Disney Cruise Weekly #2: All About Dining (Dinner Edition)

 

Dining is one thing that's on everybody's mind when they're booking a cruise. For this video we focused on dinners! We'll go over everything from rotational dining, tipping your wait staff, table sharing and more!

On the Disney Ships they have a routine called rotational dining. Instead of showing up to the restaurant every night, you rotate between the three different dining rooms on the ship. The restaurants are a little different depending on what ship you're on:

Royal Court is the restaurant located in the main lobby of the Fantasy and the Dream

 

Enchanted Garden is also located on the Fantasy and the Dream. 

 

Animators Palate is a restaurant that can be found on all four of Disney's ships.  

 

Lumiere's is the 'Royal Court' of the Disney Magic. 

 

While the Wonder has their fancier restaurant, Tritons.  

 

Formerly, Parrot Cay, the Disney Magics third dinner area is Carioca's.

 

The Disney Wonder still has Parrot Cay

 

Your Key to the World Card has your dining rotation schedule and table number.

The dinner rotational dining schedule for the card above is:
Royal Court (R)
Animators Palate (A)
Enchanted Garden (E)

Your card also shows the assigned dining time (6:00 P.M. or 8:15 P.M) as well as your table number (36). 

One restaurant you attend twice (7 nights.. only three dining rooms). On the morning you debark the ship you attend breakfast wherever you ate the last night. Cabanas is also an option for breakfast as well. 

Your waiters also follow you around to each of the restaurants so they will get to know you quite well over the week.

If you choose to go to the restaurant's nightly a predetermined  gratuity for the waiter, assistant waiter, and head server will all be added to your final bill. You’re allowed to hit up guest services and adjust it to pay them more or less if you wish. Wine and alcohol are also not included in dinners. All other drinks are though! Including soda. 

The dinner menus are laid out the same every evening and generally go like this: 

Bread is always on the table (specialty bread the first three nights, then it's just rolls)

4-5 Appetizer options

3-4 soups and salads

6-8 Main course selections

4-6 Dessert options

Every menu has the same 'lighter fare' offerings that are the same throughout the entire week. They have also included vegetarian options and no sugar added desserts. 

There is one evening in Animators Palate where there is a condensed menu. This is because they have an interactive 'show' this night and like to have all your food out as soon as possible by the time it starts. 

If you don't want to attend the restaurants you can easily go to the quick stop food places up on deck 9. Cabanas, the buffet, is not open buffet style for dinner. It's turned into a mini restaurant so you do have servers and you are offered similar options to what they are serving in the main dining locations. 

Our famiy always attends the resturants and we would encourage you to as well! Even though you do have to tip at the end of the week:

You get a chance to interact with your servers, they are the best! On all the cruises we've been on we have never been disappointed with our assigned wait staff. They're very entertaining, even though we don't have children at our table. If you're going on another cruise you can request a server you've had in the past. 

Also, adults have the option of having the kids club members come pick up their children during dinner. If you have young kids who would rather play then sit down for a nice meal this service is perfect for your family. When you come to dinner the servers will bring our your children dinner very quickly and then the kids club crew come down and take your kids to go play in the club and you are free to take your time and enjoy dinner. 

Finally, there is amazing theming in the restaurants. It's a great Disney atmosphere in all of them and you won't be disappointed. In Animators Palate there's plenty going on. The first night you're eating there Crush from Finding Nemo comes on TV screens all around to interact with families and play games. They also show scenes from movies while pictures light up around the room. The second night you create your own animated character and they'll bring it to life at the end of your meal. 

Table Sharing

Table sharing is not as big on Disney as it is on other ships, although it still happens. If you're traveling as a part of 2 you can expect to be sharing your table. Most tables are designed to sit 4-6 people with some pushed together for larger parties. 

Dining Times

Early dining begins at 615 while late dining is at 815. Doors open at 6 and 8. People begin lining up 15 minutes before and are super antsy to get in! If you show up right at your dining time or a few minutes later you'll be able to head right to your seat with no crowds. You should be curteous to the staff and not show up too late, however. 

If you don't have young children in your part expect the later time. We were first assigned late dining on our 4th cruise and thought it wouldn't work for us, and we were proved wrong. We've actually decided we enjoy the later time more. If you don't want to go to the show that night then the boat is a ghost town and it's a great time to be up on deck. We usually grab a snack around 5 and it holds us over until dinner. 

Disney Weekly #1: Booking a cruise. Is the price worth it? How do I go about it?

Trying to decide if you really want to pay the price for a disney cruise? The price tag definitely is a lot higher when comparing to other cruises. Here's our opinion on whether or not the price is really worth it and how to make it happen if you decide to go out to sea with Mickey. 

Here is how much it's going to cost for our upcoming cruise in May:

7 Day on the Disney Fantasy. We always go with inside staterooms, why? Because they're the cheapest and you really aren't in your room that much (at least we aren't) so it' doesn't make sense to get anything more than that. If you want to have your breakfast on a private verandah every morning then you will end up paying more. Also, with the virtual porthole you're not missing much. Plus you get the characters popping up on your screen all day. 

