I went on a 7 night Disney Treasure cruise of the eastern Caribbean. It left from Port Canaveral on Sat Jan 17 2026 and returned on Sat Jan 24. There were 3 people in our one room: my wife 32 female, my sister in law 28 female, and me 32 male. I'm hoping you will find my review to be interesting, but my primary goal is to help evaluate if you would enjoy a Disney cruise.

About me

This is our first and only cruise at the time of writing this. My wife and I have been to two all inclusive resorts before, a Sandals in Jamaica and another in the Dominican Republic (don't recall the company). I say all this to provide some priors that shape how I will be reviewing the cruise. We are definitively Disney fans both as children and now. In the decade of being together we watched multiple new Disney movies in theaters including Moana, Coco, Frozen 2, Beauty and the Beast live action. We routinely listen to Disney music at home for pleasure. Many of the earlier Disney works are extremely nostalgic for me (Hercules, Tarzan, Lion King, Aladdin). I carried around a USB flash drive in high school with movies on it and an iPod with music. If there was down time in class teachers would sometimes let me put on a movie or music and if it wasn't Avatar the last Airbender then it was often Disney. I ripped a Disney playlist onto a CD which we listened to routinely at my swim practices. At my senior year talent show my friends and I performed “A whole new world” in front of the school. This is all to emphasize that we are Disney fans which heavily shaped our experience.

Do you like Disney?

The answer to this needs to be at least kind of yes. You don't need to love it but you at least need to be able to tolerate it.

If the answer is wholeheartedly no then you probably will not like the cruise. There is Disney music playing in most hallways and instrumental covers on the upper deck more than 90% of the time. The main swimming and sunning area has a Disney movie playing. Many people cosplay as characters. Crew members put on character suits and pose for pictures. All artwork throughout the ship features various characters including in your private room. Most activities in some way relate back to Disney: trivia, crafts, even meals incorporate elements of Disney.

The only silver lining here if you do not like Disney is that they also incorporate Star Wars and Marvel which while technically owned by Disney still feel to me like entirely separate IPs. However this makes up less than 10% of what you will see around the ship.

For me I like all 3 so easy yes.

Do you like cruises?

This is the question I was ruminating on for the months leading up to the cruise as I had never been on one. The most comparable experience was all inclusive resorts which I am neutral to negative on. You have to weigh the opportunity cost whenever making these decisions. I am spending time and money on this vacation which implies I am not spending time and money on something else. All inclusive resorts are simply not worth it to me. I would rather be seeing something novel, being active, and I hate drinking all day. Well the plus side is the cruise made 3 stops which somewhat satisfies this itch for novelty:

1. Tortola (British Virgin Islands)
2. St Thomas (US Virgin Islands)
3. Disney Castaway Cay (Bahamas)

The only way to visit 3 is if you work there or if you book a Disney Cruise because it is privately owned by Disney. So my theory is that I would surely like cruises more than resorts and this has turned out to be true.

The other key differentiators are activities, food, and people. If you've heard someone talk about Disney cruises they probably mentioned shows and I was not disappointed. I'll get more into these later.

Our Experience

Before

Leading up to the cruise we got some advance paperwork to fill out, luggage tags, and a boarding time.

Read the cruise FAQ page. The internet is an amazing resource.

Alcohol

You are allowed to bring some alcohol which if you like to drink I recommend because the alcohol on board is expensive. Per 21+ guest you can bring 2 750ml wine bottles or 6-pack of 12oz beer with the ability to mix and match for multiple guests. No hard liquor allowed. We each brought 2 bottles of wine in our carry-ons which we purchased day-of in Port Canaveral. You’re supposed to drink it only in your room but I never saw this enforced. As long as you’re not being belligerent the crew tends to be lax. You can bring glassware back to your room and refill it or bring your own cup (at your own risk, maybe I got lucky).

This quota also applies to every port stop. I.e. you can get 2 extra bottles or 6 beers per port. We did not take advantage of this, but I can easily imagine only drinking alcohol you buy off ship and saving a lot of money in doing so.

You can also buy liquor or excess alcohol to check until the end of the cruise.

