Disney Destiny - Day 4: Sea Day / Lunar New Year!

Today is Chinese New Year! It's the year of the Horse, or, credits to Gemini, more specifically the year of the Fire Horse - a rare, high-energy, and transformative year. Symbolizing freedom, speed, and passion, this year favors decisive, fast-moving action. It is a time for taking risks, pursuing ambitions, and adapting to rapid changes, but also requires careful management to avoid burnout. 

Because I am always trying to maximize the Chinese heritage connections for the twins, I set up a red envelope exchange with a few other cabins on board who were celebrating as well. Oh my gosh the kids were so cute in their traditional garb! 

After we handed out all of our envelopes, it was almost time for our lunch reservation at adults-only Enchante. The twins had a plan to catch a showing of Zootopia 2, so the four adults headed up to the 13th floor. The entrance is actually the adults only Rose bar/lounge.

It's very quiet, nice chairs, kind of overpriced drinks but I guess that's the cost for the serenity and view!

I'll run through all the food photos because someone might find our review helpful if you go on the Destiny. Or I figure enough folks just like food photos. 😊 

Starts off with these little starters - one was creamy and the other was chickpea based. I think I liked the chickpea one more. High presentation points:

What's a French restaurant without some good bread and butter:

Laoye actually says he prefers his butter pre-salted because he's not very good at using the little salt spoon. They claimed the butter came from 57 different sources? Is that like 57 different...cows? 😆 

Then a second palate cleanser, little radish rolls sitting in a green tomato sauce. Did the job as a palate cleanser I suppose?

Next up was the scallops, which came as three parts - a cerviche:

And an actual scallop along with a foamy soupy thing with bits of charred shrimp and scallop inside. 

Here is the second tasting course, langoustine (had no idea they were this long when fully unshelled!), which was well prepared...but the sauce was a little too salty for us. 

We ordered one tasting per couple and then the second person would supplement with some a la carte off menu items. Here's the chicken dish that Baba picked as one supplement. He said the highlight was the butter foam that he applied liberally to each bite. 

The tasting menu seafood item was some kind of white fish. This was my least favorite dish of the meal. Pretty bland, texture felt a little rubbery, not my thing. 

By contrast, the pigeon pie was really really good. Maybe my favorite item of the cruise -- though I'm always a sucker for foie gras. 

LaoLao chose the lobster supplement here - it was, as expected, quite nice. But when is lobster ever not good, eh? Again, beautiful presentation.

Baba got another add on dish -- Wagyu (which I was surprised wasn't on the main tasting menu). It actually wasn't as memorable to me as the Pigeon Pie. Also, I feel like we've had some very nicely done steaks in the main dining rooms. But Baba seemed to enjoy it. 

And to move towards the end, we had a cheese plate with 5-6 different cheeses (I forgot to take a photo of, but my favorite was the goat cheese with honey and LaoLao and LaoYe preferred the blue cheese. 

And finally, dessert, which was this chocolate thing that was WAY too much chocolate. Even for me. 

And of course a number of little bites that we decided to largely pack up and bring to the kids. They were pretty bummed that they couldn't come to Enchante -- maybe this is how Disney gets the kids to come back after 18! 

After our lunch (which, I think because of our half tasting menu, half a la carte selection left us not OVER stuffed), we caught the Maleficent mini show. These shows aren't in and of themselves that impressive...but for people who like theatre and Disney character improv, help the whole cruise feel more immersive in the Villain and Hero stories. 

After that it was time for pin trading. This is when I felt like L & R don't fully appreciate monetary value of things yet. I silently cringed a little everytime they just gave away a pin or traded away a pin we actually bought from a Disney Park - but I guess they can stay innocent and naive kids of privilege a little longer before the real world comes for them eventually!

At this point I was getting a little tired too so Baba and I headed up to the adult only pool area for some quiet reading and resting time. I would have stayed longer except I didn't want to miss today's stretch class. Laolao already went once on the first sea day and said she came out sweating and feeling very challenged. I am proud to say my splits were the closest to the ground. 😁 

After stretch class we were headed to dinner, back to 1923. L got the beef with sweet potato mash. 

