Disney Mediterranean Cruise: Dining, Shore Excursions, the Vista Spa, "Others" and all the things I left out.

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Dining at Disney
I have already mentioned the various kids offerings around the ship. Besides this, there is a fairly nice buffet called Topsiders, which is open often. There is also room service, which is open ALWAYS. Really, always. I called a 2 am to get slices of white bread for a hungry and grumpy Seb. They delivered it within 15 minutes...and with a smile. But the heart of the Disney dining experience is your evening meal.
As you will read in any decent Disney cruise book, they have a rotational dining system. Every night you eat at one of 3 restaurants: Parrot Cay, Lumiere's or Animators Palate. But, the nice thing is that, as you rotate through these 3 restaurants, you have the same wait staff. Our servers, Grace and Laurent, got to know our kids so well by the end of the cruise that they automatically brought them strawberries as an appetizer without having to be asked. (My kids only eat red fruit...sigh). In addition, you also share a table with another family, who rotates with you. Normally, I am not super keen on eating with strangers but we were paired with a really lovely British couple, Emma and Jim. They had two children very similar in age: a 4 year old boy and a 2 year old girl. Coincidence? I think not. This is the kind of attention to detail that makes Disney different. By the end of the cruise. Elliott and Lucas were chasing each other around the table screaming, and the toddlers were enjoying Baby Einstein dinner dates. "? This system also means that the boys automatically had someone that they knew fairly early on in "the club", and I saw Lucas and Elliott playing together there as well.
As an added bonus, I got additional insight on the excursions from Emma, as they were much braver than us and did the "Rome in a day" extravaganza. When they appeared at dinner that night, they both looked a bit like war survivors. In short, the takeaway seemed to be "what were we thinking"? They also had a bad Tunisia experience, but with the market in Tunis. I will she or Jim comment, if either feel inclined.
A note on dinner planning. "READ THE PERSONAL NAVIGATOR", she says again. It tells you (on the top right heading for those who overlook headings) the dress code for each evening. There IS a formal night, and we completely missed that little piece of information. We showed up in rumpled sundress (for me) and rumpled khaki's (for Julien) as we had made zero effort. I won't even mention the state of the kids.
The staff was super attentive and fairly amazing during almost every moment of our cruise.... except for one. Here it comes. Our head waiter, Grace, asked me THE question...the one question you never ask a woman who has kids. The question you should really know better than to ask if you are a woman who has had kids. So, there I am, about to dig into my delightful appetizer of scallops when Grace says (loudly) "so I never asked you when you are due?" Yes, she did. Dinner suddenly turned to ashes. God, I hate this question. Mind you, I have gotten it fairly often because I am a fairly thin woman in all areas except the belly, where my muscle tone and cartilage have been shot to hell after baby number 2. As I have been told by a doctor that this cannot be fixed with anything besides the longed for tummy tuck, I will have to come up with a better quick response to this question than " Uh, um, I'm not pregnant" which is what I said to Grace. I could not really see her blush, as she was from Jamaica, but she began stuttering like crazy and back pedaling.....but damage was already done. Really, one should know that one does not ask that question unless one has been TOLD that the woman is pregnant or unless she YOU SEE THE HEAD CROWNING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. I will say that she had the good sense to avoid me like the plague for the rest of the meal but the ego takes a huge hit after this sort of thing. In a way, I felt bad for her as she did such a lovely job otherwise, but still. Note to Disney Training folks: you need to train on this...end of story.
Overall , the restaurant experience was fun and lively. Be prepared for characters. Be prepared for parades. Be prepared for Opera singers who may force you to sing in a microphone. I will say no more.
The Vista Spa
For the most part, were exactly what I would expect at your average spa on land...but they were not "Disney". They were polite but not particularly pleasant. The woman who did my pedicure was subtly hostile about her work experience, but didn't seem to take it out on me or my toes. The person who cut my husband's hair was irritable but did a good job. Thus, it was not unlike any other spa experience and better than quite a few. Happy Feet in San Jose comes to mind 😊. But none of this would keep me from going back because they offered at least one really unusual service...the Exotic Rasul.