Disney Cruise Line App

I was quite pleased with their mobile app (Android user, wife on iOS). We were able to book excursions and restaurants in advance. Notably daily activities are not shown in the app in advance. This was very confusing for us as it looked like there simply weren’t any activities. They will show up once you’re on the ship and connected to the free WiFi which lacks general internet access unless you pay $20/day (confusingly I was still receiving notifications of unread messages in some apps, but I could not load those actual messages; I digress). You can look through activities by day and they appear in order by time with some pre-baked filters. As someone who works in software design I have some feedback.

First the slops:

1. Filters are cleared whenever you leave the schedule page
   1. The schedule shows all activities for all ages which includes kids-only, tween-only, teen-only, adult-only, and all ages. I would have loved a way to permanently filter to adult and all ages as manually re-applying it every time was tedious
2. Pre-baked filter options
   1. I desperately wanted a “hide all character meeting” option. These have the “all ages” tag and occur every 15 minutes for most of the day. The title of the activity is just the name of the character which can be confusing at a glance.

Props:

1. The schedule automatically filters out all activities that have already happened based on the current time
   1. This sounds like such a simple feature but many designers manage to miss simple things
2. Heart feature with a “My Day” tab
   1. This enables you to plan your days whenever you’d like with activities you want to do, toggle the “heart” icon, and then you can ignore the general schedule focusing on your day
3. Messaging
   1. Chats are automatically created between you and your roommates with theoretical push notifications through the app but this was inconsistent for me. You can create additional chats with other people by exchanging an ID. We never did this but it’s a smart idea
4. Room bill transparency
   1. When paying for anything on the ship you can charge it to your room. This bill is available through the app at any time. If you connect your room to a credit card you do not have to do anything else. The card is automatically charged at predetermined increments. Very convenient.

Day Of

We forgot the tags which turned out not to matter. They have extras to just write your room number on. We had a lot of uncertainty about exactly when to arrive for our boarding. The time given was 2:30-2:45pm and info we read said to not get there early. Based on how our day was going we ended up showing up at 2pm. A friend dropped us off but the experience would be identical if you Uber, can't speak to the bus experience but I'm sure it's seamless. The cruise terminal was intuitive. There were dedicated drop-off points by the ship, like 12 maybe. We waited in a brief car line and then pulled up to one of the dropoffs. A luggage guy helped us unload and took tips through Venmo. He put on the aforementioned tags and wrote our room number. We kept our backpacks but in retrospect we could and should have checked those too.

Then the people boarding area. It's laid out with maybe 10 cordoned lines filled with people. Each line has a sign indicating your board time. The earliest sign when we arrived was 2pm but they shortly put up a 2:30 so my takeaway is that arriving 30mn prior to your board time is okay.

We stood in the cordoned line until 2:30. This is why I say we perhaps should have checked our backpacks. Cruise veterans kept a carry on suitcase to sit on while waiting. But we are young and in shape so it was fine. Went through security and received “key to the world” cards which are glorified hotel room keys. So many smiling employees. Finally, board the ship. A guy stood at the ship entrance and announced every group by a chosen name. “The Disney treasure welcomes the [x] family!” Over the top for me but probably very cool for some kids.

Aboard

We were able to go straight to our room 6038 to drop off our stuff. Checked bags arrived a few hours later. My first goal was to explore to familiarize myself with the whole ship. I tried to get lost but this proved extremely difficult due to abundant signage and simple, intuitive design decisions.

Ship layout

Rough description: 13 floors. Bottom floor is just boarding, 2 is rooms and kids areas (they have kid care programs which sounds so attractive for parents), 3-5 are common activity areas including 3 restaurants, lounges, bars, shops, gym, spa, theatre (spans floors 2-3 with typical gradual decline seating plus balcony on 4), grand hall (3 story ceiling with overlooking balconies).

It's surprisingly ostentatious for a cruise which I would expect to value space more highly. Aesthetics are great, lots of art. There are also outdoor viewing areas accessible from these floors including the prow of the ship. I.e. you can stand at the very front of the ship which is super cool. Naturally the captain's quarters overlook this area.
Floors 6-10 are just rooms, “staterooms” as Disney calls it.
11 is buffets plus main pool area. 12-13 is upper decks with more pools, lounges, and adult only area. I'll cover all this in more detail later as they are where most people spend most of their days.12 also has Enchente and Palo, the +$ restaurants. We did both.

