The Disney Destiny

With all of the drama right after we returned from our latest cruise, I completely neglected to write down a few thoughts about the new Disney Destiny. This is the third of the Triton or Wish-class ships. The general layout and function of the spaces is about the same, but the decor and theme is very different on each one. We did the Treasure in August, and it remains our favorite of the three. It's just the level of detail in the mid-east themes on that one that level-up the decor. I like the various carpet designs and what not, too. The Wish is nice too, it's just not as good as the other two.

The grand hall on Destiny leans into the design found in the Black Panther movies. Literally every detail refences something from that movie, and if you take the tour, they'll point those details out. But it's super lame that none of it is made out of vibranium. Just kidding, that's not real. The overall theme is attributed to heroes and villains. This makes a lot of the art extra unique (there are thousands of pieces on every ship), and it serves as a backdrop for many of the venues. Saga, the two story "Luna" venue, continues with the Wakanda-inspired texture, and I really liked that area. The open "family" bar on this one is called the Sanctum, referencing the Dr. Strange movies. The dinner theater venue is Lion King themed, and the music borrows heavily from the stage show's African themes instead of the movie pop music.

I don't see a lot of point in getting into all of the details, because they don't differ enough from the other ships. We did see no less than four previously known bartenders on this one, and it's always fun to catch up with them. A lot of things had new-ship smell, so it's kind of neat to be among the first few folks occupying a room, for example. There's a thing where they produce these wooden mock-ups of each ship, and we collect those. We now have the entire fleet, except for the Adventure, which I'm not sure counts. It's a one off thing, a ship designed for a defunct company, that they Disney-fied and sent to Singapore. It doesn't go anywhere, it is the attraction. So it's kind of like a resort and park at sea. I doubt we'll ever see that one. If I'm going to go to that part of the world, I'm not going to spend days at sea not seeing stuff.

It's worth noting that this one departed from Ft. Lauderdale, which is a new port for us. We drove about two-thirds of the way down the night before and stayed in a hotel. It was mercifully a non-event as far as travel and teen behavior goes. The terminal itself is pretty awful. It gets so loud in there, and this was also the highest capacity that ship has seen, so it was crowded (spring break in Florida). I was just pissy and angry when we disembarked, I guess not for any specific reason, other than maybe knowing we had to drive three hours home.

I wish we had better ports. Cozumel is a dump, and I much prefer the newer Disney island over Castaway. Not that it mattered, because the weather was pretty bad, and we didn't even get off. That's like three straight cruises of suboptimal weather for the beach day.

Next up is Wish again, and we're going VIP, because we deserve it and it's our 19th first-date-aversary. Just learned that next summer they're sending Wish back to Europe for drydock treatment, and having the Dream service Canaveral for the Bahamian itineraries. I'm a little nostalgic about that, since it was our first cruise ship, the one we had in Europe and 16 itineraries overall.