tidefan
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2007
So, we have only done 1 member cruise and it was the 2015 Alaska 7-night (there were 2 MC's in 2015). Not sure if this MC will be similar, but they capped passengers (DVC Members) at 2,000, so there were less people on the ship, especially at late dining. Some things I remember:I'm sorry if I'm posting this to the wrong place, but I noticed a few people here have done another MCs on here. Can you share or comment on any member specific activities/events/etc? I realize that all cruises are different and would never hold you to anything. But I'm just looking for more information to help plan (because I'm a planner!). In about a week I can book activities/adult dining and it would be so helpful to have more information so I don't book things when other things may be going on.
Day 1 - Port Canaveral - Sail-Away Celebration Anything else happening or just a normal type of cruise day 1
Day 2 - Disney Castaway Cay Will they do the 5K? Will they do it both CC days? I think I read they plan stuff for on CC as well. Is that on CC specifically or back on the boat?
Day 3 - At sea So my assumption is that this will be a day where there could be a lot of DVC events
Day 4 - Disney Castaway Cay 5K again?
Day 5 - Sadness
Is there a pirate night?
I think I saw someone mention the possibility of a formal (or semi-formal) night?
Do you get more information in advance or is it only once you board you get a sense of the activities and their plans?
I understand movies and shows are a big part of this cruise. So we like doing Palo and Remy? So I need to sort of plan around getting to a show after.
Any thoughts or speculations would be greatly appreciated.
And of course I'm overly excited about doing my first MC.
- We did not know any of the line up until the sail-away party. At the sail-away, Ken Potrock introduced a video that showed a highlighted itinerary of things we would have on the ship
- Our sailing had a number of the Pixar folks on board. One of the nights of the cruise, we got to see "Inside Out" about 2 months before it came out in theaters. We couldn't take anything into the showing and had to go through metal detectors on the way into the WD Theater.
- There were a number of seminars on that cruise from people that made it special. James Ford Murphy from Pixar created the short "Lava" that was before "Inside Out". He gave an hour seminar on the making of "Lava" and finished it up by playing the song on his ukulele on stage. Another bonus was he was in a room just down from us, so we got to meet him and talk to him a number of times during the cruise. There were also a number of people from DisneyNature on the ship doing similar talks. (I didn't go, but everyone raved about the presentation that the gentleman that made the "Monkey Kingdom" movie did.
- On the final day of the cruise, we had a 1.5 hour show of Disney Broadway stars, which included Ashley Brown (the original Broadway Mary Poppins), the gentleman that played Mustafa from the Lion King, a gentleman from Newsies, the original Broadway Tarzan, and another lady that I can't quite remember which show she was from. Anyway, that was the best show, hands down, that I've seen on any cruise ship, anywhere. Ashley Brown ended it by singing "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and had the whole theater standing...
- Most of the gifts (like the Disney Totem, the binoculars, the toboggan/scarf set, etc.) were themed to Alaska. We also had a goodie bag one night with a bunch of "Inside Out" merchandise (t-shirts, etc.), and of course, the obligatory board game, which was "Clue" on our sailing.
- DVC used the Walt and Roy Disney suites as reception areas where you could get a pass and go mingle with DVC executives with hors d'ourves and cocktails. I talked with Ken Potrock for about 15 minutes and he could not have been more generous. (As an aside, he also had his family on the cruise and it was cool to see him enjoying it all with his family. Sort of personalized it...)
- On the day we went into Tracy Arm, we had not only the soup and hot chocolate, but we had freshly made breakfast sandwiches distributed on deck and some wonderful person made the decision to also put out hot chocolate stations with Bailey's!
- The DVC desk had a lot of different Member Cruise SWAG each day that you could get by going by there.
- They turned the pub into a "travel center" where you could go meet with DVC advisors about using your membership at all kinds of different destinations (they had a DCL person, a couple of RCI people, a Disney Collection expert, etc...)
- We didn't have a pirate night (we were in Alaska, no fireworks!), but we did have the Frozen Deck party followed by a massive nighttime buffet...
- We had so much extra SWAG by the time we got to Juneau, that we (and many others) headed to the US Post Office there to mail stuff back... and we still filled a carry-on suitcase full of stuff...
- I want to say that MaryEllen Hooper was on our cruise too, but we didn't go see her (I think that Ricky Kalmon may have been on too, but I may be mixing up my cruises).