State Room

I was heavily informed about how cramped rooms tend to be. Going in with that expectation, I was pleasantly surprised at how much space we had in our room. Upon walking in there’s a hallway with a big closet on the left including many cubbies and clothes hangers. On the right there’s first a toilet room with a sink and then a separate shower room with a sink. This was the biggest sell to me as even if someone is showering or using the toilet there’s still another room for an accessible sink/changing area.

Then a king size bed with plenty of space underneath for suitcases. Then an open area with a desk/storage unit on the left including many drawers, shelves, fridge. Couch that flips into bed on the right. We paid a bit more for a veranda/balcony which came with two chairs and a table. This was also substantially larger than I anticipated. We could comfortably sit two people on the balcony both with their feet propped up on the table or even all 3 of us with one standing. Air conditioning worked great. TV with access to many Disney movies. I intended on bringing an HDMI cable for my laptop but forgot and did not miss it in the least.

For the first time ever I actually unpacked my suitcase and put clothes in the closet. Unlike most hotel rooms it is not realistic to leave open suitcases on the floor. There was more space than I expected, but not that much space. This worked out well from my point of view.

I was happy with where our room was being very close to main activity area and gym, but being higher up gets you closer to pools/buffets so there really isn’t a bad place to be.

The Food

The food options were truly amazing.

I'll just say this once but it is sad to see how some people treat this as an opportunity to load up on way more food than they actually end up eating. I was raised to minimize food waste as much as possible and it pains me to see how much others do not care about this. I would oblige anyone to please try and order only what you're hungry for but also I'm not your dad and I respect your freedom to choose for yourself. Hopefully Disney is at least composting the waste.

Buffets

The buffets on 11 included all of the following and more:

• Constant options (open from 11 to early evening) - each of these is a separate “line” managed by separate employees:
  • BBQ - barbacoa, kielbasa, ribs, shredded pork, corn bread, Mac n cheese, potato salad, collared greens, corn salad, various sauces
  • Mexican - taco, burrito, or bowl with standard topping options (basically Chipotle but better)
  • Grill - burgers, fries, chicken tenders, cole slaw, macaroni salad, potato salad
  • Ice cream / fruit - there's a different flavor of the day every day
  • Pizza - also unique flavor per day
• Almost every buffet has a daily unique option but everything else stays the same
• Fountain drinks (coke products), coffee, hot chocolate, milk (24/7 I think?)
• Market area - you have to wear shoes and shirt to go in here and there is an employee at the entrances asking everyone to wash their hands. In general this is a bit “finer” dining but still casual. This is where I ate lunch most days
  • Chicken Tikka masala, pad Thai, mushrooms, tomatos, sweet potatoes, squash, salmon teriyaki, daily pastas, roast lamb, steak, cucumber salad, fun sauces, side salads (daily special - my favorite was goat cheese walnut)
    • So much more, this is just what I remember
  • Dessert counter with so many options - carrot cake, cookies, puddings, tarts, souffles. I liked the dailies like fig pudding, fruit cobbler
• They are also open for breakfast ~7-10 but I did that only once as I'm not a breakfast person but the options were good.

Dinner Restaurants

There are 3 table service restaurants which are assigned each night. You can submit a preference for dinner time at 6:30 or 8:15 and it seems like most preferences are accommodated? Not sure how many people are forced. Anyway the 3 are:

1. 1923 (year Disney founded)
2. Worlds of Marvel
3. Coco

Given there are 7 nights you will have two for two nights and the third for three. We got 1923 for three but I wish we got Coco, I think it's my favorite. I don't think I was ever disappointed by a given dish but I have a fairly flexible palette so that's hard to do. Maybe some meat courses were a bit on the dry side? Always had soup and salad options, vegan, vegetarian. Always a steak option, seafood, lighter entrees if you had too much buffet. You can order however much you want for each course. I usually ordered an app, soup, salad, entre, and dessert, often eating some of my wife and sister in law's food too.

Because we are a group of 3 we were paired with another 3 at a 6-top table. We made friends with them and had a lot of fun conversations. This was a huge positive. We also had the same wait staff every night which was kind of nice to have familiar faces. Maybe we didn't take enough advantage of befriending them but so be it.

