Disney Cruise Line Announces Port Canaveral Port Adventures

On port-of-call days they have a good idea of how many eat aboard and how many eat ashore, and factor that into the cost of the fare. They're not going to purchase or prepare food that will just go to waste.

Yes, DCL could have chosen to include meal vouchers, and bury the cost in the cruise fare. Vouchers are issued all the time at WDW and DLR, so it's not like they couldn't do it for technical reasons. In this case, they chose not to. There is some room for complication, though, if they do issue meal vouchers. Do they give everyone a lunch voucher, a dinner voucher, both? Do they give out vouchers for table service meals, or counter service (whatever they decide, some folks will be unhappy). If they give out table service vouchers, do they help their guests with dining reservations to ensure that the guests can actually use the voucher? What do they give to the cruisers who choose to visit Kennedy Space Center instead (hey, it could happen!)? Compare these issues to simply saying, "all meals ashore except at Castaway Cay are the guest's responsibility, just as it is on every cruise line," and offering a slightly lower cruise fare (say, $75/person less), making it an easier cruise to sell?

Due to the length of the port visit (passengers can debark as early as 6:15am and board as late as 11:30pm), there's a fair amount of time available for touring the parks. I expect that guests will have on-property privileges (they'll be using their Key to the World cards for park admission), so they could take advantage of the morning Extra Magic Hour park, which will open at 8;00 am. The last bus is scheduled to leave Animal Kingdom at 8:00pm, an hour after park close. The last buses leave Epcot and Studios at 10:00pm, allowing time for Fantasmic! or IllumiNations. The last bus leaves MK at 11:00pm, allowing time for Wishes fireworks. That's a really long day.

Would someone want to visit all four parks? Some will, for the fun of it, but it's not a very efficient use of time. I expect most of those who do park hop will take just one hop. Say, start the day at Animal Kingdom then hop over to Epcot for dinner and IllumiNations. That's a perfectly practical plan, and had DCL not provided the hopping option, they'd probably have a whole lot of unhappy cruisers.

A blanket FASTPASS would be a very nice thing - every park visitor's dream come true. As it is, DCL is selling several VIP tours (at very healthy prices). During the time of the tour (usually 7 hours), the VIP tour guide is the equivalent of an unlimited FASTPASS. As long as he/she is present, the guests on the tour can walk right into the FASTPASS queue. It's not the same thing, of course - the impact on park operations will be quite small. But if they let loose close to 4,000 people with unlimited FASTPASSes on the parks, who could walk off Toy Story Midway Mania and walk right back on again, all day if they wished? That could be very disruptive to other guests' enjoyment of the day.