Welcome to part 1 of our trip report on our 7-night Caribbean Cruise aboard the Disney Treasure! This report covers just one day—embarkation. Let’s set sail!

About This Post and Related Posts

I plan to have a separate review of the ship later on, but I’m writing these trip report posts first. In general, this will be more narrative and less focused on my commentary (except where I can’t resist).

This one covers embarkation day but will also go a little deeper into some topics that are relevant to the entire cruise. I expect later posts in this series will cover multiple days. For now, here’s the listing:

Disney Treasure 7 Night Caribbean Cruise Trip Report Part 1 — Embarkation (you are here)

I have three other review / report style posts on other Disney cruises:

And all our Disney Cruise Line content can be found here.

Booking This Itinerary

We booked this cruise with the help of our go-to travel advisor, Lauren Quirk of Travel With Character LLC. The itinerary happened to coincide with the end of Zoe’s summer, when we were hoping to visit family in Florida already.

With a 10% onboard booking discount (we used a placeholder reservation we’d booked on a previous Disney cruise), the total for the three of us, including prepaid gratuities, came to $7,409.94. I might do a separate “budget” post for this cruise—as I’ve done a few times before—but when you get to 7 nights on Disney’s newest ship, the numbers start to just sort of become…big (for us, at least).

The cost and length were a bit tough to stomach, but the itinerary had the added bonus of making stops at two countries—Jamaica and Mexico—that Zoe and I have never been to. There’s a fun discussion to be had (and it’ll come up later) about just how much a stop on a cruise counts for your “visited countries” list, but for now our plan was to do enough that we’d feel comfortable checking that box for Zoe and me.

Embarkation Day on the Disney Treasure

Whenever possible, we try to bookend our cruises with visits to Walt Disney World. Flying in the morning of a cruise is too much of a risk, and while we have comfortably flown back home on debarkation day, it’s nice to add a leisurely most-of-a-day in the parks if we can.

Visiting Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party

For this particular trip, there happened to be a Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party the evening before we embarked. This is slightly less than ideal as the party would have Zoe up late, but our go-to for parties is to spend the night at a monorail resort to at least make for a quick getaway at the end of the evening.

I’ve covered a portion of this trip in Disney World Summer 2025 Trip Report Part 1, and if I write more about the trip, it’ll be linked to from there.

Getting to Port Canaveral

We opted to pay for Disney transportation to Port Canaveral, which is about an hour’s drive from Disney World. Zoe does much better on buses than in cars, and there’s always some value to staying in the bubble. The cost of the transfer was $135, which isn’t bad for the trip to Port Canaveral.

We received the email with details of our transfer two days before the cruise:

All Guests with Disney Cruise Line ground transfers are invited to meet with a Disney Cruise Line representative in the main lobby by Contemporary Grounds at Disney's Contemporary Resort at 09:00 AM (EST) for a 09:30 AM (EST) motorcoach departure. Photo identification for all Guests 16 years of age and older is required to board the motorcoach.

Of course, I have to admit that I completely ignored the second part of the email:

For those of you staying at your Walt Disney World Resort pick-up location, Bell Services will begin luggage pick-up at 7:00 AM (EST) on the morning of your sailing. Please place the luggage you wish to transfer to the ship inside your resort room (with Disney Cruise Line luggage tags attached) near the entrance door. You do not need to be present for your luggage to be collected. Should you need additional Disney Cruise Line luggage tags, they may be obtained at the Bell Services Desk or from a Disney Cruise Line representative.

Luggage transfer is handled separately from the transfer of guests to the port. As a result, Emily got a call around 6:30AM while I was out running saying the luggage needed to be delivered to Bell Services by 8:15AM. We managed to throw everything together and deliver the bags on time. (Opting out of this process was allegedly not an option, and indeed Emily encountered the Bell Services Cast Member while he was en route to our room.)

