Disney Cruise, Take Two

Last week we went on another Disney Cruise. Those of you who were around a year ago might remember the Disney Cruise review that I published back in March of 2008. Instead of writing another full review, I thought I’d just write up some details of how this year differed from last year.

For starters, we had the exact same itinerary, and we stayed in the exact same staterooms. The ship was in great shape — in fact, it was actually taken out of service for a few weeks last fall for refurbishing and a number of upgrades. A nice change in the staterooms was that they replaced all of the old TVs with brand new 22″ LCD TVs. Topside, the ship also sports a new “Splash Zone” near the Mickey Pool for kids that are still in diapers and thus aren’t allowed in the regular pools.

Another change was that they re-did the age groups for kids programs. The Oceaneer’s Club is now home to the 3-4 and 5-7 year old programs, with the Oceaneer’s Lab housing the 8-10 year old program, and Ocean Quest housing the 11-13 year olds.

As before, the kids loved their programs, though they were once again a bit slow to warm up to being dropped off. Early in the week, they complained about not wanting to go the Club/Lab/Quest, but by the end of the week they didn’t want to leave.

Another big difference this year had to do with shore excursions. After our fantastic experience at Castaway Cay last year, we decided that we wanted to spend as much time as possible at the beach. Thus, we went to Seven Mile Beach at Grand Cayman, and then we hit up a private beach club called Nachi Cocom in Cozumel. We booked the former through Disney, and the latter on our own (we just caught a cab from the pier in Cozumel). Both beaches were beautiful, and very relaxing.

The only downside this year was that I got sick and spent one of our sea days recovering in our stateroom. Aside from that, we had a great time. It’s not cheap but, if you can swing it, a Disney Cruise makes for a great family vacation. For more details, check out last year’s review.