Boundless Horizons

Introduction

Back to the Disney Dream! This is cruise number three, our second on the Dream… but it’s actually the fifth cruise we booked. Now, there is a little bit of a story here, and a bit of a preview for future sailings!

On our last cruise (Disney Dream – 7 Night Mediterranean Cruise – May 2023 – Part 1) we booked a placeholder. Placeholders give 10% off your next sailing, but you have to sail within two years. We really wanted to sail from Port Canaveral next to see the classic Disney Cruise Line terminal and Castaway Cay! And we fell in love with the beautiful Disney Parks-inspired spaces revealed for the Disney Treasure. Looking at options which fitted with work schedules, there was a seven night April 2025 sailing which worked perfectly.

The next part of this tale involves DCL announcing that the Disney Fantasy will be taking over the 2025 European sailings. Now, we’ve been on the Magic and the Dream, but this was a chance to see the Fantasy without having to pay for transatlantic flights! That opportunity was too good to pass up, especially as we’d been watching vlogs on the Fantasy to see the ports that our Treasure cruise would stop at. We booked a three night sailing to France in August 2025 as cruise number four (at the time of booking…).

An Alaskan sailing has been on my list for a long time – in fact, when I booked our first ever cruise in 2021, I said it would mean we’d be Silver Castaway Club members for Alaska. I really want to book this for 2026 and realised this would be cruise number five, bringing us to Gold Castaway Club status just too late to make a difference for activity booking. Unless we could squeeze in one more cruise between now and 2026.

So that brings us to the subject of this trip report. A three night sailing on the Dream to Belgium in August 2024 was the best option to add an additional cruise to put us on track for Gold by Alaska. We’d also struggled to choose between the Belgium and France options for the Fantasy so this let us see both itineraries. As a little bonus, we picked up a placeholder on this cruise which let us take 10% off next year’s Fantasy sailing!

Day 0 – Travel Day

Flying in on the day of a cruise is never advisable, but we weren’t able to get any additional time off before the cruise. So our only option became a 9:15pm flight down to London Gatwick, leaving for the airport as soon as we finished work. Luckily our flight was not just on time, but actually landed a few minutes early!

We landed at the North terminal, but it’s only a short shuttle ride to the South terminal where our hotel was located. There’s also a 24 hour M&S Food which was perfect for grabbing some supplies. Each adult is allowed to bring up to two bottles of wine (or a six-pack of beer) onto the ship, but we were only taking hand baggage and couldn’t bring liquids through security. We picked up some wine and snacks, then checked into the hotel.

There’s several hotels at Gatwick airport, and when we were booking all of the closest options were similarly priced. With not much difference between them, we picked Bloc Gatwick, since it’s located inside the south terminal and therefore the closest option. The day before we travelled, I received an email with check in instructions which gave me the option to upgrade to a bigger room for £20. We would literally only have about 8 hours in the room, so I was happy to take their smallest room – though when we booked I paid a little more for a room with a window!

We were able to use our phones to bypass reception and go straight to our room, using a digital key. The hotel room was small but comfortable, perfect for what we needed. Like on the cruise ship, the bed is raised to allow cases to be stored underneath. The only down side is that the small bathroom is a wet room meaning the entire floor ends up soaked from the shower. But the room is otherwise well-appointed, and I was amazed at the soundproofing. We were really close to the runway with great views of planes landing. From checking the arrivals board, we had planes landing all through the night but we heard nothing! We’re definitely considering booking here again for next year’s Fantasy cruise.

But for now it was time to sleep, because we had an early train to Southampton in the morning!