Ahoy Captain Minnie! Happy New Year!

[Katie]

We are a Disney family. My Teen and I have been to every park, except Shanghai. Mr Katie has been to every park except Shanghi and Paris.

In 2023, we went on the Disney Wonder in its first season in Oz and sailed on a 6 night cruise from Sydney to Noumea and back to Sydney. We bought a placeholder on that cruise for a future discount. Late 2024, the Teen and I go on a trip to the US and WDW (Disneyworld in Florida). Maybe that's enough Disney for us for a bit.

Then April 2025 comes around and we have no travel plans for the Christmas holidays this year. Too preoccupied with the mid-year Euro holiday documented in this TR - Katies do Euro Summer.
Disney hadn't quite said they're not coming back again, there's port bookings in 2026-27, but the bookings for this season aren't going well and they offer an unheard of discount of 30-35% off the NYE cruise from Sydney-Eden-Sydney (Hobart was added later as a port stop on NYE day). So, we book a Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah for the 5 night cruise for US5,196 for three adults. I booked through a Disney TA in the US to get a huge USD150 travel credit on board.

After booking, we sit back and wait.

Until November, when my FIL passed away and we thought "wouldn't it be fun for MIL to come along, too? We'll be on the Derwent river on what would have been FIL's 86th birthday". In between cremations and funerals, the last rooms were booking out. SIL doesn't want to go on a cruise, other SIL has two kids the costs would be too much at such short notice. So, we ask my Mum to come along and share the room with MIL! We end up booking one of the last inside staterooms for the two mums, knowing one will have to sleep on the couch or they'll be sharing the bed - Disney Queen beds *do not* separate. PHEW! Time to prepare the Grandma Squad for the cruise and all of the things to know about cruising with Disney.

 

[Flyfrequently]

On board with the @Katie clan ️

 

[Katie]

After booking the Grandma Squad's room in late Nov, getting us all checked in online, we started a weekly dinner with the Grandmas for debriefing and questions. We also started a group chat so I could eke information to them, unlike the Teen who tended to excitedly information dump on her Grandmas.
Our weekly dinners continued until my Mum left for Sydney on 18th Dec, deserting me and her only grandchild for Christmas, as she was lured to Sydney by the much younger and cuter grand nieces and nephew, the youngest of which was born on 1 Nov (ripe cuddling age for a besotted great-aunt).

We booked MIL on the same flights as us to/from Sydney. Luckily I had already booked two hotel rooms in the Hilton for the three of us; we just added Grandma into the room with the Teen and they were OK sharing the King bed for a night. I had booked Executive rooms, which in the end was almost a waste as we didn't make it to the lounge at all. It was useful for the included breakfast, but I probably could have gotten a cheaper rate and paid for brekky. Oh well.

Decorating your stateroom doors is common on Disney cruises - we found navigating the long hallway to our room last cruise was really aided by the door decorations! Last time, the room next to us was covered in paper roses with a comment "We're all mad here" - Alice in Wonderland theme.

I hit up Etsy for some door magnets with our names on them and also bought some "pixie dusting" items. The Teen made us a "fish extender". Pixie dusting and fish extenders are unique to Disney, I think. The staterooms have a fish-shaped hook next to the door, and you can hand a receptacle from this, which becomes your fish extender. Then, in your cruise's FB group, if you're organised 6+ months in advance, you sign up to swap gifts with another 5 or so staterooms.
If you're not organised, you can still put out a fish extender and you can also pixie dust any other room. Pixis dusting is random acts of kindness/random small gifts, which could be as simple as a sheet of stickers. I bought some bracelet kits on Etsy (to make "Disney" or "Wonder" bracelets) and a heap of stickers to put on other small items I'd found at Daiso. I had a packet of 150 lollipops left over from my big birthday party, so we also used them as pixie dust.

Some other cruisers had their ceramic moulds and 3-D printers out - someone made Mickey waffle magnets! The pixie dusting was quite incredible. An aspect I like about the random pixie dusting - if you're not going to use an item you receive, you can always pop it into someone else's fish extender bag!

 

[Katie]

A stateroom door from the 2023 cruise:


Take a glow stick pixie dust



The fish and fish extender in the wild:



Our neighbours in 2023-24