While I think it’s a bit over-engineered, this is overall a good arrangement. Typically, when you board a Disney Cruise ship, you’ll plan to drop your luggage off with a porter before you board, leaving yourself only a day bag until evening, potentially. In this case, a guest might have the additional challenge of navigating their morning at the hotel (7AM onward) with only their day bags. But it allows for a much smoother transfer, as all that has to be loaded on and off the buses are people and a few larger day bags that went under the bus. (If you’re tracking your checked luggage via Airtag, note that it will take a different journey than you to the port.)

The cruise line staff were easy to find in the lobby of Contemporary, and they confirmed our number of checked bags and assigned us a bus.

Boarding and Getting to Know the Disney Treasure

Leaving a little before 10AM, we arrived at Port Canaveral at 11AM and were checked in and through security by 11:27AM. Our group—Group 4—was called around 11:56AM and we were onboard at 12:17PM. This was a fairly long time to board, but presumably this was one of the first large groups and we were at the back of it.

We made a slight change to our typical boarding routine this time. We usually head straight to lunch, but we opted to divert to the Oceaneer Club to finalize Zoe’s registration. We have a love / less-love relationship with the Oceaneer Club. It’s a bit quirky, but despite everything you did at check-in, you’ll still have to finalize registration onboard. The lines for this process can get quite long and it adds some friction.

On a seven-night cruise this isn’t a huge problem. But on a shorter itinerary the time you spend in that line on the first night mostly to reconfirm information you already put in online is a bit frustrating. And if you’re already having a hard time convincing your child to part with you for a bit, the added conversation at the desk is only another unwelcome hurdle (particularly for a club with the fun gimmick of being able to easily slide right in from the third deck slide entrance).

It’s also worth noting that (as seen above) on the first day during open house there are usually some crew members staffing pop-up stations that can finalize registration. Anyways…that’s why we opted to just go immediately, before any lines had formed.

With check-in quickly taken care of, we headed up to Marceline Market for lunch. Marceline Market is the main quick service establishment onboard, comprising the aft of Deck 11. It’s U-shaped, with service counters along the inside and seating along the outside. The offerings on either side of the U are identical. Even when it’s crowded, I’ve never had a real problem with lines or getting a table in Marceline Market (or, on other ships, Cabanas). I’m overall a huge fan of all the quick service onboard this ship.

Here are two pictures, not from embarkation day to give you a sense of Marceline Market:

Alternatively, you can get food from some of the smaller “Festival of Foods” stands further forward on Deck 11. There’s plenty of seating around Deck 11 if you go that route. We expect to make plenty of visits to Festival of Foods later in the trip, so we usually opt for Marceline Market on day one.

We usually don’t try and fit much into our first day. Zoe loves pools, so it’s usually a good chance for us to enjoy the pool and whatever movie is playing on Funnel Vision (the big movie screen next to the pools on Deck 11). Today’s weather, however, called for a different plan. With an absolute downpour ongoing as of 1:15PM, we decided instead to head to Haunted Mansion Parlor, which opened around 1PM.

We wound up snagging one of the last open tables for a while. Zoe was pretty nervous at first. Haunted Mansion Parlor seems to have essentially two modes—spooky mode and regular mode (or, happy haunts summoned and happy haunts not summoned). During this particular visit, the parlor spent an extended amount of time in spooky mode—pretty dark, ghouls on the screens, lightning strikes, and so on. But after a few minutes we’d settled in and were all having a good time.

Overall, I was incredibly impressed with Haunted Mansion Parlor. It was an exceptional experience, with plenty of effects around the room and a chilling ambiance. This was one of the first things I noticed as a clear improvement over the Wish.

The Wish’s Star Wars Hyperspace Lounge is a fine bar, but in a world where we have Oga’s Cantina and all of Galaxy’s Edge, it felt a bit underdressed for our taste. By contrast, Haunted Mansion Parlor joins Trader Sam’s and Oga’s Cantina as one of Disney’s best themed bars.

