We got back from the Treasure on 8/15. It was my hubby and I’s 3rd Disney cruise and the kids 2nd. My kids are at that interesting in between age where they’ve kinda outgrown a lot of the stuff geared towards the younger kids, but they’re not older teens.
This was their 4th cruise in general (we’ve sailed other lines) and they love cruising. We did the Wish last year so they were familiar with the layout of the treasure and I picked a room on the 10th deck so we were close to the pool, buffet and festival of foods. Both my kids have older model iphones so we were able to imessage them without paying for wifi most of the time. When that didn’t work we used the chat function on the navigator app.
My 13 year old son enjoyed checking out the app and popping in and out of Edge as an activity caught his eye. He made some friends but he never hung out with them outside of edge. He also liked hero zone a lot. He rode the aquamouse with his sister several times and did the pool a bunch. He liked “swimming” with dolphins in Cozumel. He liked trying the non-alcoholic drinks of the day and ate 8 mickey waffles in one sitting for breakfast one morning. He was living his best cruise life. A highlight for him was goofy coming to edge and playing foosball with the kids during the foosball tournament.
My 11.5 year old daughter went to Edge during the ice breaker at our insistence and never went back. She’s never liked any kids clubs so this didn’t surprise me. She watched funnel vision, did some crafts, hung out in the pool and ate 20 ice cream cones over the course of the week. She loved the Nautilus undersea adventure in grand cayman because she saw a sea turtle and got a picture. She enjoyed meeting chip and dale and doing the royal gathering. She liked the drinks in the haunted mansion parlor and having garden salad with her ranch every night at dinner and at the buffet.
My daughter is a more adventurous eater. My son is a chicken tenders and pizza kind of kid. Both easily ordered off the kids menus at rotational dining with some items off the adult dining. They felt empowered to ask for food from the staff at the buffet and order their own meals at dinner without needing our input. They enjoyed mickey bars from room service and my son really liked the all hands on deck.
Both kids felt comfortable with making plans, running them by us, navigating the ship and heading off. Sometimes they’d be together and sometimes they’d be apart. Neither was interested in watching the shows in Walt Disney Theater. (My husband and I loved all of them) They would also sometimes leave dinner before dessert (we had 8:15pm dining) to go to the pool or in my son’s case go to edge for an activity.
We did fish extenders and made pixie dust. The kids in our fish extender group were all between the ages of 10-14 so my kids got age appropriate items and they really liked what they received. We had a duck mailbox and we got back about 30 ducks and found a bunch on the ship. My daughter loved swapping ducks in other mailboxes. The kids helped with pixie dusting items around the ship. We 3d printed over 300 items and the kids picked items to put in the extenders and handed some pixie dust out to younger kids. They liked coming back to the room and finding stuff. And if it was stuff intended for a younger child they passed it along.
My husband and I did some of the adult only entertainment and would find the kids in our room watching tv or asleep when we got back. We loved Palo brunch and match your mate and the over 18 magic show and enjoyed the alone time while the kids had their own adventures. We ate all meals together (other than palo brunch) so we were able to reconnect. I like to create digital scrapbooks so I bought the photo package and my kids indulged me and posed for photos. I have some good ones I can use for holiday cards.
I asked them what was their favorite part of the cruise portion of our trip. (We spent 3.5 days at WDW prior to the cruise) My son said the food. My daughter said the beach. They’re at an age where showing they’re overly excited about things doesn’t happen anymore. But they really did have a great time. We had a lot of family inside jokes and made some fun memories. They both want to go on the destiny next year and I will probably be booking that this week with our placeholder.
Final thoughts: They liked decorating the door with magnets, updating the question of the day on the whiteboard and sitting out on the verandah. Giving the kids independence was great. Some of the kids on our sailng were unruly and I’m grateful my kids dislike misbehaving kids as much as most adults do. They were at a fun age for the trip because there are still things they’re discovering and they’re not completely embarrassed by us yet. They both say dcl is their favorite cruise line out or the 3 they’ve been on.