R got a really lovely chicken and tagliatelle mushroom sauce entree (she added salt, but after that it was very good -- would recommend!).

I opted for the duck breast salad -- the vegetable in the salad and the dressing sauce were actually really nice..but the duck wasn't for me. A little too thicky sliced and gamey for me. 

Our server came by to show us another card trick (the first one last night I was a little meh on but this one was very impressive!)

In honor of New Year, we all helped Baba with his wine package (he bought a 3 bottle package, which we weren't sure would be a good deal at first but we are now already into the last bottle). 

Classic family shot! I am glad all the outfits worked out so well.

Some more food shots from dinner - here is the apple pie. Laolao and Laoye liked it better than the lava cake because it wasn't as sweet.

Sweetness not a problem for R! She thoroughly enjoyed the lava cake. 

L opted for the mint chocolate chip sundae today. And she finished it all before I could turn back from phototaking to ask for another bite. 

This was the sugar free option -- a chocolate mousse thing I believe? I actually liked this more than the lava cake. Perhaps my taste buds are losing their sweetness tolerance - horrors!

Moving backwards -- here's the chilled dill marinated shrimp - not bad but I think I've concluded Disney does shrimps pretty well so they're all starting to blend taste wise. 

Baked oysters! Low on oysters, heavy on breading. But overall decent. Would recommend if you like oysters.

Baba went for the three cheese souffle - he liked it, he describes it as cheese on cheesy shortbread.

Since we got all dolled up, we had to get some more backdrop photos.  Nighttime Destiny:

And lucky gates:

The twins liked their dresses enough that they kept them on all evening. The rest of us swapped back to normal clothes.  Tonight was an encore performance by Bradley and Hiba for adults only - Baba actually though Hiba was better - both quite impressive still.  

The towel animal today - Wall-E (Baba originally thought this was Baby Yoda 😆):

L really wanted to go to the silent dance party...I think she underestimated how embarrassing Baba and Mama could be:

I would have stayed longer except I didn't know most of the songs (you'd think they would have one channel that only does Disney tunes or something!)

So after 10 minutes or so we called it quits to catch the second half of Hercules again. I do really like that show. Except for the Phil parts, those are both musically not as interesting and hard to understand. 

After the show we decided to check out the Family Game Show (alas, we did not get picked). Maybe next cruise! 

At this point it's 11pm and time for bed. Tomorrow is Castaway!

Disney Destiny - Day 3: Dolphins in Cozumel

Today is our first port stop of the cruise -- Cozumel. We've been to Cozumel once before on a Fantasy cruise - I recall we did a chocolate tour because things were just opening again for covid and shore excursion options were limited. Fast forward to 2026...there were SO many different fun things to choose from! I forgot to mention that when we left Port Everglades, there were actually 7-8 different ships all leaving that day - no wonder so many people got stuck in traffic. Even here in Cozumel, I think there were at least 3 ships around -- we disembarked right next to another cruise line and I almost stopped for pictures before Baba pointed out they were not for our cruise. 

We got a close up of the Norwegian ship (the ship to the right of this photo) -- it had a twisty water slide going from like deck 13 or something ALL the way down to like deck 5. The twins were a little jealous. They kept bringing up the Princess cruise this trip as well...I hope this is just their cruise repertoire broadening...and not a sign of Disney fatigue!

The excursion we booked today was at Dolphinaris; we got the "swim with dolphins" package. None of us have ever done a dolphin encounter before so this was sure to be memorable.

We booked LaoLao as an observer because she wasn't so keen to interact with dolphins...and also this way she could take photos of the rest of us. I had heard that the photo packages for Dolphinaris is where they really make their money. The fee for the excursion itself actually seemed reasonable -- but I was told photos would cost like, $500 or something crazy like that -- also they don't let you pick like just a couple photos, you have to buy the whole lot. So we equipped LaoLao with Baba's new Pixel 10 in hopes that the more powerful optic zoom would be sufficient.  

We were in a group of 10 or so, luckily we were standing on the side that was more likely to get front-facing photos from LaoLao. First the dolphin did various tricks, making noises, rising high out of the water, waving its tail, etc.  

