Aaaand, we’re off! Welcome to part 2 of our trip report on the Disney Treasure 7-Night Caribbean Cruise. Part 1 covered Embarkation day, and part 2 will focus on a Day at Sea. Join us as we spend a day relaxing aboard Disney’s newest ship!

Rise and Shine (And Run…And Explore)

Day 2 was a day at sea, meaning the ship wasn’t stopping at any ports. Days at Sea are sort of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s nice to have a day to enjoy the ship without feeling like you’re missing out on a port. On the other hand, literally every guest is aboard the ship trying to enjoy the same amenities you are. By contrast, if you skip a port you’ll have fewer people to share the ship with that day.

On the pre-Wish Disney Cruise Line ships, my morning routine is to run around the Deck 4 promenade. Depending on the ship, this means something like 15 to 20 laps to get to 5 or 6 miles, and while it can be easy to lose track, I generally enjoy the run.

Unfortunately, the Wish-class ships don’t have a promenade going around the entire ship. Instead, there’s a U-shaped promenade that also requires stairs to get from Deck 4 to 5 to 6 and then back down.

I felt like this would be relatively unpleasant to run, so instead my morning runs were in the Senses Fitness Center.

Senses has two sides—a Fitness Center and a Spa. We never had cause to use the Senses Spa on this visit (I’ve heard good things, so it might be worth looking into if spas are your thing). The Fitness Center was supposed to open at 6AM but didn’t open until 6:02. It’s a small delay, but not the only small operational issue I’d note this cruise. There was a decent crowd, and when I walked back past it closer to 8AM, it was about full. Here’s a look at it from a later evening:

The treadmills were Technogym, which for whatever reason I’m just not comfortable on. They’re very nice treadmills, and it’s entirely possible that I’m just used to a worse treadmill at home. It’s also just possible that running on a moving ship isn’t super easy.

After my run, my plan had been to use the Senses shower facilities so as to not wake up Emily and Zoe. Unfortunately, it seemed that the showers were in the spa, which was closed at this hour. So I took a walk around the ship instead.

If you can manage it, an early morning walk around the upper decks is quite nice. There’s drip coffee, plus the soda machine, available on Deck 11.

I walked the interior of the ship—Decks 3 through 5—a bit too, but while it’s a great time for photos, I generally found the vibes to be more eerily quiet than the upper/outer decks.

Eventually, Emily and I settled on a routine where I’d bring her coffee from Deck 11 and then either shower or keep walking the ship until Zoe woke up.

Laundry, Characters, and Obstacles

After my shower this morning it was time for my favorite thing about the Wish-class ships—laundry! As I find myself at the uncomfortable intersection of being (1) an aspiring light packer, (2) runner, and (3) often on long trips, I’m constantly burdened by the need to do laundry while traveling.

On the older four ships, there are small laundry rooms scattered throughout the ship. It’s not the worst arrangement, but they fill quickly and it can be a pain to have to zig and zag around the ship looking for an open washing machine. On the Wish-class, there is one big laundry room—Fairytale Fresh Laundry—on Deck 8.

The setup is easy enough. You can use your Key to the World (room key) to purchase detergent and activate the washers and dryers. The system will actually provide you in-app notifications when your washer and dryer are done, too. Detergent was $1.25 per load, and washing and drying were each $3.50 per load, bringing each load to a total of $8.25.

The machines are pretty small, but otherwise I had no problem with them. The dryer setting I used didn’t have a timer, instead relying on % dry. As it happened, using two dryers for two loads of mostly running clothes meant the dry cycle took less than 15 minutes. In the future I’d may save the few bucks and use one dryer.

If this isn’t enough laundry talk for you, I’ve got one more nugget. There is laundry service available on the ship, too. I resorted to using laundry service on the Fantasy a few months back because I couldn’t deal with the smaller, scattered laundry rooms. On the Treasure, I actually forgot to even take a photo of the laundry rates. BUT I did get a special offer in my room for a discounted laundry service:

Best I can tell, this is a relatively common offer. I can’t tell whether every guest gets it or whether it had anything to do with my rather obnoxiously stuffed laundry bag sitting out. In any case, the offer came after I did the laundry, and the 48-hour return period probably wouldn’t have appealed to me in any case.

We were scheduled for the 9:30AM Royal Gathering, so after breakfast we headed to the Grand Hall. We wound up being able to fit in greetings with Donald and Goofy before heading to queue for the gathering. These were back to back greetings, and I’ve covered how to efficiently meet characters on Disney Cruise Line before.