Enchente / Palo

We did both of these which effectively replaced the free assigned dinner options. While I thoroughly enjoyed them, I don't think the price warrants it. Opportunity cost - free good food or pricey great food? It's a no brainer to me but our decision to eat at these was heavily influenced by my wife. Enchente also caused us to completely miss a show because our reservation was at 6:30 and we didn’t leave until after 9:30. Show times are built around standard dinner times with one at about 6 and a repeat at 8:30.
We also got unlucky that both our reservations fell on the night we were eating at Coco which we did not want to miss. Fortunately we were able to change it. Tip if you decide to do the same as us: book on consecutive nights to ensure you won't miss two of the same dinners.

Not going to detail everything but overview:

• Enchente was lots of small plates planned out by a 3 Michelin star chef, many courses, French inspired, mostly sea food, cheese course highlight. Over the top fancy. Waiters pulled out your chair and your napkin on your lap. Possibly 1-to-1 staff guest ratio. Our bill was $800 after tip. Tasting menus ~$150x3 plus one wine pairing, one mocktail pairing, and a few ala cartes (Wagyu). I can easily imagine people spending well into the thousands here with more drinks
• Palo had a smaller 4 course tasting menu of app, salad, main, dessert for $55. We got two of those with one wine pairing, A5 Wagyu and some sides. Bill came to $400 after tip.

I would not do either of these again but part of me is glad we tried it. In general unless money is really no object for you then this is not worth it.

Activities

One of my biggest concerns about the cruise was that I was going to pay to be bored. By and large this was unfounded. There are many genuinely fun and interesting activities, at least for me. Plus I brought some good books to fill the downtime and kept a private travel log which I always like to do as they're really fun to read later and reminisce. We spent a good deal of time laying out on the deck, reading, and relaxing.

It's not worth covering everything in detail but here are some highlights.

1. There is a nightly show in the main theater every evening. I suggest going to every one even if you're not sure it sounds interesting. You can always leave. I regret each of them that I missed and loved going to some that I was wishy washy on. Our shows were, in order:
   1. Fly Boys - singing trio performing swing covers of a high variety of songs including Disney. With dancing and humor. They had a smaller adult only show 2 nights later, this is a theme. Very charismatic and entertaining
   2. Intro / Goofy adventure. Here's what I wrote in my log: “Captain gives his mandatory introduction, clearly not a show guy. Actual show is like a Disney montage fever dream caused by goofy driving the ship for Captain Money: frozen, Moana, brave, Aladdin, Mulan, Mickey at the end. The cast dancing is quite impressive. They clearly practice a lot and are talented.”
   3. Broadway Stars - we fortunately got to see their adult only show 2 nights earlier but very sad we missed this due to Enchente. It features two ladies who starred in multiple Broadway shows including Wicked (Elphaba)
   4. Goofy and Max adventure - we skipped it but I kinda wish we went
   5. Jonathan Burns physical comedy - iheartburns - this guy was hilarious. Great family friendly comedy. I got picked on during his show which involved a lot of unexpected attention, but it was all in good fun plus a free sweatband.
   6. Tale of Moana - full production basically mimicing the movie. Effects and choreography are amazing. Singing is solid and a few questionable adaptation decisions but thoroughly enjoyed it. Tafiti transformation highlight
   7. Beauty and the Beast - I liked this even more than Moana. Same cast, Belle and Moana same girl. Beast transformation highlight
2. Trivia - these were mostly Disney/marvel/Star wars but there were some general ones too. Movies, songs, quotes. We went to many of these because the winners get rubber medals shaped like Disney characters which my wife desperately wanted and finally got. Cast members do a great job of keeping the vibe positive and energetic.
3. Adult shows - in the evening there's a lounge called Sarabi that had 18+ shows every night. As alluded earlier this involved follow-up shows for several main theatre shows including Fly Boys, Jonathan Burns, and Broadway Stars. They were hosted by the same guy the whole time who was awesome, Walter. These included some trivia but our favorite was a “matchmaker” show where 3 couples went on stage from the audience. One half of each couple went backstage to a soundproof room while the other was asked questions about their relationship. The goal is to match how you think your partner answered then they swap and do it again. This got quite raunchy and while it sounds a bit trite, it was hilarious.
4. Movies - there were two indoor movie theaters and an outdoor “funnel vision” by the mail pool area playing Disney movies at all waking hours. The indoor theatres played new releases that are still only in theaters like Avatar 3 and Zootopia 2. It was fun to see all that was playing outside but I never did the indoor theatre. My companions did watch Zootopia 2 one morning.
5. Spa and gym - my wife got a massage which was quite pricey but she loved it. The gym is open early until 10pm every day and has a wealth of equipment. I don’t think I noticed anyone waiting long for a treadmill/elliptical as there were like 10 of each. Feels good to do some exercise before indulging
6. Water slide - Aquamouse - definitely recommend doing regardless of your age. My wife and I went several times and they changed the theme of part of it via indoor screens. Cute, fun.
7. Other stuff - character meetings, kids camp stuff, crafts, bingo, product showcases. We didn’t do much of this, but we saw it on the schedule.

