I didn’t want to go on a Disney Cruise.
Didn’t want a sea-going theme park. Didn’t want to share a pool or hot tub or sundeck sunning space with a thousand screaming kids in mouse ears. Didn’t want to stand in buffet lines for food you normally eat before riding an amusement park ride. Didn’t want to watch “Aladdin” on the TV in my cabin, didn’t want to listen to “Jolly Holiday” piped into companionways between decks, didn’t want to see “Beauty and the Beast” on a cruise-ship stage with a lot of cranky toddlers.
It would be all beast, no beauty, for me on a Disney Cruise. I didn’t want it.
But I am one of the editors of a magazine called “Explore Florida & the Caribbean.” And when I learned earlier this spring that the 4,000-passenger “Disney Dream” would be redeploying from Port Canaveral to its new home port of Miami on June 6, I put my own 50+ dreams on hold to explore a Disney Cruise from Florida to the Caribbean and back.
Reluctantly because I couldn’t find anybody over or under 50 to go with me, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. It didn’t help that I would be an editor significantly over Mouseketeer age traveling alone on a Disney Cruise. Didn’t help that I was going to appear, shall we say, out of place on a cruise ship manifest made up mostly of families with kids. Didn’t help that I wasn’t going to have kids or grandkids of my own I could use as cover at the pool or the hot tub or the buffet lines.
Let me pause here to say that I have not always dreaded Disney. No, no. I have mouse ears older than you.
My first movie was Disney’s “One Hundred and One Dalmatians,” when I was 3 years old. When I was 5 years old, my mom took me by the hand to Disneyland in California – the only Disney park then! – and signed me up for a Mickey Mouse Club card, entitling me to “special surprises available only to Mickey Mouse Club members!” The surprise at the park that day, in my case, was a silhouette of my 5-year-old head drawn by a real Disney animator, which my mom proudly displayed in our home, and probably still has (somewhere).
The story goes she took me next on the raft over to Tom Sawyer’s Island in Frontierland, where I spent the rest of the day outrunning her. She’d get almost close enough on the footpaths to grab my hand, then just miss as I jumped onto the barrel bridge or took a sharp turn into the mystery mine or escaped down the secret passage under the stockade at the fort for more fun.
I outran mom that day to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, then to the Mad Tea Party, then to Dumbo, then to it’s a small world, then back to Tom Sawyer’s Island, then ...
I was a handful then. (I’ve grown out of it. Mostly). But clearly, I was an early, enthusiastic, aerobic fan of Disney.
Years later, my wife and I went to Walt Disney World in Florida and loved riding the same rides I’d ridden as a 5-year-old. When we had kids of our own, we diapered them in disposables printed with Mickeys and Minnies, and took them to the parks, too. Our oldest son’s first movie was “Aladdin;” our youngest son’s was “The Lion King.” Both boys were waiting with their mother for me at the finish line of the Walt Disney World Marathon a few years later. I celebrated with them (and a margarita) under the volcano at Disney Epcot’s Mexico. Aside from our wedding and the birth of our children, I said, it was the happiest day of my life.
It was so easy for us to get to the parks from our home in South Florida, and it seemed we were going all the time. We felt sorry for people anywhere other than Florida who might only get to go to Disney once in a lifetime. We were there practically every month!
But sometime on the sixth or 16th or 60th visit to the Magic Kingdom — time flies when you’re having fun in a flying Dumbo — we started to get tired of Disney. It happens. (There, I’ve said it.)
So tired, we vowed we wouldn’t return to Disney until a grandchild asked us to take them.
We’re still waiting. (No pressure, kids.)
So I dreaded boarding the “Disney Dream,” even though I knew it would be newsworthy. Dreaded it partly because I was still feeling burned out on Disney, and partly because of that deep-sworn vow we’d made.
“How many people are in your family today?” the attendant said brightly as I waited to board the ship at Port Canaveral.
“Just me,” I said.
“Just … you?” he said.
I know, I know. Out of place.
“Just me,” I said.
I wondered how other mature, solo travelers — without kids or grandkids for cover — could ever find happiness on a kid-centric cruise ship from the Happiest Place on Earth. Confined to a small space, floating on an ocean hundreds of miles from shore, surrounded by thousands of screaming kids in mouse ears.
“Well,” he smiled, “Welcome aboard! Ready for fun?”
I was not. But everybody else was.
The kids were having fun everywhere aboard “Disney Dream.” Splashing in Mickey’s Pool, Donald’s Pool and Nemo’s water-play area. Fueling up on endless hotdogs, hamburgers, pizzas and Eye Scream ice cream. Racing away from their mothers to play mini golf on Goofy’s Sports Deck or lining up for the umpteenth time to ride the AquaDuck water slide. Watching an endless stream of Disney movies on a drive-in movie-sized screen with booming speakers overlooking the pool area. Singing along with “Let It Go.” Dressing up like pirates and princesses. Piloting a full-scale replica of the “Millennium Falcon” in Disney’s Oceaneer’s Club. Doing whatever things they were giggling about doing at something called the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. Hitting the endless soda fountain faucets over and over until their Disney cups overflowed.
It’s a small-centric world on “Disney Dream,” after all. Fun for them, not so much for me.