Anyways, we have 6 adults and one baby booked (the price for an infant is around $400 which covers fees, taxes eat). Each adult is $1,404.90 without taxes. The baby is $431.55. This price includes our discount for being castaway club members. Keep in mind that different weeks differ in cost. Why? I have no idea, maybe it's seasonal pricing. 

Total cruise cost for all of us including taxes: $8,621.24
If you were to go book the same cruise with the same people right now it would be: $10,694.86 with no discounts. 

If you scroll through all the upcoming cruses in 2016 you'll see the prices are not the same week to week. 

You also need to factor in flights to where the ship departs, transportation to the port, a hotel the night before if you're not flying in the day of (which we highly recommend NOT doing). It also doesn't include any shore excursions, tips for your room hostess or waiters, alcohol, and any other charges you make on your key to the world card. 

Now that you have a rough idea of how much it'll cost your family and the sticker shock didn't completely shut down the idea but you're still on the fence here's why it's worth it. 

Is your family mostly small children? (almost) everything on the Disney Ships is geared towards them. They won't walk through bars and casinos to get to restaurants, the smell of smoke is contained to the few smoking only areas. The nightly shows are all PG rated, the adults only shows are still PG-13.. if that. I've only heard them curse a few times and they always follow up with something like 
"Whoops, I forgot I was on Disney."
Are your kids Disney fans? If your daughter would call the best day of her life going to the Salon and getting a princess makeover and dancing with Cinderella before dinner, it might be worth it to see her so excited. 

If you aren't a disney family, if it's an all adults trip, or if it's college spring break it may not be worth your money. We're all 'adults', but we love Disney so it's worth it for us. 

We went on one other cruise in 1997 but I can't compare because I don't remember. I did go on Carnival earlier this year so it's more of a fair comparison. (Keep in mind that I compared it to my other cruises the whole time, even though I Tried not to!) 

Food:
First off, a buffet is a buffet and unless you're paying top dollar they're rarely the best food you've ever eaten. But, I would say Disney has a lot better lunch/dinner/breakfast buffet. They have a larger selection and the food seems a lot more fresh. 
Dinners are close to the same, but I would still rate Disney a bit better. 
Ice cream: Disney WINS hands down. The carnival ship I was on had the worst soft serve. 
Fast food. This one is hard because on carnival they only had two locations that were 'fast food' for lunch and the lines were a mile long so I can't fairly compare those. 

Entertainment:
Okay to be honest, a couple of the shows at night on Disney are straight outta disney channel and we skip those nights and take advantage of the empty deck. 
Our cruise in 2013 had a hilarious adult host. 2015 we had an okay one. They really set the tone for nighttime entertainment. Must be hit or miss. 

Like Disneyland, the cruise ships always have someone around cleaning. I've never gone into a bathroom and walked right back out because it was gross. The staterooms are clean and nothing creeks late at night and everything has always been in working condition for us. 

After considering a lot of different factors, I would say if you can't decide look to your kids. Would they be happy on any cruise as long as they could be in a pool all day or any kids club? Or would they love the magic that comes from a disney cruise? Get online and show them the kids clubs, the aqua duck, and all the other activities geared towards kids. 

Okay, did you decide yes? You're not going to regret it. The easiest way to get the process started is with a travel agent. They know what they're doing and it'll be the least headache for you. Our travel agent even comps a hotel room for the night before departure, ask around to see what they can do for you to make your vacation even better (or cheaper!). 

You can, of course, book your cruise on disneycruise.com too. Also, it's fun to request a free planning DVD here: https://disneycruise.disney.go.com/cruise-planning-tools/

We don't generally book excursions through Disney, but if you want to you can do it all online through four months before you leave. You can also do your online check in at the same time. Your screen will look like this:

Earlier I mentioned booking your next cruise while on board. Here are some more details about that:

When you are on the cruise they have agents there all week to book another cruise and you get a 10% discount on the final cruise fare. Up to $200 onboard credit per stateroom ($100 for 3-6 night cruises, $200 for 7+ night cruises).A lower deposit requirement of only 10% on 7+ night cruises (regular deposit requirement is 20%).

Also, you can book any date you want and change it up to 60 days in advance. Our last cruise my dad booked it for April 10, because they hadn’t released any dates after that yet, he booked it knowing we can easily move it.

Our last tip for planning your cruise is to fly in at least a day before! If your flight gets delayed the day the ship leaves you will be out of luck! They won't wait for you! On our first few cruises we would fly out on wednesday and go to Universal Studios on Thursday and Friday (Disneyworld is obviously an option too!) before boarding the ship on Saturday. We all have busier lives nowadays so we fly out on Friday and rent a car to drive to Port Canaveral and stay at a hotel right on the port. Then on Saturday morning we can take a shuttle directly to the terminal.

If you’re not living in Florida or driving to the port, our best piece of advice would be to fly in at least the day before. If your flight gets delayed or cancelled the ship will not wait for you! On our first few cruises we flew out wednesday and spent 2 days in Universal studios parks before getting on the ship, or you could do Disneyworld. Nowadays, because of busier schedules we fly in the day before and rent a car to drive to port canaveral and find a hotel right by the port. That way we can wake up and shuttle right over to the terminal.