Honest Disney Wish Review: Sea Day, Disembarkation & Was It Worth It?
After a five month travel break, we were back at it in a very Disney forward way. Rachel, our adult daughter and Disney Cruise lover, came along. A 4-night sailing aboard the Disney Wish was the main event, embarking in Port Canaveral, stopping only at Disney’s private retreats in the Bahamas: Castaway Cay and Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point. We’d only ever been aboard the sister ships Magic and Wonder, Disney’s very first cruise ships, so this would be new to us.
We flew into Orlando the day before, experiencing one park-less night in the Walt Disney World Resort, staying at Bay Lake Tower. This is the final of three trip reports, covering our one sea day, disembarkation, some more shopping and dining on land, and our honest Disney Wish review. This post is part of our Disney Wish 2026 cruise review series.
A Sea Day, and how much trivia can you handle?
We woke to another brilliant day, the ship now slowly moving Northeast back to Port Canaveral (boo). This would be the sole day at sea, so the plan was to experience more of what the Wish had to offer. The last two days were primarily focused on Castaway and Lookout Cay, and all things outdoors. Before that was the utter madness of embarkation day. We were still trying to find our way around the ship, while joining the crowds looking for something to eat and dealing with Disney’s unfortunate muster drill. Today promised to be a more comfortable and chill experience.
Time outside the cabin began with breakfast, once again in the friendly and more organized confines of 1923 rather than in Marceline Market. Rachel was able to order gluten-free eggs benedict and a side of fresh fruit, while Rona and I each ordered an omelette after sharing the smoked salmon. It’s not that the food is amazing in 1923 for breakfast – it’s pretty standard fare and rock solid – it’s just a much more civilized experience as compared with the buffet. Think about eating breakfast at your slightly upscale hotel’s restaurant versus the McDonald’s at the busiest highway rest stop you can imagine, only the McDonald’s has a really large selection.
As you might imagine, the pools on the Wish were pretty crowded given it was a sea day, and it wasn’t a priority for us since we’d done the swimming thing for the last two days. Instead, we spent the morning wandering, browsing Mickey’s Mainsail and losing at trivia, as one does.
At one point, Rachel and I camped out for trivia at the Bayou, while Rona grabbed us some fancy coffees from the Pinocchio-themed Wishing Star Cafe, which resides off the main staircase on deck 4. Another failed trivia attempt brought us to Vibe and the Hideaway, a couple of the legit places on deck 12 for teens to chill. They’re legit because teenagers actually were there doing teenage things before we grown-ups appeared and took over Vibe with trivia shenanigans.
We had a much larger set of “things to do” that afternoon and evening, which we’d checked off on the DCL app to remind us where to be and when. Since we had to get our bags packed and outside our room by 10 PM that night, we also spent part of the morning doing most of our packing to free up the rest of the day.
Lunch was back at Mickey & Friends Festival of Foods, where Rona and I ordered some Mexican bowls of goodness at Donald’s Cantina, while Rachel went off to Daisy’s Pizza Pies to once again enjoy the “summon the allergy-trained crewmember” experience. Donald’s Cantina is similar to Chipotle or QDOBA, offering similar choices with which to compose your meal. The resulting bowls were pretty good if not particularly big. Rachel scarfed down her smallish pizza, which is always an indication that it was a successful pizza implementation.
Feeling a little light on the protein ingestion and “because cruise”, Rona went over to Mickey’s Smokestack BBQ and brought back smoked sausage and some of those awesome pickles for her, a chicken leg for me, and one of those fall-off-the-bone St. Louis-style pork ribs for Rachel. And then feeling a little light on the dessert ingestion and “also because cruise”, we swung by Sweet Minnie’s Ice Cream for a sweet treat. Also, I’m pretty sure ice cream has protein.
Typically, DCL offers two performances of each live show on the Walt Disney Theater stage, which most folks choose based on the set dining time they were assigned. However, because this was a sea day, Disney added a matinee performance of Aladdin, and that’s the one we decided to see. This was my favorite show on this sailing. The performances were energetic and fun, and the actors playing Genie and Jafar nailed it, cruise-specific Genie-jokes and all. There were no such audio issues repeated from Little Mermaid, where the music was often louder than some performers.
