Rogue Ones
Cruising without kids on a Disney ship? May the Force be with you!
In eight days on board, we never encounter anyone under drinking age in our hallway.
Another couple is having breakfast next to us. It’s eerily quiet. Lian disagrees. “Kids don’t sleep in.”
His South African accent is thicker than the maple syrup drowning the Mickey Mouse–shaped pancakes. Where was the sea of kids we were expecting? For the two of us, who met on Tinder and have only been out a handful of times, seven nights on Disney Fantasy was going to be the best — or worst — date of our lives. But, we couldn’t be the only childless couple on board.
Could we?
According to Cruiseline.com, 14 percent of Disney reviews from 2017 to 2019 came from travelers identifying as either a “couple” or “single/friends.” It’s easy to imagine most of these cruisers are like Barb Nefer, the author of 10 Disney Cruise Line Tips for Adults & 7 Ways To Tell If Disney Ships Are Right For You, who has sailed with Disney sans kids more than 80 times.
Lian and I like Disney, but we aren’t fanatics. In fact, we’re both Frozen virgins. Still, we were free in January, the Caribbean was calling, and we knew this cruise had a sea day with an epic theme: Star Wars Day at Sea. Is there any better people-watching than being surrounded by 4,000 wannabe Obi-Wan Kenobis?
“Their kids must be sleeping in.”
Not once over the course of a week has anyone asked us where our kids were.
“Do. Or Do Not. There Is No Try.”
“Welcome Jackson Family!”
Lian isn’t a Jackson, and we aren’t family. But I don’t correct the cast members greeting us as we board. I’m dying to see our room. We’re expecting
Disney Fantasy’s interior to be transformed into the space-traveling Millennium Falcon’s. Instead it’s like traveling back in time. On the ship’s behind-thescenes tour, we learn why.
“Our design inspiration comes from the elegant 1920s ocean liners,” explains our guide before launching into the etymology of “posh.” It’s short for “portside out, starboard home” — the sides of the ship the wealthy wanted their staterooms to be on for England-toAmerica crossings.
Our ocean-view stateroom with veranda is port side. It’s toward the ship’s bow where most of the adults-only areas are concentrated. In eight days on board, we never encounter anyone under drinking age in our hallway. We do, however, find in our sitting area a bottle of chilled champagne and a cheese plate so pungent it would knock our socks off (if we were wearing any).
Like the rest of the ship, the room doesn’t scream Disney. The only whisper we even hear is when we turn on the TV. One of the channels is pre-loaded with every Disney movie — even Escape to Witch Mountain.
The family staterooms have character-inspired decor. But our room? Besides the bathtub/shower room and the separate toilet room — a practical layout all ships should adopt — it doesn’t look too different from staterooms I’ve seen on Princess Cruises’ ships.
Speaking of, a princess is definitely hosting a tea party somewhere on the ship. But we spend our first afternoon reading Man’s Search for Meaning
(him) and A Short History of South Africa (me) by the adults-only pool. I’m sure “It’s a Small World” is playing somewhere on the ship as well, but we hum along to a cover of “Small Town” and other Heartland-rock hits crooned by an acoustic guitarist with a residency by the pool’s swim-up bar.
Taking a Disney cruise without kids offers the rare opportunity to rediscover your own inner kid.
Dinner, however, is undeniably Disney. “Welcome to the Animator’s Palate,” beams our waitress. Joy flashes a superhuman smile that could light up a black hole. She knows our names but refers to us as “my beautiful people” for the duration of the cruise. While Joy works on serving us a delicious sea bass dinner, Lian and I work, too. Cutlery in one hand and Crayolas in the other, we create our own characters on what I assume are our placemats until they’re taken from us mid-meal. By dessert, our drawings are dancing around us on the restaurant walls. We gape at their moving limbs — which we’d drawn frozen of course — like we’ve never seen a cartoon before. We don’t know how animators do it. Of course, Disney’s answer is magic.
Baby Yodas On Board
While docked in St. Thomas, Lian and I join two dozen fellow passengers on a snorkeling excursion. We swim alongside an aloof sea turtle and hover over an even more aloof octopus. I can’t ask it aloud what with the pipe in my mouth, but I wonder if Ursula from The Little Mermaid is an octopus or a squid. It’s the perfect question for one of the ship’s daily trivia games; we attend — though never win — several in O’Gills Pub.
We don’t win the Star Wars costume contest either. Sure, we wield a lightsaber with believable sound effects we recorded ourselves. But, we’re no match for the man who shows up to breakfast on the morning of Star Wars Day at Sea sporting a custom-made, four-figure First Order stormtrooper helmet. I’m not even sure he takes it off to eat. We also can’t compete with the adorable baby Yodas, dangerously cute Darth Vaders, pint-sized Princess Leias, and enough junior Jedis to stage a successful mutiny.
Despite the sheer number of kids on board, we don’t see them 80 percent of the time. Most hang out at the mid-ship pool or hide in the kids’ clubs where they also eat. Even when
Disney Fantasy docks at Disney’s private island, Castaway Cay, encountering kids is optional. Not only do adults have their own private beach, they also have their own buffet.