The Exotic Rasul is basically where they take you and your husband to your own private room. This comes equipped with tiled floors, a shower and a plethora of body scrubs, lotions and oils. The other area is a steam room. They spend about 10 minutes telling you about the products, close the door, and leave you alone to do whatever you will do for the other 50. At the 50 minute mark, they knock discreetly and you come out sheepishly whenever you can. Before going in, they stress that the couples LOVE this and that this is YOUR time. So, for us, this was a not so subtle way of saying "go , have sex, with our blessing". With that in mind, we didn't really need the 10 minute diatribe on the different oils but one must keep up appearances. Also, the steam room was a bit treacherous from that perspective. But, all things considered, this was a very lovely experience that couples can use however they see fit. From other readings, I have found that other couples did not take the hint and wore bathing suits, actually tried all the oils and tentatively played in mud. To my mind, all that is fine if you were doing this alone, but there is a reason your mate is there. Enough said.
I thought it was quite amusing that after we came out, the staff who wandered by merely smiled knowingly and avoided eye contact. No one said anything to us and they let us leave at our own pace. Tons of fun, and surprising from Mickey!!
Shore Excursions: Mickey is NOT responsible.
Let me make one BIG forewarning about the excursions. They are NOT, repeat, NOT run by Disney. They are run by vendors hired by Disney. As this was only the second season (I believe) for the Mediterranean cruise, there were definitely some vendor management kinks to work out. The shore excursions, on the whole, were spotty and bifurcated in range of experience. I will break down the ones we attended but there were many more, so do your homework before hand, and you may avoid some of the mistakes I made.
Valletta, Malta: Island Panoramic
This was not the first of the shore excursions that I booked but it was first on the agenda. Our adventure here is a prime example of how Lexy can sometimes overlook BIG details. Somehow, when I read the description of this excursion, which was "Island Panoramic", somehow my demented brain assumed this was by sea. I don't know why. There is no reason for that. Nothing in the word panorama implies ocean but my brain went there nonetheless. So, I had an expectation of us with the boys on a boat for a few hours, soaking up the sun and shoreline. It wasn't until the night before that I re-read the description and realized that it was on a bus. OK, on a bus for 4 hours with the kids was EXACTLY what I wanted to avoid. So that morning I prepared myself for the worst. I brought multiple bottles of water and snacks. I brought Tylenol. I stopped at the notion of lugging around the portable video players but only because my purse (OK it is really a diaper bag- I'm a mom) already felt like concrete had been poured in the bottom.
As it turned out, it wasn't great, but it could have been much worse. The tour itself was too long and tried to encompass the whole island..which is I guess what they meant by panoramic. The result was that it ended up being quite boring in stretches between towns and cities. OK, I will be honest, it was also fairly boring in some of the towns and villages. The tour guide seemed to have a bit of an inferiority complex because she kept going on and on and on about the fact that Malta was SO SMALL At one point, she was discussing football (soccer) and she said that Malta got to play Italy or something. And that they lost, but not by too much and that they were so proud just to be able to play them. It went on like this. I found it a bit depressing. I also got fairly tired of her pointing out petite strawberry fields and live stock. Really, more than once we got "on the right side of the bus you will see a goat". Whoopee. Even the kids were bored at this point. We did stop to see the Blue Grotto, which was really lovely. Apparently there was a boat trip that took you there, but I believe it was a non kid thing. We also stopped at the old harbor where we found a cute little playground for the boys. They really enjoyed this. And we got a cool picture of Lucas with a Maltese Falcon as we were heading back to the bus.
This is one of the stops that I think would have been much better if we had done a little homework before hand and just gone out in Valletta ourselves. That was pretty much the take away for most of the planned "family" excursions.
Tunis, Tunisia: Private Beach Excursion.
OK, I will take a deep breath. This was advertised as basically 2 hours at a private resort, on a private beach in Tunisia. I will point out that they said "private" several times in the description. The ride to and from the resort was supposed to be only 20 minutes. This fit nicely with all my family criteria and, after forcing the kids to be on a bus in Malta, it seemed like a good opportunity for them to run around and for us to lie in the sand and watch them run around. Not a @#@*ing chance.
The ride to the resort was, in truth, only 20 minutes and the walk to the bus had some nice exotic looking scenery despite the overcast skies. Once we got there, the hotel was huge and extremely empty. It was actually had a creepy, echoey, "the Shining" kind of feel. It was also quite a hike from the hotel lobby out to the beach, which required constantly pulling Lucas away from all the attractive nuisance items along the way...bugs, flowers, sand, small bits of rock. But all this was quasi normal and no real problem. The problem was when we got to the beach.