Our Disney Treasure Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah

By 1:44PM, Staterooms were ready. I’d honestly forgotten we’d gotten a room with a verandah, so that was a nice surprise.

I’ve never found the need to say much about the Disney Cruise Line staterooms, in a good way. All of our staterooms have been good, functional rooms. We simply don’t spend much time at all inside of them. We never even sat on the verandah—we pretty much always preferred to be elsewhere on the ship. Other notes:

As has been our usual experience, our stateroom host converted Zoe’s bed from couch to bed in the evening and bed to couch in the morning.
I believe all of the staterooms on the Treasure except for the Inside Staterooms separate the bathroom into a shower and a toilet, which—also including two sinks—facilitates faster getting ready in the morning and before bed.
I was happy with the outlets and USB ports, but I’d recommend bringing a two-prong European adapter to maximize your options, there are a handful of those outlets in the room. Some of the outlets or ports charged even without a key to keep the lights on.

Oceaneer Club Open House

After some time settling into the room—not too much, none of our big bags were there yet—we headed down to the Oceaneer Club (for kids ages 3 to 10) for Open House. During Open House hours, anyone can access the club, including unaccompanied adults.

There are open house hours at the youth clubs throughout the cruise, but the first day is particularly popular. And I’m sure this day was even more popular than usual because of the weather.

The Wish and Treasure also have a quirk where specific rooms of the Club can be opened for “All Ages” events. Specifically, you’ll see things that happen in the Marvel and Star Wars rooms for all guests despite the Club not having Open House at that time. During these events, the room is closed off from the Club and you can enter/exit via the Deck 2 corridor.

Mickey and Minnie were leading a dance party in the hub of the club, which kept two of the major activities—an interactive Avengers motion-capture game and a design-your-own roller coaster machine—with relatively low crowds.

Visiting the clubs with your kids during open house hours makes a ton of sense. It’s nice for them to check out this new place with you to show them around, and some of the features are cool enough for you to enjoy checking out, too. But keep in mind this is a wildly crowded and disorganized time at the club.

I’ll save most of my commentary on the clubs for my upcoming ship review, but I will say that Zoe had a markedly better time in the Oceaneer Club this trip—at 5 years old—than on our trip on the Wish (with a nearly identical Oceaneer Club) at 3.5 years old.

There are a few reasons for this, but the one that’s relevant for actively planning a day is that kids under 5 are placed in a 3-and-4-year-old cohort that is separately supervised and doesn’t always partake in the scheduled activities. This means at that age (3-4) you cannot just look at the schedule and tell them “there’s going to be a volcano activity!” For many kids this won’t be a problem, but it’s a matter of expectations.

Specifically for the open house, the reasonable expectation you’ll set of “oh, you can come back down and do this later!” might not be met for kids in this younger cohort. If you have someone in that cohort, you might want to check out my Oceaneer Club commentary from when Zoe was in that group on the Wish (with its nearly identical Oceaneer Club).

Setting Sail For Treasure, Er, Adventure?

The Mandatory Guest Assembly Drill was set for 3:55PM. Every guest of every age is required to be at the drill, and everything else on the ship is closed during this time. There are cruise lines that handle this differently, but altogether I’ve found it to not be a particularly bothersome interruption to the day. We at least had a seated assembly point in Walt Disney Theater.

After the assembly drill, we headed up for the 4:45PM “Let’s Set Sail.” This is the welcome show on the ship, and it’s worth watching—particularly on a longer itinerary—if for no other reasons than it has characters, it’s only done once, and you’ve got the time. It’s a fun show.

If you’ve been on any Disney cruise before, this show is basically the same (even if there’s a different name). The cruise activity team puts on a song and dance, some characters come out, and the ship sails away. It takes about 10 minutes. We usually arrive early to get a spot near the front, but the show can be seen well enough from around decks 11 and 12.

