MouseStation 420 – The Disney Dream: Pure Disney Magic at Sea
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Show run time 0:50:49
On today’s show, Mark talks about his two days aboard the Disney Dream. He also interviews Imagineer Bob Zalk, who worked on many aspects of the ship.
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Feature: The Disney Dream: Pure Disney Magic at Sea
Mark mentioned all of the articles and videos that we’ve published to date:
- Disney Dream a fabulous addition to the Disney vacation portfolio
- So is the Disney Dream enough to make you consider your first Disney cruise?
- Castaways on the Dream: 10 things repeat cruisers will love about Disney’s new ship
- Castaways on the Dream: 10 more things repeat cruisers will love about Disney’s new ship
- Castaways on the Dream: Things that might make repeat cruisers miss the Magic (or Wonder)
Take a look at the Magical Porthole room!
Check out the special guest at Animator’s Palate!
I chat with some of the cast of Disney’s Believe, one of the Broadway-style shows aboard the Disney Dream. Subtitle this “Fat Guys Shouldn’t Dance.”
I felt so “Travel Channel” recording this!
Keep watching MousePlanet, as we’ll be continuing our coverage of the Disney Dream every week on “Cruise Tuesdays.”
Entering your stateroom provides your first glimpse of cool technology, where your Key to the World cardkey serves as a proximity card rather than a swipe card. There’s no slot to slide your card through. Instead, you tap your card against a box on the door, and the door unlocks. Enter the room and put your cardkey into a special slot next to the door to activate your stateroom’s environmental controls and lights. Your room key also unlocks your portfolio at Shutters, the onboard photography sales location. The card still has a magnetic stripe for backward compatibility.
While shipboard cabins are relatively small compared to landside resort rooms, the cabins do feel somewhat spacious. The Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah measures 246 square feet, compared to 260 square feet in a Value resort on land. Fully 88 percent of the ship’s rooms (1,100 staterooms) are outside staterooms, with 900 of them having verandahs. The remaining 150 cabins are inside staterooms, but they’ve got the Magical Portholes, where onboard cameras give you a “view” of outside as if there were a hole from your wall right to the outside of the ship in that direction.
Category 5A staterooms are just short of the size of a Value resort room on land. Photo by Mark Goldhaber.
Mark talked a bit about the three rotational restaurants and the outstanding food aboard.
The Caramelized Sea Scallops with Roasted Asparagus, Sun-dried Tomatoes, and Pearl Pasta, garnished with Caramelized Leeks and Veal Jus Reduction at Enchanted Garden was Mark’s favorite dish of the trip. Photo by Mark Goldhaber.
Mark described the enchanted artwork on board the ship, and the Mickey’s Midship Detective Agency game that utilizes the artwork. He described the effects used for the game (which can also be used as just a way to find the enchanted artwork) as well as some of his favorite pieces of enchanted artwork. His favorite of all is on Deck 5 Aft, where two side-by-side pieces of artwork show the castle and the ship from the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, which when activated fire upon each other with original attraction audio.
The kids’ spaces feature some cool technology, too. The Oceaneers Club and Oceaneers Lab each have a Magic Playfloor, where the kids jump around on panels along the sides of the floor and control the action in the middle of the floor. Adjacent to the playfloor is a large screen where characters can interact with the kids.
The Edge tween club and Vibe teen club are really cool and have great facilities for the kids. They include little nooks in the wall where kids can plug their iPods in and have movies from the player appear on a screen in front of their faces in the nook.
The District adult nightclub area is really cool, with the Pink champagne lounge, District Lounge piano bar, Evolution dance club, 687 sports bar, and Skyline Lounge (Mark’s favorite), where the skyline “out the windows” behind the bar show the skyline of five different cities that changes every 15 minutes. The D-Lounge family lounge also has family-centric fun.
Paris is Mark’s favorite of the five cities that appear in the “penthouse windows” of The Skyline Lounge. Photo by Mark Goldhaber.
The Dream’s horn is very versatile, and plays a number of different tunes. Mark also introduced recordings of the Dream’s horn (with some background noise) playing the second measure of “When You Wish Upon a Star”, “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes”, “Be Our Guest”, “Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee”, and “it’s a small world”. The recording of “Yo Ho” somehow disappeared in post-production.
Mark talked with Bob Zalk on the top deck of the ship after the ship left Castaway Cay. Zalk’s favorite project that he worked on aboard ship was Goofy Golf, the miniature golf course on deck, because it reminded him of playing miniature golf with his father in his youth. Zalk was also very involved as executive producer on the “undersea magic” show with Crush at Animator’s Palate, and he talked a bit about some of the logistics that were involved in making the show work correctly within the environment of a restaurant where dinner was being served.
There’s so much more to talk about with the Disney Dream, but what do you want to hear about? Send in questions about the ship and Mark will answer them!
Thanks to Bob Zalk for chatting with Mark, and to Lee Kitchen and Frank Reifsnyder for setting the interview up and facilitating it.
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Wrapping up
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Thanks to our announcer, Andrew Rich.
Thank you for listening!
