Anybody have to skip Castaway Cay lately?

We'll be there next weekend...hoping we can dock. I've been on several Disney cruises and I've missed being able to dock at least twice. I'll have my daughter, her husband, and my 11 year old grandson with me. REALLY hoping we can dock at the island. The weather calls for 80 degrees and partly cloudy. Wind 18 mph

We were there the last weekend of February and it was a gorgeous day.

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We were there two days ago (March 17) and it was a bit chilly, but still nice.

The Dream took three attempts to dock the other day, but did get in.

It really depends on the winds and currents on your day - and how patient the captain is with trying.

The winds that are predicted for this coming Saturday make me nervous about not being able to dock, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Thank you to all who responded! Glad you all got to enjoy the island.:cool:

Does size of ship matter? i.e. Magic/Wonder vs. Dream/Fantasy? If so, in what manner?

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Does size of ship matter? i.e. Magic/Wonder vs. Dream/Fantasy? If so, in what manner?

 

 

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I have heard anecdotally that the Classics are more likely to miss - but it still is not a FREQUENT occurrence.

The captains WANT to get you in there - but they are also not going to put you or the ship in an unsafe situation. Unless there is something like a massive storm going on (not talking just rain or even just a thunderstorm) they will make more than one attempt to dock before calling it and making it a sea day. As I said earlier, the Dream made it on her third try last week (a lot of guests thought it was only two, but the first attempt was early - before most of them were up). I have even heard that the captain may opt to cruise around for a little while to see if the conditions improve later.

Two years ago when the Polar Vortex was freezing the country, it was making the currents VERY strong (a private excursion I was on in St. Maarten even skipped a couple of snorkeling spots because it was too currenty for us to safely be in the water due to the rocks and reef the spot was near). The Wonder did not make it on its day. I was on the Fantasy and stood on the top deck aft for an hour while Commodore Tom crept us into the channel - so slow it barely looked like we were moving. I was fully resigned to not making it, but after about an hour we sped up and I knew that meant he had safely maneuvered us into the channel and we would be docking.

If it's any consolation, if it's too dangerous for the ship to dock, even if tendering were a possibility it would be too dangerous to do that too.

edit to add: If there is an issue with winds and currents, while the captain will do everything he can to get you on the island, there is a good possibility that at least some if not all of the excursions will be cancelled due to those same conditions.

So if the forecast calls for "windy" conditions, does that automatically mean the currents will be strong and the ship will have a harder time trying to dock?

There is no way you can predict whether the ship will be able to dock or not. Recent past performance doesn't predict what will happen on the day of your cruise. There are plenty of situations recorded where they couldn't dock one day but a docking happened the next day; usually that was a different ship. There are MANY confounding factors including wind direction, wind strength, currents, height of the waves, etc. Wind direction is at least as important as wind strength, maybe more so. The size of the ship you are on is also a factor.

There used to be a guy who kept a chart of every cruise attempting to dock at CC and whether that was successful or not--the ships typically ran a 1% - 2% "failure" rate. I haven't seen his data for several years and don't know if he is still recording it. On a personal level, I've done 30 DCL cruises. Some of those were not scheduled for Castaway dockings, and I haven't run those numbers...but every sailing scheduled to go to Castaway was able to do so, including one where the captain re-arranged the schedule due to a hurricane in the Caribbean. We've had MUCH worse luck with tender ports--it took us three cruises before we were able to tender at Grand Cayman; in each case the culprit was stated as "rough seas."

The weather prediction you are reading has no effect--you don't know the track record or ability of the persons making the predictions. If you are reading predictions for another island, that's even less accurate. We've docked in rain, wind, and beautiful days. We've had a slightly early departure on one day when the Captain's weather prediction system said the weather might get bad later, so he cut our island time about an hour short to get us well away before the weather got bad. Again, I don't know what systems he has available, but I'd believe them over any longer range stuff you are finding on line.

The bottom line is that the captain will make his best effort to dock, usually trying several times IF he feels conditions are safe to do so. If not, you'll miss Castaway. It doesn't happen often, but it gets a lot of bad press when it does happen. I hope you have a great cruise. All this advance worrying is not going to add to your enjoyment.

Lula Mae was on my cruise! Lol.

They had said 68 degrees for the high, but I think it ended up warmer than that. The water was very cold though. And they closed down everything around 3pm. That was weird.

I was there also on the 17th the strong wing made it feel very chilly.

