Have you ever WONDERed what holiday MAGIC is afloat during the holidays aboard Disney Cruise Line? If you love to cruise, visions of sugarplums may not be what fill your DREAMS, but rather a FANTASY about spending Christmas on the water. From the look of things, it’s pretty nautical and nice!
From Thanksgiving through the new year, all four ships are decked with winter wonderlandery. The Disney DREAM and FANTASY are adorned with more than 300 custom designed pieces, including
- 1,016 feet of garland, longer than three football fields and nearly enough to stretch from bow to stern—the entire length of the ship
- 66 holiday sprays of 15 inches to six feet in length
- 29 wreaths from 24 inches to five feet in diameter
- 41 Christmas trees ranging from two feet to 20 feet tall
- One 20-foot-tall tree in the atrium lobby weighing more than one ton, complete with 300 branches and more than 20,000 white LED lights
Special holiday events begin during the Thanksgiving cruises and continue into the new year. Some include
- King Triton’s Tree Lighting nightly in the atrium lobby; a young Guest helps Disney Characters light the three-deck-tall tree
- Family crafts such as decorating stockings, building gingerbread houses, making holiday cards and creating animation cells
- Holiday storytellers sharing tales of Christmas and Hanukkah, plus a story about the magical feeling of spending the holidays on a DCL ship
- Traditional holiday feasts in the themed dining rooms
- Special holiday editions of DCL’s farewell on the final night of each cruise, featuring Disney characters and the ship’s crew in an engaging musical finale led by Mickey Mouse
- NFL football games are broadcast live on the ships’ outdoor, jumbo LED screens
- Cruises stopping at Disney’s Castaway Cay experience “snow flurries,” island Christmas trees, Christmas-attired Character meet-and-greets, carolers, and holiday-themed activities for children
Those fortunate travelers spending Christmas Day aboard DCL will meet Santa Claus and his elves Christmas morning at the atrium lobby tree, where Santa will hand out surprises for all the kids and share his milk and cookies. Christmas services will be held on Christmas Day with a midnight mass on Christmas Eve, and Hanukkah services were held each day during the celebration.
Mini-trees, ornaments, and holiday greenery arrangements are available for purchase and delivery to your stateroom, and this year for the first time, holiday-themed DCL merchandise is available in the ships’ gift shops.
To launch 2013, the Disney MAGIC departs on December 29 for a six-night Western Caribbean itinerary, the Disney WONDER departs December 30 for six nights in the Caribbean, the Disney DREAM sails a five-night Bahamian cruise that departs on December 28, and the FANTASY heads to the Eastern Caribbean for seven nights, leaving December 29. All four voyages include a New Year’s Eve party with music, sparkling wine in commemorative flutes, and a midnight countdown.
Today’s Takeaway:
You may have noticed a few puns in the above article. Yes, they were intended! A pun is a play on words, or according to dictionary.com, “the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest its different meanings or applications, or the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different meaning.”
Here’s a few funny ones I found online. You may need to explain a few to younger kids…or have them explain some to you.
1) The roundest knight at King Arthur’s Round Table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. (Hope you don’t do that this Christmas, lol!)
2) I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
3) No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
4) Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
5) Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, “You stay here, I’ll go on a head.”
6) I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
7) To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
8) A rule of grammar: double negatives are a no-no.
9) Math teachers have lots of problems.
10) Studying fungus is a way to mold young minds.
I feel like we need a ba-dum-ching of the cymbals!
Alrighty, now come up with some puns of your own. I’m always up for a good Snicker (pun again!), so please humor me and leave your witty comments below.
SCHOOL SUBJECT: Language Arts
SKILL LEVEL: Middle Grades
Think outside the textbook with this veteran homeschooling author & editor, and learn while you play!
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