL tagged luggage outside, it looked like almost everyone on our floor was going on our cruise.

The buses started at 9.30 and ran every 15 minutes and we were on the 10.15 bus. Unlike the Gatwick Hilton where the luggage had travelled on the bus with us, this was more like the Disney Resorts and the majority of the luggage had already left on a truck. I think with it being such a long cruise people had a lot of luggage, we had four cases between us, and there wouldn’t be enough room on the bus.

On arriving at the port we were given the paper ‘fastpasses’ that allow Disney transport guests to bypass the main queue at the terminal. Security and check in were very quick, our boarding group had already been called so we joined the queue to board the ship.

I don’t have any photos as we boarded the ship because I was watching Sophie’s reaction. There were definitely some happy tears

We were both hungry so straight up to Cabanas for some lunch

Finally some photos, my usual first day lunch

And one of my beloved cruise cheesecakes, it usually Oreo on the first day

We wandered out through Sweet on You (photo from my last cruise)

Sophie already saw something she wanted but couldn’t buy it yet because we were still in port

We still had a while before our room was ready so explored the ship a bit, mostly the adult spaces. The last time Sophie had been on the Fantasy was in 2015 when she was 16 so she’d been too young to go there.

Our room was ready right on time, 8674 aft my favourite area and the connecting room to the one I’d had on my Norway cruise

Sophie was very excited about the lovely view of Southampton IKEA

 

[Piglet_the_brave]

Monday 3rd November (cont)

After a nap (I needed a lot of naps on this trip) and the muster drill, we ventured out on deck to find a spot for the Sail Away party. I don’t usually do this because it is too crowded for me but it was something Sophie really wanted to do and I’m glad I decided to go with her.

It was chilly and drizzly out and usually if it’s raining the stage show is moved down to the atrium. I don’t know if people were expecting that to happen and had gone there or that they just didn’t want to go outside, but there were way less people watching the show than usual and we got a pretty good view

I think this couple were YouTubers, they had a lot of themed outfits

I enjoyed the show a lot, it’s very cute. And I loved not having to deal with crowds to see it

We decided a tropical cocktail would be a good idea on a cold November day and opted for the drink of the day which is always a bit cheaper than other drinks

It was a bit on the sweet side for me, I stuck to my daytime mojitos for the rest of the cruise

We enjoyed our drinks on our verandah as we set sail

We had a partially obstructed view on our verandah on this cruise so part of it was a bit more sheltered from the drizzle

 

[Baron Von Capybara]

Found them .

 

[Piglet_the_brave]

Monday 3rd November (cont)

There wasn’t a show in the Walt Disney Theatre that evening so we used the time to unpack and settle in to the room that would be our home for the next two weeks. I introduced Sophie to our stateroom host Eric, I’d met him on my Norway cruise and he’d done an excellent job of looking after my room.

Then some pre dinner music in the atrium from the Victrophonics with their jazzy versions of Disney tunes

Our first night dinner was in Animator’s Palate where we met our serving team Milo and Dejan who were excellent the whole cruise. There are just so many little details in Animator’s, I always seem to see something new every time I go there

We had the Let The Magic Begin menu which I’ve had a few times, it’s often the first night menu on longer cruises

Calamari and the Pork Wellington were delicious

 

[Piglet_the_brave]

Monday 3rd November (cont)

Then desserts

The crème brûlée for me

Sophie loves mint choc chip ice cream but didn’t want the big sundae, so Milo brought her just a bowl of the ice cream

We very much enjoyed the food and service at dinner, unfortunately I can’t say the same thing about the company of our table mates.

On the summer cruise with the younger two girls we’d had a private table and on my solo cruises I’ve sat with other solo cruisers who’ve been very good company. I thought Sophie might want someone other than me to chat to at dinner, and Disney do a very good job of seating similar parties together. When the girls were younger we’ve been seated with families with children of a similar age. Dinner started at 8.15 and we were shown to a six seater table with four place settings together and two empty spaces at the end. Milo told us another mother/daughter pair would be joining us. Our table mates turned up at 9, I looked up to smile and they just completely blanked me. They grabbed the place settings that were next to us and moved them to the other end of the table. Milo and Dejan arrived to help them and they were very brusque with them which annoyed me more than the fact that they’d ignored us. It was all a bit uncomfortable. Sophie said she overheard them talking about some lost luggage so we hoped that maybe they would be more polite the next night. I wasn’t expecting to be best friends with them but a polite acknowledgment of our existence would have been nice.

 

[Minnie1986]

Sounds like a great trip! Can't wait to follow along

 

[Piglet_the_brave]

Sounds like a great trip! Can't wait to follow along

Lovely to have you following

 

[Piglet_the_brave]

Monday 3rd November (cont)

After dinner the Victrophonics were playing in the atrium again so we watched/listened for a while

Our first room creation

 

[Piglet_the_brave]

Tuesday 4th November: Day at sea crossing the Bay of Biscay

I’ll start by saying I had a lovely relaxing day. Poor Sophie and a good percentage of the other passengers had a pretty awful day. This was my third time crossing the Bay of Biscay, the first time was a completely calm summer crossing then the second was a very rough crossing on the previous year’s transatlantic cruise. I had felt not exactly ill but just off all day, I think I went too long before eating breakfast that time.

We woke up to quite rough seas, not the 10m waves of the previous year but about 7-8m so still quite significant. Sophie woke up already feeling a bit queasy even though she had taken some Bonine, I persuaded her to come to breakfast hoping eating something would help.

Cabanas at 8am, it’s usually very busy by that time

My usual cruise breakfast

But no churro waffles , usually they’re a treat on the last sea day of a cruise but we’d had them every day on last year’s transatlantic. I had to have mini pastries as my breakfast dessert instead

Sophie picked at some food and left me so she could go back to bed. She just about made it back to the room in time to lose her breakfast

 

[Bullseye1967]

I just wanted to say that I really appreciate you and your great TR style. Your TR's are always chocked full of great info and pics. I am glad you and Sophie could make this trip. The rest of your family is wonderful also. You will look back years down the road and be thankful for all the time and love you put into these TR's. Thank you for sharing them with us.