I don't know if they have different translations for the word "private" and that is how wires got crossed but suffice it to say that this was NOT a private beach. This was the antithesis of a private beach...this was a beach with VENDORS! And not vendors offering you drinks and sun umbrellas. These were the "here you must have this spotted clay ashtray" type of vendors. We had not been at the beach for more than 3 minutes when some guy came up to me and said "You are the most beautiful of the women here. Your husband is lucky. I would gladly offer 4000 camels for you". I kid you not, he actually said this. Really, it sounded like some movie cliché. Perhaps he meant it as a complement to butter me up to buy something but, if so, he had a poor understanding of western women. Then he proceeded to harass Julien by saying that if he had such a fine wife then he would surely be buying her things. When Julien ignored him, he started telling me that French men are notoriously cheap. I don't even know what he was selling. It was some brightly colored piece of pottery like substance.
Just so our children wouldn't feel left out of the hard core sell, they had horses and camels right next to us on the beach....right next to us. This meant that when I wasn't being harassed by vendors, I was chasing Lucas away from the front end of fairly nasty looking horses and camels. Or I was chasing Seb away from back end and feet of said horses and camels. OR I was trying to keep Seb from eating the horse and camel poop that was strewn all over the beach. I don't think I succeeded on that last bit. When Seb wasn't trying to get trampled or eat camel poop, he was trying to climb some old wooden drift wood thing that might have been designed to be a play structure but was certainly covered in splinters. So, after about 20 minutes of this, most of the sensible people from the group had retreated to the pool area. We didn't, mainly because we are both fairly stubborn, but also because I suspected that the pool would be even colder than the water and even less monitored. From discussions with other parents, I found out that I was right. It was quite a relief when we realized that the two hours were finally up.
I will say that Disney made good on this, I called and made a verbal complaint and filled out the requested comment card. Within 24 hours someone had called to thank us for providing input and to inform us our money would be refunded. Apparently, this was a fairly new excursion for them. In retrospect, I can only wonder at their choice of destination. Tunis doesn't have that much that is exciting for families of young ones. Perhaps they wanted a harbor so that we didn't have to tender but, really, I would have preferred tendering in a nice harbor with a nice beach. And voila. I would not go on this excursion again. Nor would I go on another planned excursion there, as I heard NO positive feedback about any of the Tunisia excursions. I might consider going to the markets with just Julien, but not even sure about that. In short, this excursion and port was neither worth your time or money. Stay on the ship!!
That being said, when we came back Lucas said "I LOVE TUNISIA". It must have been the camels...go figure.
Naples: Vesuvius, Wine Tasting and Pompeii
By this point in the cruise, I was LOVING the ship, and about to give up on the excursions. Malta was OK. Tunisia was bad. But this day was a better prospect. We had booked the Nursery all day, and dropped Lucas at his "club" so that Julien and I could do this one by ourselves. I am so glad that we did because it made up for the other two.
We started the excursion in a bus, as usual. The ride to the volcano was OK, but not fantastic. The tour guide seemed to think a little too highly of herself for my tastes (hmm, it is looking like I just don't like tour guides). However, once we got to the volcano itself, things took a fairly steep upward turn. We were taken most of the way up to the crater in 4 x 4 jeeps that looked like leftover army vehicles. The final bit of the climb we did on foot. The view was incredible and the volcanic rocks, stones and soil were so multi colored that I occasionally felt like I had fallen into some 60's flashback. Once we got to the crater, it was amazing to look down into the mouth of this sleeping god and realize the power that simmered there. It was a little like falling in love. We got some fairly cool videos of the steam coming out of vents in the crater as well as the obligatory photos of us in front of it but none of this captures the feel of the place. It is a visceral thing that you just have to experience. I must admit that I, like roughly 4,000,999,993 tourists before me, took a few stones away. I rationalize this by the fact that I left some coins on the ground as a kind of payment. Yeah, I'm weird.
