Trip Log Day 7: 7-Night Western Europe Cruise on Disney Fantasy – At Sea

Trip log, day seven. At Sea.
7-Night Western Europe Cruise on Disney Fantasy
July 30, 2025
Personal Navigator

The morning started out with some disappointing news. Isabelle has been enjoying the pin trading around the ship at fellow passenger stateroom doors. Well, the stateroom down the corridor from ours which we pass by often had a note on the door. “Our pins were stolen” – it’s really sad to hear this is a common issue with these on the door pin trading opportunities, one of the other participating staterooms added a note.

Our day at sea started out as I joined Emily on her walk to the gym and detoured for a coffee from the Cove Cafe. The weather last night was a preview of things to come. Today’s forecast high was only 70ºF and not looking promising for mini golf or a movie by the pool.

We did have one very important item to take care of this morning, face-to-face passport inspection by Immigration Officials from the UK in the Walt Disney Theatre. For the majority of guests, times were established based on stateroom location with a morning session open to anyone to come at their leisure.

Earlier this cruise, we received a notification to attended the morning session as our deck’s assigned time was during our pre-reserved brunch.

The customs check was simple. We arrived, checked in with the crew member outside the theatre, present your passports to the immigration official, and then checked out with a crew member at the opposite side of the theatre. This was a much better experience than we encountered years ago when repositioning from Copenhagen to Dover we were required to turn in our passports, then given a photocopy, and couple days later picked them up at a similar face to face check-in at the theater.

This morning it was hunger games (i think this is a valid reference, I’ve not read the books nor have I watched the films) in the launderette as everyone had the same idea to wash before leaving the ship tomorrow.

It was so busy, I opted to sit and wait in one launderette until a washer opened rather than run around to another deck where the kiosk shows available machines as I already went to 2 others where machines were either out of service, or someone arrived minutes earlier. I returned to the laundry room and camped out until a machine opened up. Launderette machines status information would be really useful in the Navigator App.

Often, mornings on the ship are quiet, but today it seems like everyone is up and about on our final sea day. Moments like this make me miss Fairytale Laundry on the Wish Class ships – even if it is busy, there is just the single location with an abundance of machines.

Laundry games cut into the morning causing us to miss out on the fun filled napkin folding activity, but I did manage to start the wash in time to make it to DLounge for Anyone Can Cook: Apple Strudel. These culinary events are worth checking out if you are into that sort of thing.

Today, we are taking Isabelle to Remy for the first time.

I think she was a little apprehensive going in to brunch, which was partially my fault. A while back, I started making espumua for dinner with an iSi Gourmet Whip after years for enjoying the result of the technique used at Remy and Enchante. However, Dad doing this at home is a little too much pomp and circumstance for a weeknight dinner. One of the first foams I made was a blue cheese and buffalo sauce for a Super Bowl get together. It also can be used to make an excellent espresso martini and infused simple syrups. Thankfully, after settling in, she enjoyed the experience.

We were welcomed and taken to our table and presented with the Remy Brunch menu. We did have some off menu substitutions/additions due to dietary requests.

The Remy Brunch experience began with a complimentary glass of Pommery Brut Champagne.

This morning’s amuse bouche was a savory croque monsieur with and without ham.

Remy and Enchante arguably have the best bread on the high seas. The bread is sourced master bread maker Frédéric Lalos in Paris. Today, the bread was paired with two compound butters: seaweed and paprika along with regular butter and a side of sea salt to give each bite a pop.

Emily added on the Champagne Experience, which includes three champagnes through the brunch. First up, was Taittinger Rosé.

The first course was Lobster wrapped in a mango ring. The ladies loved this dish!

As a shellfish substitute, I was presented potato gnocchi, which melt in your mouth.

The asparagus course was a hit for asparagus lovers.

Ruinart Blanc de Blancs was the second Champagne in the Champagne Experience.

The toothfish was topped with sun-dried tomato drizzled with chive olive oil. A flavorful spinach and basil puree added to the overall enjoyment of the dish. Everyone loved this.

The Wagyu in the mini beef Wellington (if I heard this correctly), is sourced from Snake River Farms in Idaho. A side of the familiar white wine sauce was included an an accompaniment.

For the non-red meat eaters, Remy offered a chicken sourced from a farm in North Carolina. The skin was crispy and the meat was tender. The ladies throughly enjoyed this dish as well.

Before dessert, we had a caffeine break.

The final Champagne in the Champagne Experience was none other than Moet & Chandon Imperial Ice to accompany dessert.

Dessert featured a baba with lemon cream and a side of limoncello shaved ice and a bonus dish with six strawberry and cream in meringue cups.

Overall, the Remy Brunch food was great, but the overall experience felt much different, almost casual compared previously visits over the years, albeit it that it has been while since we brunched at Remy.

Following brunch, we returned to the stateroom where we finished our puzzle.

Then, we made our way to O’Gills to donate it to the pile of games in the corner and hung around for Sports Trivia.

Muppets Trivia was next just next door in La Piazza which was packed following a paper craft.

Around 5pm, we set out to Bon Voyage for some pre-dinner drinks.

We grabbed some to-go to take into Enchanted Garden for our final dinner, where we were served the Prince & Princess menu.

