It’s the fourth and final recap of our Disney cruise. If you missed any of the earlier ones, my family went on our first Disney cruise (actually, it was our first cruise ever!) last week. My parents joined us and we went on the Disney Dream for a 4-night Bahamian cruise out of Miami, and we had such a great time. We made a million memories, and it was such a special trip for the boys to get to have with their grandparents. It was a VERY different vacation than what Nate and I typically book, but I think we’re starting to think about the types of trips that will be slightly relaxing when we’re traveling with a family of young kids, and Disney cruises are pretty incredible.
If you missed the first few days of the recaps, here they are:
Here’s the final day of our cruise, and then I promise to stop talking about it for a while. 😉
The fourth and final day of the cruise was a full day at sea, so it was little of this, a little of that. I woke up feeling like my body needed a workout, so I went to the gym for a quick run before the boys woke up.
Not a bad view from a treadmill, right?
And then it was back to the room to get these boys dressed and out the door to breakfast!
Sooo many breakfast options. We were there pretty early, so the line to the omelette station was short and I ordered one of those.
Mickey waffles and bacon for Milo…
…and lots of scrambled eggs for Dayton.
Since it was a full day on the ship aaand our final day of vacation, I booked two mini sessions for the boys at the nursery so all four adults could have some time to relax.
I grabbed my kindle and hit the 18+ deck for a bit of quiet time!
It started off a bit cloudy and windy around 9 am, and then a few rain splatters starting hitting the deck…
…and then it was POURING! Haha! I mean, I was under a covering so it wasn’t getting me too wet, but rain was literally coming in sideways under the awning.
Haha! It was raining too hard for me to run inside (I was pretty much dry where I was under the awning, but to get inside I’d have to make a mad dash through the rain with all of my stuff), so I basically made a little cocoon for myself with a bunch of dry towels and stayed warm and cozy in there. I took a selfie to see if I looked as ridiculous as I felt. (I did.)
Making the best of it! Vacation is a mindset. 😉 We drank our coffee and stayed warm under the towels, and the rain only lasted for about 45 minutes until…
…the blue skies appeared. It was warm and sunny for the rest of the day.
Another character meet-and-greet! Dayton got to say hi to Mickey Mouse!
Time for more lunch and swimming.
Haha!
Milo looooved that shallow Mickey pool!
Aww. My sweet boy.
Dayton started giving his sleepy cues, so I took him back to the room and put him down for a nap while Nate, my parents, and Milo went to…
…the matinee show! They got 6th row seats to see the third and final show.
Milo asked to sit on Ama’s lap. So sweet.
The seats that aren’t covered by the balcony are the best – that’s where the confetti falls! In true Disney fashion, they shoot out confetti and sprinkles and ribbons during the performances.
Milo gathered some up as a souvenir after the show was over.
Three years old and OWNING IT.
We had a little bit more time that afternoon so we went to Deck 4 to play shuffleboard.
Milo would basically get behind the disk and then walk it all the way across the board to the opposite side and then proudly yell, “I did it!!”
Such a cutie.
And Dayton’s favorite part was pulling all of the tissues out of the travel pack. #goodtimes
A beautiful day at sea!
Milo asked for ONE final ice cream cone, so we obliged.
Always chocolate for this one.
And literally made such a mess, every. single. dang. time.
My dad offered Dayton a bite of his cone, thus creating Soft Serve Monster #2.
Can’t stop won’t stop.
Haha. Also SO very messy.
Grandpa thought he could give Dayton 3 licks of ice cream and he’d be done. Silly grandpa.
Dayton wasn’t done!
Deeelish.
“Umm, excuse me grandpa, I see you have a bit more chocolate ice cream in that cone and I’d like to finish it for you.”
The boys headed back to the nursery for their second mini booking that day, and Nate and I had one more little batch of time to relax on the top deck!
Final little burst of vacation mode!
It was soooo lovely! I totally get why people do cruises without kids, haha! It was incredible to just sit there on the warm sunny deck, soak up the views, read a book, hang out with my man, and drink a cold beverage.