I was just there yesterday. Weather was amazing. Blue skies nice breeze but the water was very chilly!!!

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Not lately but,

4 out of 7 here. We have little luck docking at CC. We understand this when booking. We encourage others to book around our dates. lol.

We can predict weather by booking a DCL sailing. lol.

Most in Fall though. 3 missed in Fall. 1 in summer.

Only once missed in summer.

Good Luck

Better response than most. IMO.

Why can't posters answer the question?

Actually did I?

I've been on 14 cruises, 10 of which made stops at Castaway Cay. Perfect 10 out of 10 so far.

I've been on 14 cruises, 10 of which made stops at Castaway Cay. Perfect 10 out of 10 so far.

Nice record. If you ask around not many have that consecutive count. Well except those aboard your sailing vessels. :p

You do know you are due for a miss with that count, yes ?

I will try to remember to post our sailing dates so you may avoid them. ;p

May your run continue indefinitely.

Best of Luck to All

:)

I've been on 14 cruises, 10 of which made stops at Castaway Cay. Perfect 10 out of 10 so far.

Yup, we have never failed to make it to Castaway when scheduled. You've done a better job than I at knowing how many of your cruises were scheduled to dock though. I know my total cruises and I can identify several that did not have a stop at Castaway scheduled but it would require looking at the list to give an exact number.

We even made Castaway on two sailings that were altered due to hurricanes.

Of our 7 DCL cruises, we only missed CC once and that was due to hurricane Irene in 2011 that devastated the island.

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Of our 7 DCL cruises, we only missed CC once and that was due to hurricane Irene in 2011 that devastated the island.

 

 

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So you didn't miss due to inability to dock, you missed because they were re-constructing stuff on the island--right? But at least in that case, you knew in advance that the Castaway Cay stop had to be canceled.

Nice record. If you ask around not many have that consecutive count. Well except those aboard your sailing vessels. :p

 

You do know you are due for a miss with that count, yes ?

 

I will try to remember to post our sailing dates so you may avoid them. ;p

 

May your run continue indefinitely.

 

Best of Luck to All

 

:)

I thought about that when i posted it, especially since we're cruising in two months. For me, I'm not as concerned, but my girls have not cruised as much with us and I'd hate for them to lose out! I hope I haven't just stirred the Disney gods.

Yup' date=' we have never failed to make it to Castaway when scheduled. You've done a better job than I at knowing how many of your cruises were scheduled to dock though. I know my total cruises and I can identify several that did not have a stop at Castaway scheduled but it would require looking at the list to give an exact number.

 

We even made Castaway on two sailings that were altered due to hurricanes.[/quote']

 

I'm a bit OCD. I have a spreadsheet of all my Disney related trips, dates, where I stayed, room number, etc. I can't trust things to my lousy memory. I can tell you the four trips we didn't go; two cruises out of NYC, one west coast cruise and one southern caribbean out of San Juan.

So you didn't miss due to inability to dock' date=' you missed because they were re-constructing stuff on the island--right? But at least in that case, you knew in advance that the Castaway Cay stop had to be canceled.[/quote']

 

 

 

We missed because the island was getting hammered by the hurricane and we were stuck in Nassau for 2 days. We were sailing as the hurricane was devastating the Bahamas. The first day Nassau was essentially closed and we didn't get off the ship. So inability to dock--yes for sure! But we didn't know prior to sailing. And, they spent the next two days dredging out the dock area at CC so we could get in there (we were on a B2B).

 

 

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We missed because the island was getting hammered by the hurricane and we were stuck in Nassau for 2 days. We were sailing as the hurricane was devastating the Bahamas. The first day Nassau was essentially closed and we didn't get off the ship. So inability to dock--yes for sure! But we didn't know prior to sailing. And, they spent the next two days dredging out the dock area at CC so we could get in there (we were on a B2B).

Ah, sorry. We were on one cruise where we were told in advance that we couldn't stop at CC as the island had been hit by a hurricane several weeks before and was under re-construction. However, we got a surprise notification on board and the Magic was able to be the first ship to dock. You never would have known there had been any issue at all--the island was gorgeous.

We almost didn't dock yesterday on the Fantasy due to wind. It took 2 tries and by the time we were on the island, we were almost 3 hours after the scheduled all ashore time. They extended the time there, though, and gave us an extra hour. I was surprised that lunch and everything else was still on time.