Disney does not let you take any photos or video during any of their stage shows, but apparently other cruise lines like Celebrity are fully okay with it. It wasn’t that big a deal for us, since you can’t do that most live theater shows on land. I do understand why it’s a minor inconvenience for youtube content creators, though.
After the show, it was time to lose at trivia at least once more, so back we went to the Bayou and grabbed a table for Pixar trivia. Up until this point, we’d done the music trivia of the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and the decades since. As repeatedly noted here, we never won, nor did we ever come close to winning.
Anyway, our favorite server “S” was there and brought us the requisite iced americano, crispy diet coke for Rachel, and flat white with Mickey Mouse winking knowingly at me as if he already knew our trivia winning percentage was not about to improve. But “S” bringing us complimentary beignets lessened the blow.
Later that day our persistence paid off during general trivia where our best score of the sailing landed in second place, and earned us a surprise Mickey medal from the lovely entertainment host, who, medal in hand, chased us down outside Luna. It was time to quit while we were ahead!
Next up, we headed back to our cabin to step up our clothing game for the evening, during which time we planned to check out some live music. We also used stateroom-time as an excuse to order room service one last time, getting that legendary All Hands on Deck cheese platter. Cheese is fuel.
Leaving Rachel with the rest of the room service, off we went, finding a table at the Bayou, where “S” brought me my Old Fashioned, and Rona a Jack and Diet Coke. The Wishers were putting on a few shows at the Bayou that evening, including a rock show as well as a country. This talented trio were incredibly versatile, and we really enjoyed each of their shows.
Eventually it was time for our final dinner on the Wish, and so we met Rachel and headed for Arendelle: A Frozen Dining Adventure. This dinner features a trio of Nordic folk musicians performing throughout and is all about celebrating the royal engagement of Anna and Kristoff. Oaken is the master of ceremonies, with him, the lovebirds, plus Elsa, and Olaf performing in the center of this huge space.
With the exception of Elsa, each character visits all the tables, Olaf traveling on a mobile cart guided by a handler. The performance happens in a series of mini “sets”, which allows you to talk to one another, eat and enjoy the overall experience.
With our table-mates having joined us and drinks brought to the table, we put in our dinner orders. Rona started with the Split Yellow Pea Soup and Anna’s Koldborde, a Scandinavian-style seafood appetizer platter. I went with Elsa’s Royal Baked Scallops and the Jarlsberg Cheese & Rosemary Ham Tarte, and Rachel had the gluten free Kjöttkake (braised meatballs) as an off-menu appetizer. This is only listed as an entree, but our main server had offered it up as an appetizer option when Rachel had ordered her meal back at Worlds of Marvel.
While the split pea soup was just okay, Rona really liked the mix of salmon preparations, smoked trout and shrimp appetizer. The baked scallops appetizer consists of scallops in a shrimp bisque with vegetables, all sitting at the bottom of an enormous puff pastry. It’s striking and loads of people order and love this dish. It was tasty for sure, but there aren’t many scallops and they are the little bay scallops. The cheese and ham tarte, though? It might have been my favorite appetizer on the entire sailing. Meanwhile, Rachel was really happy with her meatballs, since gluten free meatballs aren’t super common.
For entrees, Rachel had ordered the Garlic & Thyme Roasted Beef Rib-Eye, while Rona went with the Kjöttkake, and I picked the Juniper Spiced Roasted Chicken Breast. The rib-eye was cooked perfectly, and Rachel made her way through it, which is more than Rona could say for her meatballs, which were equally good, but so much more food than she could manage. The bone-in chicken was super flavorful, and not at all dry.
We did our best with dessert, which involved a moist apple cake (Eplekake) with caramel sauce and ice cream for me, the signature Troll Family’s Rock Chocolate Bar for Rona, and an apple bread pudding with ice cream for Rachel, which she didn’t love, finding its texture a bit weird. The other desserts were sweet and tasty. Overall, Arendelle continued a positive dining trend for us on board the Wish after a disappointing first night.