We then each got some individual time to hold the dolphin, stroking it's stomach and back. I wasn't really sure what I was expecting but the smoothness and the "I'm holding a large rubber barrel" feel was not what I imagined. I think I thought there would be some hairy parts...or more uneven texture somehow. But it truly felt like it could have been a very large plastic/rubber toy!

Then each person ran through this routine where they would get kissed by two dolphins and then "dance" with the dolphin holding their flippers. 

(The video keeps not processing...might need to wait until cruise ends to update this one). 

Then we formed a large circle for the dolphin to pass in front of us, but there was an older woman who kept breaking formation and getting too far forward, so this just turned into the dolphin circling us like sharks waiting for a meal. 😆 

Here's the last part where the trainer told us to splash the dolphin as a joke...which Maddie (our dolphin) responded to by hugely splashing us. Don't engage a dolphin in a splash fest. You will absolutely lose. 

We did not have a ton of time before the shuttles were going back (the encounter probably lasted 30 minutes or so but there was a good bit of waiting time beforehand and briefing etc) so we didn't do any snorkeling or kayaking (we didn't feel too bad about that because the snorkel area didn't seem like it would be that interesting - being so close to land and cut off from the ocean).

We did have time for lunch (ordered from a menu, included in the excursion price) -- it was decent, nothing amazing, but this will be our only "Mexican" food outing of the entire cruise, so it seemed appropriate. Nice view of the ocean at least!

After getting back on the ship, I decided to do a load of laundry with all our wet clothes and then also get our fish extenders together to distribute. Delivering things up and down the ship apparently makes pirates tired. 

But no rest for the busy! Soon enough it was time for dinner again, this time at Pridelands (Lion King themed). This is the equivalent to Tiana's on the Wonder where there is an actual show as part of the dinner. They ran through some of the Lion King songs but then also had a few African-inspired songs that I hadn't heard of before. The singers were really impressive!

I had read a lot of reports about the food being a bit blah...but we actually thought it was pretty good! And this was after I had an afternoon brisket/ribs snack too. R's prime rib was very juicy.

L went for the shrimp curry - she really really enjoyed it. Like maybe favorite dish of the cruise level good. 

Other things we tried: shrimp and grits appetizer -- I liked this - very flavorful. The roasted chicken was also flavorful, but not as impressive because Costco makes a great roast chicken. 😆 Baba got a coconut soup appetizer that he said was pretty bland. 

After dinner we decided to finish up the interactive ghost hunt. Photo proof of our success!

Sorry forgot dessert photos -- more sundaes...

My coffee sugar-free dome. This is a great choice for someone who doesn't want anything too sweet.

I think R got the creamsicle cheesecake, which everyone agreed was a little too saccharine sweet.

We also passed out some of our Lion King gifts during dinner -- glad others will enjoy those bags and books more than us!

In case you hadn't noticed already, today is pirate night. So even the towel animals got into the spirit -- this towel monkey is pretty impressive!

Tonight was the flagship broadway-level production of Hercules. 

Excited for the show to begin!

After the show, which I thoroughly enjoyed, Hercules being one of my favorites from the 90s Golden Era (L and R concur, they particularly liked the muses and the double casting joke by Hades 😆), we went back to the staterooms to get sweaters (turns out unnecessary, Bahamas in February is much warmer than January in Ensenada) and headed back out for the Pirate Parlay Party. As with all Pirate shows, Captain Hook swung in for an appearance:

Hook helped kick off the fireworks. The show seemed similar to other Disney cruises but the photos of the fireworks actually came out very clearly. The red and blue tube here at the bottom is part of the Aqua Mouse track. 

As you can see, there were lots of people, but it wasn't like sardine packed, which I feel like previous Pirate Night crowds have been. Not sure if it's because the ship is bigger so more viewing areas, or if people on this cruise are just not as participatory in the classic Disney Cruise experiences?

Shot of the grand finale:

And the cruise is now officially more than halfway over. *Tear* -- tomorrow is our second (and last) sea day...and also Lunar New Year!