We jumped in the pool for a bit, enjoyed a few drinks, and just loved every second of it!
Aww, gosh y’all. I looked over at Nate’s leg and just thought of how incredibly lucky we are that we’re all 4 here and get to enjoy a family vacation together. AND that Nate is able to do things like walk around on a beach with his two boys, climb stairs inside a cruise ship, chase a toddler around during dinner…this leg has been through it!
We got cleaned up for dinner and headed to our final seated dinner at…
..The Animator’s Palate! This was my favorite of the three rotational dining rooms. It’s kind of decorated like a retro diner (lots of red chairs and black/white checkered flooring), and they have all sorts of images and videos of Disney animation.
But the best part for sure is the talking turtle! Crush (from Finding Nemo) appears in the screens in the wall and swims around the restaurant, talking to guests. He actually personally addresses the guests (like, “hey duuuude, yeah, you in the purple shirt…what’s that you’re eating?”) and has a conversation with the diner before “swimming” off to the next table. It’s so cute!
This picture was snapped during the 10 minutes that Dayton sat still. Haha.
And then he was OFF! Nate took this picture during his shift of watching Dayton outside the restaurant. He loooved the stairs. Almost as much as he loved…
…grandpa’s ice cream. Yup. Joke’s on you, dad! You should have known better than to order the Oreo Sundae because Dayton will eat ALL of it!
Ha!
Hands in the air if you love ice cream!
Dayton loved the ice cream, but no one (and I mean NO ONE) in the world loves ice cream as much as my dad. He probably had twice as many soft serve cones on this trip as Milo ate.
Two sweet boys in matching pajamas.
We got the boys into their beds, closed the curtain between the two “rooms” so the boys could fall asleep, watched the Bengals game in bed (they lost…no Superbowl for them this year!) and fell asleep. Again, there was a late night deck party (and by “late” I mean 10 pm) but we were all too wiped to make it that late!
On the final night, you have to put all of your luggage out by 10 pm to have the valet get it off the ship. So I had to pack up Dayton’s slumber pod tent so I could pack it away in the suitcase. And those boys were SOOOO giggly that night when they could see each other! On all of the other nights Dayton was in his blackout tent so they both fell to sleep right away, but without it… oh my goodness. The whole time Nate and I were watching the football game, Dayton and Milo were in their “room” just giggling. They finally fell asleep, but oof! I’m so glad we had that slumber pod for the rest of the trip!
We had an early 6:45 am breakfast the next day before we got off the ship, went back to the Miami airport, and flew home!
Those post-cruise sleepies are a real thing, y’all.
And that’s a wrap on our first cruise! There will be more of them…mark my words. I really see the advantage of waiting until age 3 (Dayton is 18 months right now) to do our next cruise. That’s the age that Disney offers free childcare, and that’s also when kids are allowed in the pool instead of just the splash pad. Also, for us, age 3 is when Milo was able to start skipping afternoon naps, which is a game changer in family vacations. I mean, when we’re at home, he’ll still do a quiet time in the afternoons, but he rarely falls asleep anymore. So when we’re traveling, it’s no big deal to keep him out all day and not have to get back to our room for a midday nap. But with Dayton, he has to have the afternoon nap or the day will be ROUGH. So I feel like age three would be a really good age to aim for another one of these! We shall see.
Regardless of when/if another Disney Cruise happens, I am so very thankful for this family trip with my parents and all of the memories we made. It was a truly special experience and I’ll remember it forever!
By the way, I booked this cruise through Tink’s Magical Vacations. Allyson Gosselin was my personal travel agent, and she was incredible. I’ll for sure use her again in the future when we do another Disney vacation. I mean, go read about how she worked so hard to save me $900! I know that there are lots of Disney travel agencies out there, but this is the one that I researched and personally used (and can now recommend!), so feel free to give them a try if you’re thinking of booking a cruise. It doesn’t cost anything to use them, and they can help with all the nitty-gritty travel details and the annoying parts (like calling Disney customer care and waiting on hold…)
Ok, my friends, that’s it for now. Thanks for following along on these recaps!