When we were done with this, we loaded ourselves back into the tanks, and went down the crater to a vineyard that was actually on one side of the mountain. It was quite a small place, but as we all crowded off the bus, I noticed that the owner had hung the flags of various countries in front of the building. It was a sweet touch. While there, we had the opportunity to sample numerous wines that he produced. Even though this was not a restaurant, he also provided food in the form of large bowls of pasta. This was served by a very serious looking Italian man, who was quite strict with his manners. When Julien held his plate out for more pasta, he said that you always serve the head of the house first, meaning me. The owner was clearly just a man who was proud of his vineyard and he gave us a history of it and his family, via the interpreter. There was no pressure to buy wine, or to do much of anything. It was truly lovely, and we were all pleasantly toasted when we were finished. They also had the forethought to provide lots of water, so I did not get the headache that I so often do with wine. Of course, with such a great experience, we bought 2 bottles of wine AND some olive oil. I hope Disney keeps working with this man, as this was such a warm reception.
After finishing our wine and food, we all sauntered back to the bus and made our way to Pompeii. I must say that the weather gods had been very kind to us so far, and continued to be, as there was sudden cloud cover when we got to Pompeii. This cut the heat which was becoming a bit stifling. In truth, I don't remember too much about Pompeii with the exception of the temples and the brothel...but I figure that is good enough. Once again, a very strong feeling here that must be experienced.
When we had finished in Pompeii, we had roughly 30 minutes in which to look for souvenirs outside before we left. After getting a coffee, we found a place that would MAKE you a pair of shoes. Not only could they do this, they did make me a lovely pair of sandals in less than 10 minutes. So I also had my chance to pay homage to the shoe gods. We went back to the ship very relaxed and happy.
All in all, a great excursion. I would give it a 9 out of 10, which is really close to perfect coming from me.
Ajaccio, Corsica: Tortoise Protection Center
I booked this excursion because it was described a bit like "Go, Diego, Go". I figured that the kids would love it and, since it was only 3 hours, it would give them a chance to run around for a while. It turns out that I was fairly correct in all assumptions.
The tortoise center had pretty much everything you would ever want to know about tortoises. It had big tortoises, little tortoises, tortoise babies and tortoise eggs. They also had a plethora of species and appearances. They even had one that looked a bit like a crocodile. As I said, everything you could ever want to know about tortoises...with the added benefit that it was apparently tortoise mating season. We saw no less than 7 tortoise porn shows. And they make noise..who knew? Unfortunately, they also look a little too much like you would imagine your grandfather would having sex...so the icky factor was high. Luckily, the kids didn't even seem to notice. Of all the kids there, I didn't hear one comment. Phew.
It was short but fun for the kids and worth doing. In fact, it was the only planned family shore excursion we took that I would put in that category.
Villefranche, France: PERFUME
As a late birthday present, Julien suggested that I go on this outing. It was described as going to a perfumery in Eze and having the opportunity to learn about perfume making, as well as the chance to compose your own perfume. As Perfume is one of my favorite books of all time, I was ecstatic at the prospect.
Part of the present was that Julien would take care of the kids, and I would have some alone time. This particular harbor required that we "tender" e.g. take a ferry to the shore. I don't mind this, as it tends to lend itself to a more beautiful landscape. Once on the bus, it took us about 1.5 hours to get to the perfume factory. It SHOULD have taken about 30 minutes, but 10 minutes into the drive the driver got a call saying that the ONE person who was late had showed up. So, we had to go back for the ONE person. The traffic was nasty and the driver was none too happy. OK, none of us were too happy. When we had maneuvered our way back, the tour guide had to then go and find this person. So, finally some chick shows up on the bus with this sheepish "I'm sorry but aren't I cute" kind of smile. It makes one long for the days of tarring and feathering. She was clearly of the "high maintenance, think too much of myself" clan. But I digress.
When we got to the perfumery, it turned out not to be just any perfumery but Fragonard. If you haven't heard of them, check it out. Quite impressive. We spent about an hour learning about the craft of making a perfume. After much hard work, I did end up crafting a fairly decent perfume, but for other people. Really. It smells great on other people. On me, it smells like grandma soap. But the experience itself was fabulous.