One thing that distinguishes the Treasure’s embarkation show from others is that you’ll meet Sage and Coriander. These are the ship’s “storytellers”, and you’ll encounter them throughout the week hosting various events. Some people absolutely love them, but we didn’t develop that level of affinity. I do like the idea of the ship having an emcee other than the Cruise Director, and from my research it sounds like many guests enjoy the sort of narrative “arc” this creates over 7 days.

Sage and Coriander. Coriander and Sage? I’m not sure.

What I did find notable about Sage and Coriander at this performance was just how much they loved saying “adventure.” Everything was about how we were going on an “adventure”. The connection was made to going on an “adventure” to find “treasure”, which definitely makes sense on the Disney Treasure.

Of course, my mind immediately went to “…but you’re about to launch another ship literally named ‘Disney Adventure’.” Adventure is a generic enough theme, I concede, but I couldn’t help but smirk every time (throughout the cruise) that the adventure theme came up.

After the show, the weather was finally good enough to spend some time in the pool. Zoe loves the pools on the Disney Cruise Line ships. Specifically, Zoe loves Funnel Vision, which actually wasn’t showing a movie at this moment.

Emily bemoans that the gigantic Funnel Vision screen means most kids (including Zoe) in the pools spend most of their time just watching the movies instead of playing. I agree somewhat, but not every kid has the opportunity (due to time, parental restrictions, or whatever else) to just chill and watch Disney movies at home. Zoe’s maybe seen more movies on Funnel Vision than at home. (And the level of playing that’s allowed / encouraged in the pools is pretty minimal, in any case.)

Relaxing and Dancing Before Dinner

The kids’ club open houses were ongoing, too, but we opted instead to wait for the open house hours to end, at which point we sent Zoe to the scheduled “Ice Breakers” and “Meet Your Counselors” activities.

You can’t really control what your kid does once they’re in the club. Zoe said announcements of activities were generally noticeable, but the activities aren’t mandatory so it’ll be up to the kid.

Skipper Society Lounge (bar area is behind us)

Emily and I caught the end of a set by The Dublooners at Skipper Society Lounge. Skipper Society Lounge is located a few steps from the Grand Hall. It’s an open space with a bar, seating area, and small stage. It’s commonly used for trivia, though it was usually a bit small for that purpose (arrive early or be prepared to stand and write your answers on your partner’s back). You’ll find fancy stores on either side, and the entrances to Scat Cat Lounge and Haunted Mansion Parlor are just off to the side, too.

At embarkation, Skipper Society Lounge didn’t have their Jungle Navigation Co. Ale ready yet. I have some allowance for these sorts of things right around embarkation—I remember on the Wish that the deck 4 and 5 coffee shops didn’t yet have cold brew—but I’m sure I made a small head shake before settling on a Blue Moon (I’m also not a big drinker, so “wasting” a drink on a Blue Moon felt silly, but I felt like I’d already committed).

At 7PM we picked up Zoe and went to the Silent Dance Party in Sarabi. Sarabi is a two-floor activity space that I believe mostly hosts Bingo, but also things like trivia and other games. Personally, every time I walked by Sirabi I had to (quietly) do my best impression of Scar yelling for Sarabi.

We’ve enjoyed the Silent Dance Party on a few Disney Cruises, and at this point it’s one of our must-do items. It was only on the schedule twice (maybe three times, but we had a conflict) this week, so we were sure to make it to the first one.

After a visit to Skipper Society for General Disney trivia (we didn’t do well), we headed to dinner at Worlds of Marvel.

Dinner at Worlds of Marvel

If you’re not familiar with Disney Cruise Line’s rotational dining, here’s the basic idea. You eat dinner at the same time, at the same table number, with the same staff, every night. You rotate between the three restaurants (so on a 7-night cruise you eat at one three times and the others twice).