I’ve also written more completely about the Royal Gathering before, but here’s a quick overview. This is a free but reservation-required opportunity to meet four princesses in quick succession. It’s held on limited dates on most itineraries, with multiple time slots. These book incredibly fast—literally within seconds on some itineraries.

I would call the pace of the greetings not quite rushed, but they’re faster than you might find at Fairytale Hall in Magic Kingdom, for example. Queuing by about 9:32AM we were done with Zoe’s greetings around 10:01AM.

During the greetings there was a standard “fill in all space!” announcement ongoing. I get it—the Grand Hall, however grand, only has so much space. But I found the tone to be overly aggressive, and at one point we got cut because the Crew Member pushed us too far forward and I wasn’t about the step between a kid and the princess she immediately ran to when she understandably thought it was her turn. Another small operational nit to pick, I guess.

After the Royal Gathering, we decided to just grin and bear a long wait for something Zoe was really excited about—the Incredi-Course.

The Incredi-Course is a giant inflatable obstacle course that takes over the Hero Zone space. It was available for a few hours on our Disney Wish itinerary, but we worried that with shoes off Zoe wouldn’t meet the 40-inch height requirement (notably, we also had an issue on the Fantasy where Zoe was 42 inches was shoes on to ride Cosmic Rewind before the cruise, but not quite 42 inches with shoes off for the water slide on the cruise).

The Incredi-Course was offered twice on this itinerary and Zoe’s height was no issue this time. If you’re considering the Incredi-Course, you might want to look into timing. We waited about 40 minutes, and it really felt like one of those situations where the lines in the afternoon or the other time it was open on this cruise would have been much shorter.

Zoe had an awesome time racing Emily through the course, and none of us regretted the long wait.

Lunch By The Pool

It was just before 11AM, and Tangled was playing on Funnel Vision, so we opted to get in some pool time around lunch.

Seats on Decks 11 and 12 were hard to come by at this point. In general, I’ve seen crew remove towels that have nothing else with them, but I don’t believe any policy of “belongings left unattended will be removed after some time” is enforced.

Personally, I prefer not to remove towels because the thought of someone saying “excuse me that’s mine” to me is absolutely mortifying and would force me into hiding in the Jundland Wastes on Tatooine. In any case, I eventually found a suitable spot.

For lunch on the Disney Treasure there are four options—table service at 1923, quick service inside at Marceline Market, quick service outside (but covered) at the Mickey & Friends Festival of Foods counters, or room service. Generally, when we’re eating around pool time one of us will just go grab some some items from the Mickey & Friends Festival of Foods counters while the other watches Zoe.

Your food options here will be Mickey’s Smokestack Barbecue, Daisy’s Pizza Pies, Goofy’s Grill, and Donald’s Cantina. Minnie’s Delights serves ice cream, but you’ll also find fruit there. And The Lookout is a small walk-up bar in the same area.

All of these are open for lunch, but dinner and late-night availability may vary. If you’re planning to skip rotational dining and eat dinner at one of these locations (Marceline Market is not open for dinner), check the schedule unless you want to wind up eating the same thing for lunch and dinner.

If there are lines, they tend to move fast, but we sometimes have to wait for vegetarian items to be made. Overall my favorite location was Donald’s Cantina with its design-your-own burrito, bowl, and taco options. I asked a nearby Cast Member if he could recommend an “actually hot” hot sauce to me, and he provided a great deal of commentary on the options, which I really appreciated.

After lunch we swung by The Jungle Cruise: An Interactive Adventure in the Grand Hall. This looked like a cool activity (led by Sage and Coriander), but it unfortunately had a capacity and was full by the time we arrived. You could watch from the sidelines, but it wasn’t too much fun.

Sea-sing Adventure

Next on our agenda was the 2PM showing of Seas the Adventure. This is the first of the three major stage shows on the itinerary.

One of the things I loved about the Disney Treasure’s schedule was the inclusion of afternoon matinees for the three major stage shows (although much, more more to say on this later), for a total of three showings—the other two are the evening showtimes that coincide with rotational dining, so you go to the show right before or right after you eat.

We had our pick of seats for Seas the Adventure at 1:40PM, and Emily grabbed a refillable popcorn bucket that we probably just got enough value out of the rest of the cruise.

I’ve written positively about Seas the Adventure before, and my assessment is mostly the same. This is a shorter (30 minutes) stage show that is a great way to introduce younger kids to “Broadway style” stage performances. It centers on Goofy but features a wide range of characters and songs.