Excursions

We did something at each stop which was fun. It’s a bit lazy but I like booking through Disney for peace of mind. I’m sure you can find similar activities for much cheaper booking directly through someone on the island, but this requires extra research and uncertainty in the face of potentially arriving back late. The boarding time was heavily stressed at each port. If you’re not back by that time you risk the ship leaving you behind. I’m not sure how serious this threat is, but in any case no one wants to be that guy.

When leaving and entering the boat you have to scan your card which is linked uniquely to you. This means that Disney is able to know exactly who is on and off the ship and when. They can easily know if there are island stragglers. On leaving the ship you are at the mercy of island customs. They stressed not having any fresh food as at best it could be seized and at worst you could be facing a steep fine.

Review by individual destination none of which I have visited before:

1. Tortola - we went straight from the ship to a smaller boat which ferried us and a hundred or so other guests to a nearby smaller island with a nice beach, Jost Van Dyke. I love boat rides so this was a pro but I heard some others complain about how long it took to get there. I was happy with this, but I can’t really speak to what Tortola is like generally.
2. St Thomas - my wife and I tried scuba for the first time ever. Again we went directly from cruise to a smaller boat with 20 guests total, some certified and some doing “DSD: Discover Scuba Diving”. We only went 40ft deep and had certified instructors with it. Very cool and would probably try again, good way to try it.
3. Castaway Cay - this is Disney’s private island and is basically just one big beach. The restaurants on the island have free buffets just like the ship. They were only open until 2pm with ship boarding time at 4:45pm and I was a bit late so didn’t get to try them. The beach areas are genuinely very nice, but I’m a bit of the “seen one beach, seen them all” mindset. We rented bikes and snorkel gear and I was disappointed at how little space there is to bike. It was nice to get between the family area and the adult-only area, but they also had a tram which ran every ~6 minutes so I wouldn’t do it again. Fortunately they were only $19 for the whole day.

Cost

This includes everything we paid to Disney. I.e. it doesn't include tips on excursions or travel before/after the cruise. Don't forget to factor that in when planning your vacation. E.g. we are paying $200 to Uber from Port Canaveral back to Orlando. We should have priced out the bus or possibly a rental car but missed the deadline.

• Booking costs i.e. 3 guests in one stateroom for 7 nights: $7000
• Incidentals accrued on our state room bill: $3700
  • Excursions: $800
  • Extra dinners: $1200 (palo+enchente)
  • Spa massage 90mn: $375
  • Gift shop (sweatshirt and other trinkets): $300
  • Internet connection for one: $154
  • And remaining ~$900 was a la carte bars, lounges, and cafes on the ship - mostly alcohol but some specialty coffees and smoothies too

We were definitely a bit loose with drinks and dinners which are obviously unnecessary but fun.

Conclusion

It was nice, overall a very positive experience. I have almost no interest in trying any other non-Disney cruise line. Conversations with other guests led me to this: if you want to drink a lot and gamble don’t choose Disney. There is no casino and drinks are extra. If you want high quality food, nice people, fun activities, and good vibes, Disney is the best cruise option. I can easily imagine paying only the base fare of a cruise and avoiding all add-ons while still having a great time. Plus we really like Disney.

That being said, I return to the main question of if I want to be on a cruise in general. I’m currently reading a book called “Algorithms to Live By”. One algorithm it emphasizes is the “Explore/Exploit” trade-off. I’m still fairly young, and my emphasis is much more strongly in the explore realm. I’m not ready to embrace exploit. There are novel places I want to see and things I want to experience and cruises are not a particularly efficient way of doing that.

Thanks for reading and hope this was useful.

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