Then, just as a trio of life-sized Green Army Men from “Toy Story” — surrounded by a platoon of endless-pizza-Eye-Scream-ice-cream-soft-drink fueled children — began to surround me, I spotted a sign ahead on a sweeping stairway to the next deck.
“Deck 13,” it read. “Reserved for Guests 18 and Older.”
“SANCTUARY!”
Well, no — that’s what Quasimodo says in “Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.” But I felt like saying it.
There was a cocktail bar at the top of the stairs, surrounded by adults doing all kinds of adult things. To the left, adults on a breezy outdoor terrace flicked ashes from cigarettes into blue ashtrays that were decidedly not shaped like mouse ears. To the right, adults sipped Caipirinhas, Pina “Colavas” and Moët & Chandon Ice from the bar menu and stared off into the sunset.
I don’t necessarily condone smoking or drinking. (Or going out in the sun without a good sunscreen). But they all looked happy. Relaxed. Or possibly relieved the kids’ clubs on Deck 5 were open.
“What is this place?” I asked a smoker nursing a Blue Moon in the afterglow.
“Deck 13!” he smiled. “Adults only, man, from here to the front of the boat.”
“What …?” I said.
Hot tub on Deck 13 of "Disney Dream." (Mark Gauert)
Doubting this (this was a Disney Cruise?!), I pushed on into the Satellite Falls Sun Deck overlooking the bow. The lounge chairs were all occupied by adults, arranged perfectly to face the pink and golden sunset. The massive hot tub, also occupied by adults, plopped and burbled invitingly. “Let It Go” had let go of the sound system, replaced by “El Ritmo de Amor,” by Kevin Laliberte, in the stillness of the twilight.
“Cocktail?” a waiter asked, “something to drink while you watch the sunset?”
Pinocchio may have had Pleasure Island, I thought, sipping a Mango Mojito. “Disney Dream” has Deck 13.
And more.
Currents cocktail bar on Deck 13 of the "Disney Dream.'' (Mark Gauert)
The adults were having fun everywhere aboard “Disney Dream,” too. Lulling around the Quiet Cove pool, with hot tub and swim-up bar. Detoxifying and deep cleansing with a heated seaweed massage at Senses Spa & Salon. Walking or jogging on a breezy, covered outdoor trail (2.5 laps = 1 mile). Dancing it up — while the kids were under close, compassionate supervision in the Oceaneer’s Club — at Evolution nightclub. Listening to live music at the District Lounge, watching basketball games on big-screen TVs in Pub 687, sipping wine and champagne at Pink on Deck 4. Eating until they could eat no more at two exceptional, “adult-exclusive” fine-dining restaurants, Palo and Remy, on Deck 12. (If they ask if you want the chocolate soufflé at Palo, say yes. You’re welcome.) Recovering from it all the next morning with espressos, cappuccinos, Americanos at the adults-only Cove Café back on Deck 11.
I didn’t even mind all the kids in the audience with their parents for “Beauty and the Beast” in The Walt Disney Theater on Deck 3. It was a beautiful, Broadway-ready show — not beastly at all. Afterward, I watched the kids file out of the theater, dressed up as pirates and princesses, meeting Mickey, Minnie and other Disney characters.
And I was suddenly awash with happy memories of taking my own kids to do the same. What was happening to me? I felt like the Beast turning back into the man in the show I’d just seen.
When we docked the next morning at Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island in the Bahamas, I had one last flashback: to the raft over to Tom Sawyer’s Island at Disneyland that my mom took me to when I was 5 years old. I couldn’t wait to do everything here, either. Snorkel in the clear lagoon, watch kids play on the 2,400-square-foot floating water slide, go parasailing, go fishing, paddle a kayak, get some barbecue and a cold beer on the powdery-white beach, pedal a bike on an old airstrip to the adults-only Serenity Bay, follow a nature trail to the Observation Tower overlooking mangrove estuaries and aquamarine water, take the five-mile trail till it ended on the far tip of the island — and then turn back and do it all over again.
I don’t think my mom could have kept up with me here, either. (She’s 88 now, and I can probably still outrun her. I think.) But being there brought back more happy memories. I felt like fearsome food critic Anton Ego, melting after a taste from his childhood in Disney’s “Ratatouille.”
I don’t know if this is really the happiest place on Earth. But it made me happy being there, remembering happy memories from my childhood, and from raising my own children. Me, a mature, solo traveler, on a kid-centric cruise ship.
I know, I know. Magic.
I didn’t want to go on a Disney Cruise. I was tired of Disney. Vowed I wouldn’t go again until a grandkid begged me.
But I’m ready to go again now. With or without them.
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If you go
“Disney Dream” cruises from Miami: Three-, four- and five-night Bahamian itineraries will begin this summer from PortMiami, starting in early June. Each cruise features a stop at Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island in the Bahamas. Three- and four-night cruises will call on Nassau, Bahamas; five-night cruises will stop at either Grand Cayman or Cozumel, Mexico. One special five-night sailing will feature two stops at Castaway Cay, and a call on Nassau. Seven-night cruises — with a variety of stops — will be available in April 2023.
Information: disneycruise.disney.go.com/cruises-destinations/list/#miami-florida,disney-dream.