If you don’t want to make it to the longer shows together, this is a great way for you to at least see one show together as a family in the Walt Disney Theater. FWIW, we did find that, at 5 years old, Zoe was able to handle the longer Moana show just fine later in the cruise.

With some additional time for the cruise director to introduce himself, we were leaving the theater around 2:40PM. We took a standing-room-only spot at Skipper for the 3:15PM Star Wars trivia, which we…did not excel in. (Lots of Rebels, not enough Legends.)

Pre-Dinner Time Apart

We had just over an hour to fill before the next item on our schedule, so we took Zoe to the Oceaneer Club and decided to check out Periscope Pub on our own.

As I’ve belabored, we have a mixed history with the kids’ clubs. Zoe loved the clubs on the Disney Wonder but had a harder time on the Wish and Fantasy. We were clear with Zoe coming into this 7-night itinerary that there would be daily time in the Oceaneer Club, and we wanted to stick with that (I’m not pretending the free time isn’t nice for us, of course).

As it happened, we found that the freedom that came from aging out of the 3-and-4-year-old cohort was enough to ensure Zoe had a good time, and the Oceaneer Club—despite the shortcomings I’ll probably address in a ship review—wound up being a lot of fun for Zoe this time around.

Periscope Pub is themed to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and it serves as the pub / sports bar of the ship. You’ll find plenty of TVs and sports alongside a nice dusting of theme. The “submarine” theming is sort of fun—and the overhead “windows” are a good touch…

…But the entire effect is ruined by having real porthole windows that allow a huge amount of sunlight into the space. As I’ll eventually discuss in a review of the ship, I was impressed with a few instances of the Treasure improving on some of the Wish’s design flaws—particularly with regard to some of the bars. But this was one instance where I felt like I was back on the Wish.

Periscope Pub also has a small snack menu that is available from something like 4PM to Midnight. There are vegan “chicken” tenders available, but I never found the time for them. (I got them on the Wish. I believe they’re Gardein. Or they’re at least very much like the Gardein ones.)

We picked Zoe up just before the 5:15PM Welcome Reception in the Grand Hall. This is a chance for guests to mingle with the crew in a fancy setting. It’s held on “Formal Night” which we very much do not participate in (I had to go to a thrift store a few weeks ago just to buy a suit jacket for a recent “formal” event). There are various photo opportunities set up around the Grand Hall, too, but the lines get pretty long as everyone wants to be photographed in their Sunday best.

Dinner and a Show

We had one last item on our agenda before dinner—The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

There are two designated movie theaters on the Disney Treasure—Wonderland Cinema and Never Land Cinema. The Walt Disney Theater also sometimes plays movies. The theaters mostly play recent Disney / Pixar / Marvel / Star Wars movies. I recommend checking the full schedule in the app early on in your itinerary. And note that some movies play regularly early on before dropping off the schedule later on (we wanted to watch Thunderbolts, but it was gone the last few days).

Zoe apparently gained an interest in the Fantastic Four from the comedians at Monsters Inc Laugh Floor, who repeatedly referred to costumed quartets as “the Fantastic Four” at our recent visit to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. The joke is hilarious, I guess.

We’re still waiting for the proper time to actually introduce Zoe to the MCU, but we were open to Fantastic Four given its tone and general disconnect from the previous MCU films.

I don’t really want to make this a thing, but it’s worth mentioning that The Fantastic Four: First Steps is rated PG-13. While I hadn’t seen the movie, I did some research beforehand and decided it would be okay for Zoe to watch, keeping in mind we’d feel totally free to leave whenever we wanted. In the end, I honestly felt more comfortable watching First Steps with Zoe than watching Descendants, and they play Descendants in the Oceaneer Club.

The movie wound up being a hit, and Zoe—who as recently as a few months ago was scared of Jafar—had no issues with anything being too scary or intense during the movie.

Dinner on our second night was at Plaza De Coco. This is a Coco-themed restaurant with a live Coco-inspired performance on a stage in the middle of the restaurant. It’s altogether enjoyable if you don’t mind your meals a little loud. As for the food, I’ve seen it written that Disney’s “please everyone” attitude leaves the food with a little less punch than you’d like Mexican food to have, and I don’t really disagree. The Plant Based Tacos and Butternut Squash Enchiladas were good enough though.

Our server reminded us at the end of the meal that we would gain an hour of sleep tonight (but she’d take it back later in the trip). Tomorrow was set to be our first port—Cozumel, Mexico…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

Related Posts