During the sailing, we had popped into Joyful Sweets to check out all the goodies, but had never bought anything. Since this was the last night on the ship, it seemed right to swing by to at least get Rachel some macarons, one of the gluten free options. Located on Deck 11, this dessert shop is themed after Pixar’s Inside Out, offering close to 40 flavors of gelato and ice cream, and tons of baked items like character-inspired cupcakes, the aforementioned macarons, cake pops, brownies, plus candy inspired by the film’s colorful emotions.
Rona and I wanted to see the Wishers once more at the Bayou tonight. They were doing a country music set this time, which over the past several years has become our thing, though not so much Rachel’s. The lead singer and drummer each doffed western-style hats for the occasion. Not the bassist though. He was a serious dude. The band performed some old and modern classics, from Take Me Home, Country Roads, to one of my favorites, Wagon Wheel.
What a great way to end the night. We returned to the stateroom to find our luggage gone, having been whisked away to live with the other passengers’ luggage until we’d see it in the cruise terminal next morning. Night-night chocolates sat at the feet of what we believed to be an elephant towel animal that welcomed us to bed.
The Saddest Part of the Cruise
All good things must come to an end. It was the final morning of the sailing, and we woke to find the older, but similarly sized Disney Fantasy sharing the port with us. Our later dinner seating afforded us a somewhat more civilized disembarkation time. All passengers had to be out of their staterooms by 8 AM, regardless. If you had the first dinner seating, however, breakfast was at 6:45 AM in whatever main dining room would be open on your sailing, whereas ours began at 8 AM.
We lugged our carry-ons down to Arendelle and our assistant server welcomed us in and brought us to the same table as last evening. Our table-mates had opted for express-walk-off before 8AM, so we had the table to ourselves. On disembarkation day in the dining room, Disney gives you the “See Ya Real Soon” breakfast menu, which is not themed to any restaurant nor designed to inspire you. What it does do is ensure you can fill your bellies quick and get off the dang ship!
It worked. We ate. We left… Arendelle at least.
Our disembarkation grouping had already been announced, so we were permitted to get off the ship and go pick up our bags in the terminal. We joined a fairly lengthy queue mid-ship, and about ten minutes later were trekking through the cruise terminal in search of our luggage, which we quickly found. This terminal uses biometric doo-dads, so getting through customs with a U.S. passport solely involves looking into a camera that’s connected to Big Brother or Skynet or whatever technology overlord they’ve got.
It was a straightforward affair stepping outside, crossing into the parking garage and finding and loading up our rental car. Our flight wasn’t until 3:30 PM, so the plan was to first do a bit of shopping at Disney’s Character Warehouse reasonably close to Walt Disney World, and then find some lunch in Disney Springs before going to the airport.
The extra cost to keep and park the rental car for the duration of the sailing paid for itself in flexibility and reduced stress. We were on the road on our own schedule less than twenty minutes after finishing breakfast at Arendelle. After navigating the typical central Florida traffic along the way, we parked at Orlando Vineland Premium Outlets and lined up outside the Character Warehouse.
Because these stores are so popular nowadays, they try to limit the number of customers inside at any one time, so wait times tend to vary. Last time we were here, we came after dinner, and found it less crowded inside, with no line to get in.
After about 10-15 minutes the doors opened for us, and the shopping began. To be honest, half the fun there is the treasure hunt. We wound up dropping $64 and walked away with a few small things plus the real score: a pair of gray and black plaid flannel shirts with Mickey Mouse silhouette motifs and Walt Disney World embroidered on the back.
Next up, we drove over to Disney Springs for lunch, deciding to stop at Raglan Road. It was just before noon on a Friday, so when we were brought to a table, the cavernous restaurant was stone cold dead, which suited us just fine.
They are very upfront about allergens and what they are willing to accommodate, which was also fine for us. Rachel was able to order the Now You’re Talkin’ Chicken Sandwich gluten free, which they fry up in a dedicated allergy fryer and serve it on a gluten free bun. It was huge and tasty.
