Debarkation Day

Today we were up at a time I like to refer to as "silly o'clock!"

We got ourselves ready and packed up the last of our bits and bobs in our hand luggage to take with us.

As we had been on second sitting for dinner throughout the cruise, we were also on second sitting for breakfast on the last day, which was at 8am. Our rotational restaurant for dinner last night had been Royal Court, so that was where we would be having breakfast this morning.

As we left the room with all our hand luggage, we saw our stateroom hostess, Dewi, so we were able to say goodbye to her, and then we headed down for breakfast. At breakfast we were served by the same servers who had been serving us for dinner on every night of the cruise, so we had the opportunity to say goodbye to them too.

Everyone disembarks the ship according to the luggage tag they were given, unless you chose to do express debarkation where you have to take everything off with you. Our luggage tag was Donald Duck, so once the announcement was made that people with Donald Duck tags could disembark, we made our move. We found it very easy and stress free, and found our luggage quite quickly under the Donald Duck sign in the terminal.

As we'd parked in the disabled parking area at the Horizon terminal, it was a really short walk to the car. Unfortunately, the traffic was bad on the way home, so it took around 4 1/2 hours to actually get home. Once at home, I had all the "fun" stuff to do like laundry and getting some food to put in the fridge, as we return to normality!

Our thoughts on the cruise:

We loved the Disney Fantasy - it's a beautiful ship, with very friendly and helpful crew, apart from the one exception mentioned in an earlier blog post.

The food was delicious and always very well presented, and gave opportunities to try things that we may not have tried before. We thought it might have been a nice idea if John had a braille menu that he could read, but with hindsight I think it worked out better that he didn't. Although John is proficient with braille, as he started learning it when he was 4 years old, he chooses to read slowly, which means we would have been waiting a while for John to read it and then make a decision.

I have mentioned in a previous blog post that I liked the way that the servers only gave us two menus to read, as it's obvious that John cannot read print. It worked well for us as I was able to read the menu to John and he could make his decision as to what he wanted. What I also liked was the way the servers asked John directly what he wanted from the menu, rather than asking me what John would like, as if he's incapable of making that decision. I especially liked how they also asked George directly what he would like off the menu, and were patient with him while he gave a response, as he struggles speaking with people he doesn't know.

The main thing that made the cruise a less than enjoyable experience were the crowds and queues. We noticed on embarkation day that the cruise was very busy. Our muster station was in one of the theatres, and during the muster drill I noticed that every single seat was taken, yet there were people still standing at the sides of the theatre.

As we were doing the cruise primarily to celebrate George's 21st birthday, we had bought a largish MDF number 21 for George to have signed by the characters, as a memento of the celebration for his birthday. The queues to see the characters were at least 45 minutes long and there was absolutely no way that George could wait that long, so we didn't get his 21 signed at all. I feel really bad about that for him.

The other thing he wanted to do was go on the Aqua Duck, but again the queues prevented that from happening, apart from the last day when the weather prevented it.

It seemed everywhere we looked there were crowds of people and huge queues. As a result we spent a lot more time in our stateroom than we planned, just for some peace and space.

Overall we enjoyed the trip, apart from the things I have mentioned, and we would love to do a Disney cruise again. However, we would try and avoid short cruises during school holidays from the UK, because of the crowds and queuing issues.