I think I became addicting to cruises when I went on the first one with my parents when I was 14. In those days I found the huge ship awesome but each year as competition steps up, the cruise industry is growing by huge degrees of awesomeness, with the beneficiaries being those of us who love to travel.
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What I enjoyed most was the really great choice of destinations because for me to have gone to Sicily, the French Riviera, Naples, Pompeii, Rome, Venice in one swell swoop is just impossible to beat. And the excellent tour organisations attached to Disney were so efficient and the guides so knowledgeable, that one was able to gain a great deal of information and see everything that one wanted to at these wonderful destinations.
One important lesson I learnt from this trip (the cruise people did not mention it at all) and I hope I will not forget the next time I go to Europe and that is, in Europe not only is the US$ not king, (as expected) but no one wants to accept it! So wherever we went we had to change cash into Euros to do any business and in Switzerland, we had to change to Swiss francs. (I had a similar experience in Cuba too as there no one wanted it or the Canadian $ either so you had to go to a cambio to change cash into pesos.)
As I see it therefore, whenever one is not using a credit card in Europe, it is easier to just travel with a debit card, go to a ATM machine and collect the withdrawal in the relevant currency for each day the ATM's change their rate in keeping with international standards.Anyway, back to destinations, we had quite a scare on the way to Pisa as the front tyre of the bus we were driving in suddenly burst as we were crossing a bridge. The horrendous blast scared the daylights out of not only the passengers, most of whom had been sleeping and had a rude awakening, but also the driver as well. He was however deft in bringing the bus safely to the side of the road and as we were only 15 minutes away from Pisa we did not have to wait too long to get a replacement bus.
Actually, there is so much to say and remember about the various places we visited that I swear I have to get around to doing a separate blog for each one soon.What was especially heartening about this cruise too was the number of Jamaicans who were working on the Disney Magic. I never knew before that there was an actual recruiting centre in Ocho Rios so it was not unexpected that the majority of the workers came from the St. Ann/St. Mary area, although I did meet a few from Kingston and elsewhere.Even the head waiter assigned to us was from Jamaica and boy did he make it specially great for us by arranging jerk chicken, stew peas and rice, oxtail etc to be served to us in addition to the other delicious choices at dinner.
Heartening too was the wide selection of reggae music played in the "fun area"on the 9 th floor (Lido deck) almost every day.
It was clear that whoever the DJ was, his favourite singers were Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley but he did not stick on them too much to make it boring for our music going as far back as Harry Belafonte was played at some point.
As I said earlier, if I were a kid the cruise would have been out of this world, and that is of course because the entertainment was geared towards kids so some nights it left me a bit bored.
However the Disney ensemble outdid itself on two nights with performances fitting of Broadway. In fact, I had the pleasure of meeting the lead singer from one of the performances, a beautiful African american young lady named Christine from Michigan, with a voice range equaling Whitney Houston's and she assured me that is where she was headed but was just enjoying travelling for a while.
However the Disney ensemble outdid itself on two nights with performances fitting of Broadway. In fact, I had the pleasure of meeting the lead singer from one of the performances, a beautiful African american young lady named Christine from Michigan, with a voice range equaling Whitney Houston's and she assured me that is where she was headed but was just enjoying travelling for a while.
Yup a Disney cruise is definitely more than worth the money for family travel
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