A little bit about who we are. 30somethings mom and dad (mom was 29 but who is counting ?), almost 11 year old daughter, and 2 year old son. We were looking into taking our first family vacation since our son was born aside from trips to the shore. Mom wanted a 7 night cruise on the Disney Magic and Dad wanted a WDW vacation. A compromise was made and we spend 5 nights at Saratoga Springs before embarking on our first ever cruise, a 3 night Bahamas cruise on the Disney Dream. This was her 3rd ever open to all sailing.

The ship was gorgeous. I spent month watching her being built via the shipyard webcams but seeing her in person was breath taking. We were so excited to see her as we pulled into port. We did drive a rental and park at the port. It really was quite cost effective and made things easy for the four of us. The port was very crowded when we got there around noon. The security line went quickly, however the line to check in was VERY long. Even with the long check in line, and the line at the kid club desk, we were still in our room and had our luggage delivered as well by 1:35. Not bad ! We had lunch at Cabanas (buffet) after we checked out our room. It was organized chaos. Enchanted Garden was open for lunch as well but I figured the kids probably needed a less formal atmosphere after all of the driving and waiting.

They had two sail away parties that day and we attended the "non sail away" sail away party at 2:30p since we had the 5 o'clock show and 6 o'clock dinner. The party was okay but seemed more like an advertisement for what the ship had to offer. I was on the ship already so it is not like they had to sell me on it. Read more