We were the second seating for dinner on this cruise, meaning dinner started at 8:15PM. For a kid who usually eats dinner at 6PM and goes to bed at 7:30PM, we worried this might be a problem. But it was the end of a busy summer with lots of long nights, and a Disney Cruise is at least enough to keep Zoe energetic until 8:15PM.

Luckily, we were at our own table. Whether this is more common on 7-night itineraries or the later seating or we just got lucky, I can’t say. On the Wish, we were seated with a family of four. And parties of two or fewer should always be expected to be seated with other parties of two or fewer. (To be clear, I’ve never had a problem with the people I’m seated next to. And honestly, we were so close to the table next to us at Worlds of Marvel it could have been the same table. Somehow that one inch gap between tables makes all the difference.)

And luckily, our first night was at Worlds of Marvel. The first night at Worlds of Marvel is the same “Quantum Encounter” storyline from the Wish. We feel like the first night on the cruise we really just want to chill and make it to bed. On the Wish we started at 1923 sharing a table with other guests. 1923 has no performances, so the atmosphere invites conversation, which I don’t think anyone at our table of 7 really had the energy for. Starting at Worlds of Marvel, at our own table, made for an easy night.

The first night is also when you’ll meet your service team. My feelings on service at rotational dining are well-documented on this site, and my plan was to just eat at each restaurant once, dining on Deck 11 quick service the other nights. I just don’t have the social stamina—particularly at 9PM when I need to get my kid to bed—to deal with the typical level of rotational dining service attention.

Well, again, whether it was luck or “second seating with a 5-year-old vibes”, our service team was absolutely excellent. They were attentive without ever being overbearing. They offered to adjust the pace of our meal as necessary, and even on slower nights they never just kept us at the table any later than necessary. My birthday was one night on the cruise, and toward the end of the meal our server simply asked “are we celebrating anything tonight?” and I said “no”, and she said “okay then have a good night!” and I’ve never felt so seen.

Vegetarian (and vegan) options on Disney Cruise Line tend to be so-so (and are always pretty limited), but we actually managed to make it through the itinerary without going off-menu. This evening we had Ricotta Gnocchi and Shiitake and Tofu Udon for entrees. It was a good meal, and overall I actually ate significantly bigger dinners on this cruise than I usually do. Over the course of this cruise + bookend Disney World stay, I gained a few pounds despite running 6 miles every morning.

Saving the world, one button press at a time

The Quantum Encounter storyline during the first night at Worlds of Marvel is a pretty great way to start a cruise. It’s a fun show on the screens around the restaurant, starring Ant Man and the Wasp, with appearances by several other characters (including one who actually visits the restaurant at the end).

The quantum…things…on the table are a little underutilized for my taste. The characters just tell you to press the buttons at key moments. They’re used for trivia on the second Worlds of Marvel night, so we know some functionality is available. I think it would be worth the effort for Disney to enable multiple storylines based on guest choices (votes) on the devices.

The show ended around 9:30PM. Alcohol and other specialty beverages aren’t included, so we always have to try to flag down our server and pay for our sparkling water a little early in order to make a quick getaway.

I somehow failed to note specifically when our bags got to our room. A few were there around the time of the muster drill, and the rest were there by (our late) dinner. As always, I recommend you plan for dinner without luggage because it can take time to get your bags to you. As we headed to dinner, for example, I had to tell a stateroom attendant that the tag on the bag outside our door was misread, and it wasn’t ours.

Neither Emily nor I wanted to go out after dinner. Oftentimes on the cruises one of us will go, but with a second seating dinner we weren’t going to be sending Zoe to the kids’ clubs after dinner. The clubs are usually open until midnight, though.

Altogether, despite the rain, this was one of our best embarkation days. We were rushed in the morning, but the Disney transportation was a great pick and got us on the ship nice and early. And even with some rain delays, we were able to put together a great day on the ship. And best of all, we had nothing to stress about tomorrow—it’s a day at sea!