The food started out great, but fizzled a little towards the end. However, this is the first Disney cruise in ages where we had positive things to say about the dishes. Dishes were mostly well seasoned and mostly well prepared. Kudos to the kitchen (and partially a result of the fact provisions were from European sources). Two years ago when we sailed to Greece on the Disney Dream, we made it a point to eat in port. Primarily, because that’s a great way to really experience a port of call, but also because food was exponentially better ashore than on the Dream. This cruise, while we did eat lunch in port, with only 3 port days, it has been a joy most of the nights with the food coming out of the galley.

Our serving team of Made and Marija were excellent and they honestly appeared to enjoy their jobs and interacting with every one of their tables each night. A refreshing change from recent DCL sailings where service has been slow and robotic. Even Oscar, our head server, worked the tables in an energetic and engaging manner.

Isabelle even passed her math assignment.

Music trivia tonight was the ever popular 2010s, which I sat there looking for the monitor with the lyrics as I couldn’t figure out how everyone besides me in The Tube knew to the word to every song.

We reached that time of the voyage where it’s time to focus on the reality that we need to pack up and get our suitcases into the hallway.

Once the work was done, we settled in and spent the reminder of the evening in the room. Earlier in the day, Emily and Isabelle were talking about a movie with a girl and a cat that I didn’t realize was a Disney movie – Oliver and Company. Well, guess what, it was available in the stateroom and only 75-minutes which was roughly how much time i had left to be awake today even though we are falling back 1 hour tonight which is nice or not nice (not sure yet) ahead of a long travel day tomorrow.

Trip Log Day 8: 7-Night Western Europe Cruise on Disney Fantasy – Southampton – July 31, 2025

Trip log, day eight. Debarkation day in Southampton.
7-Night Western Europe Cruise on Disney Fantasy
July 31, 2025

This is a big day for the Disney Fantasy, which is making her inaugural call to Southampton ahead of an eleven cruise stint before heading to dry dock at the end of September.

I cannot tell you the last time we actually went to the our assigned dining room for breakfast on the final morning, and since Emily & I don’t eat until ~Noon each day, I don’t see us ever going back. I picked up an espresso from Quiet Cove to caffeinate before we left our stateroom & Isabelle said she was good to go.

The announcement that the ship was cleared came over the PA around 7:10AM. We made our way off the ship about quarter to 8 where we immediately found our luggage waiting in our defined area.

A few weeks ago, we arranged transportation from the Port of Southampton to Heathrow Airport with Airport Pickups London. The roughly 90 minute private transfer ran us $206 (USD).

Our transatlantic flight doesn’t depart until the 3 o’clock hour, but we still choose an 8:30AM pickup time. Not much else we could really do with luggage in tow other than go to the airport.

There was a big of a hiccup where we did not need any of the private transfer van drivers holding signs with surnames. I managed to find a driver for the same company who contacted dispatch to get the license plate number for our driver and learned they were about 5 minutes out. Turns out, they use WhatsApp to communicate this information, but I did not have it on my phone and didn’t have cellular service. I did manage to connect to my paid internet package on the Fantasy, but WhatsApp required a 2 factor authentication code they sent via SMS which I cannot receive. I guess, moral of the story, if you are arranging things as part of your international travel, be prepared and in my case setup and signed into WhatsApp.

Our driver was on time, and we were on our way to Heathrow; that is until we were about 10 – 15 minutes out from the airport when traffic just stopped, as there was an accident with a fuel spill at M3 & M25. Our driver was relieved to hear that we were not in a rush to the airport, as he turned off the car for the nearly 45-minutes we sat on the roadway waiting for it to clear up. Once cars started to move, we had to take a detour as the exit to M25 was now closed as emergency crews and heavy lift worked to clean up the accident

The detour did take us past Thorpe Park where we could see the roller coasters in action as we continued the long way to the airport, arriving at 10:50AM.

We still arrived too early, as we were unable to check our luggage. This left us with about 90-minutes to fill before we could drop off our bags and head through security and onto our gate.

We settled in to the Terminal 2 Queen’s Arms restaurant, where lunch took long enough to get us to the magical time where we could drop our luggage off.

A bit of a heads up if you are flying from Heathrow. In Terminal 2, there is a lack of charging ports and outlets available at the seats around each of the gates. Emily did spot a charging station at an adjacent gate, but it was the only one in the vicinity of our gate. Best advice it to be prepared and charged up ahead of time if you have a longer wait.

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I will not bore you with more details about our flight to Newark and our connection back home to Orlando.

Other than to point out, Global Entry is worth the time and expense to arrive and welcomed into an empty line!

Instead, I will share some final thoughts about our 7-night Western European (Spain) repositioning cruise. Outside of the Classics, the Disney Fantasy was the ship that we sailed on the most with 28-nights during her first 18-months of service or something crazy like that. In the early days, she set the bar or service excellence that was only rivaled by the Magic and Wonder. Looking back, our last voyage on the Fantasy was in June 2016. Just short of a decade after our last voyage on this ship, she is still in excellent overall shape inside and out.

The morale of the officers and crew was incredible, and it was a pleasure to sail with Captain Wesley at the helm. While we didn’t meet him in person, we did observe him during his guest photo opportunity and he was beyond personable with each group. Plus, his daily announcements were extremely detailed, and you can tell he is passionate and loves his job.

All things considered, the price and itinerary is tough to swallow, especially after losing a port of call and looking at other cruise lines’ itineraries in the region. While we did have an enjoyable time, I am not sure that we will be returning to Europe on DCL in the future.

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Trip Log Day 7: 7-Night Western Europe Cruise on Disney Fantasy – At Sea – July 30, 2025

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