Three football fields long, Disney Magic docks on the West Side. (
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After a break on deck, Leo and Katie check out the Oceaneers Lab. (
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t’s 10:30 on a Friday night, and I’m feeling out of my element.
I’m a resident in good standing of the so-called new Brooklyn. I’ve got a Park Slope ZIP code and a job in the knowledge economy. I’ve got a preference for obscure bands and a pair of kids who drink hormone-free milk and watch PBS.
As the weekend begins, though, I’m not out dining on pasture-raised meats and drinking unfiltered farmhouse ales, nor am I home reading Jonathan Lethem.
No, I’m on the top deck of a ship that’s slicing through the Atlantic, looking down on a “Pirates of the Caribbean” party
in full swing. A throng of revelers undulates as “Livin’ la Vida Loca” booms from the speakers and a troupe of dancers dressed as pirates whirl and kick onstage. Villainous Captain Hook attempts to bust up the fun and is defeated by Mickey Mouse, who makes a dramatic entrance via zip line to save the day as the crowd roars.
In short, I’m experiencing my first night on a Disney cruise.
So, am I: a) ready to disembowel myself with a pirate’s cutlass and fling myself overboard; b) looking on with detached curiosity, like an anthropologist witnessing a Zulu ritual; or c) thoroughly enjoying myself?
I’ll get to the answer, but first, some background.
The Disney Cruise Line has been around since 1998, sailing ships stocked with Disney-fied entertainment out of Florida and several other locales. It’s been expanding in recent years, adding not only two new ships (for a fleet of four), but new ports of call — including, as of last month, New York City.
Twenty Disney cruises a year will run from the passenger ship terminal on the Hudson River, including an eight-day trek to the Bahamas, a five-day Canada swing and a weekend jaunt that leaves Friday afternoon for a loop in the Atlantic, returning Sunday.
So Disney is ready for New York, but is New York — a city of self-styled cynics and high-culture aficionados — ready for a floating Disneyland? The weekend cruise seems like the perfect chance to investigate.
So last Friday, I left work early to meet my wife, Becky, and our two children — 12-year-old Leo and 8-year-old Katie — and headed for the Hudson.
As we made our way through the cavernous terminal, the sight of the Disney Magic through the windows generated a degree of awe. It’s a 964-foot monster, towering 170 feet above the waterline. As we walked up the gangplank, my kids practically levitated with excitement, and I felt a buzz of anticipation as well.
After stashing our bags in our small but comfortable stateroom, we headed out to a mandatory safety drill, after which we were free to explore. For Leo and Katie, that meant making a beeline for the children’s pool and its water slide. While Becky commandeered a lounge chair and took a strawberry daiquiri from a roving waiter’s tray, I got the lay of the land.
Having left my Midtown office just over an hour earlier, I felt like I was hallucinating as I wandered the upper deck, past the stage where a group of dancers rocked out to pumping music and an emcee worked the crowd (“Get ready to party on!”), past the adults-only pool and hot tubs to the prow of the ship, where there’s a basketball court and an array of pingpong and foosball tables.
Below deck is a veritable floating resort. There’s a 1,000-seat theater, a smaller movie screening room, clubs for kids, teens and tweens, an arcade, a spa, a nightclub, a handful of bars and lounges, several gift shops and 877 staterooms — plus accommodations for 950 crew members. There are also three large themed dining rooms, a buffet restaurant and spots for snacks such as pizza, burgers and soft-serve ice cream. (In fact, an opportunity to stuff your face is never far off — a scenario that would give our calorie-czar mayor a serious case of heartburn.)
After some wandering and a family dunk in a hot tub, it’s time for dinner, and we report to our assigned dining room — Lumiere’s, where the theme is Continental elegance. We order, but Leo and I end up making a quick exit when he starts to feel seasick. Shortly after we return to our room, I’m surprised to see Rachael, our lovely British server, arrive at the door with our food — an indicator that customer service is a big part of Mickey’s game plan.
Leo and Becky go to bed early, but Katie joins me for a late walk to the upper decks, where the aforementioned pirate party is under way. It’s there that I drink the Kool-Aid, pretty much. The dancers are fantastic, and their energy is infectious. The crowd is grooving, Katie jumps and shimmies, and with the stars above and the dark waters churning below, the whole thing feels kind of, well, magical, to use a Disney buzzword.
Not the words of a big-city cynic, I guess. But I seem to have reached a key step in Disney cruising — giving yourself over to the experience. Step onboard, and you’re entering an irony-free zone where the commitment to wholesome fun runs bone-deep. If you’re looking for a knowing wink when, say, Mickey’s attendant announces breathlessly that photos have to end so he can get ready for a date with Minnie, you’re not going to find it. I find the dedication that goes into this impressive, but I also find the whole thing a refreshing change of pace for a city slicker.
The next morning we hit the buffet breakfast, and over fruit and smoked salmon I eye the jam-packed schedule. There are bingo games, ship tours, movies, a family cabaret, a scavenger hunt, an animation class, wine tastings — the list is endless. And that’s not to mention nonstop entertainment in the two kids’ clubs, where a wristband check-in system allows parents to leave their kids and enjoy some adult downtime. We head there after breakfast, where Snow White is giving a lesson in doing the do-si-do, holding a room full of kids rapt.
The kids’-club activities are a powerful lure for Katie, who’s checked on regularly but never wants to leave. Leo is equally attached to the pool and water slide. Becky and I each get a chance to hit the spa — me for an acupuncture session and her for a massage. Between that, swimming, hot-tubbing, wandering, a seafood lunch buffet, late-afternoon drinks by the pool and dinner in the cartoon-themed Animator’s Palate restaurant, the day goes by in a blur. We don’t make even half of the events I’d circled, but we do have a great time.
For that matter, everyone I speak to seems to be doing likewise.
“It’s beautiful — be-yoo-tee-ful,” says Pamela Clark of Coney Island, who’d brought her 4-year-old son, Domani. “When I got here, I left my troubles behind. I feel free.”
And it’s not just those with kids. I meet empty-nesters Frank and Nancy Prochaska of Stafford Springs, Conn., who are on their sixth Disney cruise, and have already planned their seventh.
“When I’m back on land, I can’t relax until I’ve booked the next one,” says Frank, a police officer. “It’s addicting.”
They like the shows and the activities, but mainly, he says, it’s the friendliness, the service and “the little details,” whether it’s the origami towel figures that appear on beds in the evening or the way servers from previous cruises remember their names.
He’s got a point about the friendly staffers. I don’t know where they find these people — an international group whose home countries are listed on their name tags — but everyone from the kids’-club attendants to the guy handing out the plates at the buffet has an upbeat energy that can’t be faked, and it’s impossible not to warm to it.
After dinner we hit the theater for “Disney Dreams,” an hour-long musical. Schmaltzy? Sure, but it leaves Katie breathless. Afterward, I leave Leo at the Ratatouille Cooking School, led by a mad scientist whose routine has kids literally screaming. Both kids are late getting to bed, though not as late as others — the kids’ club is open until 1 a.m., and when I pass by at 12:30, there are still some die-hards going strong, as grown-ups boogie to a DJ in the club downstairs.
The whole thing is over too fast. Not to mention too early: Cruisers have to be up, breakfasted and off the boat by around 9 a.m. on Sunday. It makes for an ending as disorienting as the beginning, what with being deposited onto 12th Avenue at that hour, back to reality after a trip that, like Clark, the mom from Coney Island, I found a total escape. Becky agreed, and the kids absolutely loved it — “the time of my life,” Katie declared.
Now if they’ll just stock a
farmhouse ale.