We then toured the factory and got a chance to buy some real perfume in the shop. Afterward, we went down to the medieval town of Eze. When we got there, it was pouring rain, and rather than seeing yet another castle (my ex husband was Scottish and I have seen enough castles thank you very much), I chose to spend my time having not one, not two but three coffees at a local cafe. I was nicely buzzed when I returned to the bus. Here I encountered the only tour guide from the shore excursions that I really liked. We had a lovely conversation about the cruise industry and organized tours in general. I got some valuable insight for next time around. Then back to the boat.
Overall another experience I would recommend. The only drawback was high maintenance woman, who remained high maintenance for the rest of the excursion....AND appears to have worked for Disney. (Disney...her name is Sarah....please fire her. Thank you. )
Non Disney Excursions
After the first two planned excursions, we decided that we would not do anymore planned excursions that we had not already bought. Instead, we did a few on our own, and all of those were wonderful. Julien and I got off in La Spezia and took a cab to Portovenere, where Byron was inspired and not too far from where Shelley died. It was a glorious lovers day, and definitely worth a visit. In Villefranche, we took the kids to the beach ourselves and all of us had a great time. It cost nothing and the boys were in toddler and preschool heaven.
So, the takeaway is 1) for simple pleasures, do it yourself and 2) for non simple pleasures, do it yourself. For the extraordinary things, like the winery or perfumery, you can't really do it yourself and it is well worth it. But be conservative as the shore excursions are very expensive and will eat up your budget faster than anything else.
Ratings:
Dining Experience: *** ( would be a 4 but for THE comment)
Vista Spa: **
Malta Shore Excursion:**
Tunisia Shore Excursion: less than zero
Naples: Vesuvius, Pompeii and Wine:****+
Corsica, Tortoise Protection Center:***
Villefranche, Eze Perfumery: ****

Summation 😊
I want to put in a caveat here in that, believe it or not, I have not covered everything in this review. There are lots of additional adult bars and activities that we didn't really have the energy or inclination to do. There were all sorts of classes and tastings, such as cooking classes, how to make the towel animals, sangria tasting, margarita tasting for those who want to either get educated or get toasted. For the "let's all share a family activity" types there was karaoke, something that seemed vaguely like "Family Feud", a family dance club and bingo. For the "let's get away from the family" types there was a sports bar, a dance club, a couple cocktail bars, a coffee house and several adult only shows at the clubs. Also, as I mentioned earlier, there is a club for the 11 to 13 set, as well as "the Stack" for teens. There was also a gym which I avoided like a vampire avoids the light. I mean, this is a VACATION after all. For those gym rats who actually enjoy working out (my husband, Matt and Shelley come to mind) this might be useful but it is unlikely to be the gym of your dreams. Julien went a couple times and thought the facilities were OK but not great. Lots of the bikes were broken and they had no way to fix them as the vendor was back in the US. In short, I think this gym exists really for those who have eaten a bit too much and want to spend 20 minutes in the gym so that they can alleviate the guilt...but that is just my perception.
As we didn't really use any of these things, I can't really make any assessment of how worthwhile they are. I can only say that these things exist, along with lots of other options, so it is fairly hard to get bored unless you really dedicate yourself.
All in all, taking into consideration all the pro's and con's, this was a great family vacation. In truth, it is probably one of the best "family" vacations that I have ever taken...including family vacations taken when I was a kid. It was not perfect, but that is part of the joy of the family vacation. It is not going to be perfect. Kids will be kids. Things will not be what you expected. Plans with go awry. Someone will eat poop. But maybe it is these moments that we remember most vividly and talk about most frequently, like veterans remembering a war (or lawyers remember law school). What Disney does, and this cruise did exceptionally well, is mitigate the pain of these things so that you can enjoy the moments more. You have to love the fact that their onboard store had : Infant Tylenol, children's Tylenol, Benadryl, Dramamine, diapers, wipes, various baby foods and a couple of binkies...just to name a few. They seem to know that your children have sucked the intelligence right out of you, so they pay attention to all the details that you are incapable of concentrating on for more than a few moments. They also know that togetherness, to be truly enjoyed, must be paired with time apart.
As a result of all this, and before the cruise was even half over, Julien and I had waited in the surprisingly long line to book our next cruise. So, for Christmas 2011, Sebastien, Lucas, Julien and Lexy Delorme will be joining "Auntie M" and "Uncle Bean" on the Disney Magic for the Western Caribbean Cruise. Between now and then, I guess the boys will have to be content with Disneyland Paris 😊.

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