10/25/2024
✨🚢✨ 10 NIGHT DISNEY CRUISE TO HAWAII - TRIP RECAP! ✨🚢✨
I am so excited to share what turned out to be my most favorite cruise ever with you!
I was lucky enough to spend 10 nights on board the Disney Wonder, sailing from Vancouver to Hawaii 🌺 My kids, Mom & Dad joined me and I think this cruise blew all of our expectations out of the water!
🌊 I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this cruise because of the 5 sea days - that’s right, 5 full days at sea, plus disembarkation day. That’s a lot of sea days, especially for someone like me who likes to be kept busy. Leading up to the cruise, I was a bit worried that I would feel stir crazy, but instead the opposite happened. In a way, I was forced to relax - and that’s exactly what I did. Here’s what kept me entertained over our 5 sea days, and what made me wish for just one more!
🎭 ACTIVITIES: The activities on Disney Cruises are endless, and there is something for everyone. I found myself ❤️’ing multiple activities everyday in the DCL Navigator App, having to pick & choose what to attend. A huge Disney thing is trivia - every topic you can think of - but I’m not a trivia person. Throughout the day, I enjoyed the 👩🍳 cooking classes (the chef from one of my favorite Walt Disney World restaurants, Topolinos, was on board as a special guest chef! I 100% fan girled him when I met him before the show one night), 🐭 meeting characters, 🎤 attending presentations by a Disney Legend, 👑 attending Bibbidi Bibbidi Boutique & the Royal Court Royal Tea Party with my daughter, 🏀 and playing basketball with my son in the sports court - we even had a surprise appearance from Donald, Goofy, Chip & Dale and played tag with them!
🌴 We were so excited for the exclusive Hawaii activities on our sailing - 3 cast members from Disney’s Aulani, their Hawaiian resort, were on board with us leading the exclusive activities. We enjoyed ukulele lessons daily, hula lessons, lei making, storytelling & stargazing at sea. We loved getting to know the cast members, and seeing them at Aulani after the cruise was so exciting!
🧖🏼♀️ I enjoyed some me time at the spa, with a lovely facial
🍽️ And a fancy dinner with my parents at Palo, the incredible adults only restaurant on board
🐥 Characters definitely dominated our sea days, as my kids are soooooo into them right now at ages 8 & 6. The extra special touch on a 10 night sailing is the characters get to recognize the kids, which creates an extra special connection when you hear your favorite princess or superhero saying “hey, I know you!” or Mickey gesturing that he remembers meeting you yesterday 😍
💰 We also played a lot of B-I-N-G-O, with my daughter (really my dad who paid for it) winning the big jackpot on our final sea day 💸 ! Pro tip - the digital tablets almost always win, not the old school paper cards.
🎥 My dad loved going to the movie theatre to watch first-run movies and other recent releases!
🏠 I organized a cabin crawl through the cruise Facebook group, so we toured over 10 different staterooms on board!
🍭 Our group also organized a trick & treat for the kids! It takes a long time to trick or treat on a cruise ship, that’s for sure!
☀️As we got closer to Hawaii each day, the sun was hotter & the water was getting bluer! We spent more time outdoors soaking up the sun! The anticipation about arriving in Hawaii was growing in a good way - it was so exciting to be cruising to Hawaii!
🥗 Of course in the evenings we absolutely loved dressing up & going for dinner! The restaurants on board Wonder are Tiana’s Place, Animators Palate and Tritons. The menu was super varied & interesting and the food quality was amazing! We loved our server Bob and assistant Wandra - they served us all 10 nights, rotating through the restaurants with us! This is a Disney Cruise Line feature.
🏴☠️ We loved Pirate Night, complete with a Pirate deck party & fireworks at sea. It’s always so fun dressing up in pirate gear and feeling the energy that arises on board as everyone gets into the scallywag spirit 🎆
🎤 The shows at night were fantastic and there was a great mix of entertainment! In addition to the 3 broadway quality shows (including an incredible performance of Frozen ❄️), we enjoyed a magician, a comedian, and a percussion/comedian group perform. There were 2 musical acts, but we skipped those due to the reasons shared below.
📱A family emergency arose when we had 2 days left at sea, which shock us to the core and impacted the rest of our cruise significantly. I am grateful that we had WiFi and could be reached. This meant that our last 2 days at sea weren’t as full as they could have been, as we mostly stuck to ourselves and avoided the group activities (like the pub crawl my cruise group organized).
💜 Tragedy aside, the cruise that I expected to be a one-and-done turned out to be my favorite itinerary ever! Before cruising, I made it quite known to friends that I wouldn’t do this cruise again. Now I’m begging them to book it with us when September 2026 becomes available to book. Quite honestly, I would go in 2025 but I have another trip planned already 🤦♀️ My husband is already on board now that he sees what he missed out on!
🌋 I haven’t even gotten to the ports in Hawaii yet. We spent 4 full days touring the Hawaiian islands - seriously incredible to get to tour the different islands all day and then return to our “home” on board, with the familiarity of our room, the amazing crew and friendly faces of our fellow passengers.
🏝️ Do you want a recap of our Hawaii port adventures? Let me know ⬇️ and I’ll be sure to share!
PS - these photos are only of our sea days! I still have more to share from our port day evenings on board 🤯