Rona opted for a moderately healthy version of the mouth-watering OMG Burger by skipping the bun and swapping the french fries out for the seasonal veggies. I ordered the Worth the Wait Beef Sandwich, which was a little different than I expected, since the menu doesn’t describe what the 12-hour braised beef is and I failed to ask. I’ve no idea what I did expect, but for some reason it wasn’t this rich and savory braised short rib, which pulled apart easily, and was a joyfully juicy mess to eat.
This was a peaceful meal stop before heading for the madness at Orlando airport. We also like Raglan Road later in the day for a beer and a snack, especially when there’s live music and the bar is more active. The server was really attentive, the food was great, and with drinks and gratuity this heavy lunch, which marked the end of our short vacation, cost $112.
Honest Disney Wish Review – Would we do it again?
If you have followed these trip reports, you know that this sailing on the Wish did not start out all that well. So, let’s begin there. Embarkation was generally fine, if a little lengthy. Then came the crowds. Marceline Market’s layout did not seem optimal for handling the number of passengers this ship can hold, and most certainly not on embarkation day. It always seemed packed, with seating at a premium.
Crowds are a general theme on Disney Cruises. There are characters for whom families line up to take photos. Sometimes large families. Sometimes families with no spatial awareness, meaning you may find yourself saying “excuse me” an awful lot to navigate through the ship’s corridors if you’re not in line yourself. It’s Disney, so you expect it, but it can be a little harder to manage in the enclosed space of a cruise ship.
Disney’s old-school in-person muster drill, while not entirely unique to the cruise industry, gets old real fast. It’s packed, like the busiest subway car imaginable. Our muster station was in Worlds of Marvel and there weren’t enough seats for the passengers assigned. A lot of things on the ship shut down as muster drill time approaches. Then, when it’s over, it’s crowded getting out of your muster area. Nearby elevators are jammed with lines. You can read about all these experiences plus a somewhat lackluster first live theater show and a couple of, uh, problematic dinner entrees at 1923.
One more word about muster. Norwegian, which we’ve never sailed, follows the same format, as does Regent and Oceania, the latter being part of the Norwegian family. Based on my research, every other major cruise line has gone with the e-muster approach, where at worst, you need only check in at your muster station after watching the safety briefing in your cabin or on your phone.
Before boarding, we were assuming that we’d book a placeholder reservation for a future sailing, with our eyes on DCL’s annual 7-night British Isles sailing. That was an itinerary we’d been interested in for a few years, given 7-night sailings are really the sweet spot for us. British Isles cruises on other lines tend to be longer.
By the morning of the second day on this sailing, we had flipped that assumption. It was unlikely we would book that placeholder. We were feeling like Disney wasn’t delivering what you would expect given the premium price of the cruise. Still, we decided to keep an open mind for the rest of the sailing, which turned out to be the right move.
First off, we decided to deal with the crowds by mostly avoiding them. We never returned to Marceline Market after our breakfast on day two, leaning in more on Mickey & Friends Festival of Foods, which seemed to handle crowds better. We had our breakfasts in the much quieter dining rooms for the last three days. The only time we went into a pool was on Lookout Cay day, after we returned early in the afternoon while most passengers were still on the island.
Dinners at Marvel and Arendelle were better than we expected, and certainly far better than our experience at 1923. Dinner at Palo Steakhouse was phenomenal. And the remaining live stage shows – Little Mermaid and Aladdin — were really good. The Hyperspace Lounge truly wowed us, and we found our happy place at the Bayou, where we saw lots of live music, played a bit of trivia and often just hung out and got to know our favorite server.
Lastly, a word about the crew. We’ve mentioned “S” repeatedly, but Matteo at Palo Steakhouse was fantastic as well. All the crew members were so nice, personable, and truly helpful. Generally, none of the criticisms through the first 24 hours on the ship were related to the crew, who consistently worked their tails off.
So would we do it again?
Well, we did buy that placeholder reservation before we disembarked. A couple days later, we contacted our awesome friend Bill from Finest Travel Agency to use it to reserve and save on the 2027 British Isles sailing. Check out Finest Travel Beat with Bill and Angel on Youtube and all the social media as well.
Anyway, one more cruise coming up this year, and now two to look forward to in 2027! Until next time, here’s one more piece of Disney Wish Art.
