In this installment of The Vault, we are sailing back to the early 2000’s with a look at Disney Cruise Line’s Castaway Club Shoreside Survival Kit. The Shoreside Survival Kit was promotional mailing sent to guests as a follow up to a recently completed Disney Cruise vacation. The contents of the wonderfully designed mailer included a letter with a bounce back offer and a post card to request a free Disney Cruise Line Vacation planning kit your yourself and a friend. The best part of the Shoreside Survival Kit was a CD with nine tropical tracks, desktop photos and a screensaver to help you imagination sail away when you’re stranded on dry land.
The shoreside survival kit was sent in a very well designed card stock envelope. While it looks multi-dimensional, it is simply an illusion – like I said, it was great design.
Inside recipients found the following letter welcoming them home from their recent cruise. The correspondence from Lee Kitchen, Manager Disney Cruise Vacations (now an independent consultant for MagicMakers Group), included a bounce back offer for a fall 2006 7-night Caribbean Cruise vacation package starting at $899 per adult based on double occupancy.
As part of the marketing effort, the Shoreside Survival Kit included a folded postcard sized enclosure inviting the recipient to share the magic of your Disney cruise with fans and family using one of the two referral post cards.
The post cards were used to request a free Disney Cruise Line planning kit which at the time would have been a brochure and DVD. I have a feeling if I dig a little deeper in some boxes, I may just find a copy for a future installment of The Vault.
The CD/CD-ROM includes 9 audio tracks, as well as some promotional photos and screensavers for both Windows and Mac.
The desktop photos featuring a mix of onboard and Castaway Cay are included below in the full original size of 800 x 600.
Mickey Pool 
Mt. Rustmore 
Sand Castle 
Ship Stack 
Ship 
Sunken Mickey 
Castaway Cay
The desktop screensaver included was available for both Windows and Mac. For the Mac, there were two versions; one for macOS 9, and another for macOS X. However, neither are comparable with the latest version macOS Catalina because it was developed during a time as a PowerPC application which is no longer supported.
The Windows version will still install on Windows 10, and for anyone interested, you can download it here and install at your own risk.
Install Screen 
Install Complete 
Screen Saver Settings Screen
The screensaver was a simple slideshow with background music, Conch Cooler Chill Out – a single track from the included CD, that could be muted in the settings.
I decompiled the flash based screensaver to present the individual images. Please keep in mind, the screensaver was from the mid-2000s so the images are once again 800 x 600.
For the full experience, here is a video of the screen saver.
The true highlight of the Castaway Club Shoreside Survival Kit was the music CD featuring 8 tropical tracks, and 1 track with the fan favorite, ship’s horn, to welcome listeners to the audio escape from land. According to the fine print on the CD, the music was provided by Killer Tracks which was rebranded as Universal Production Music in 2019.
Disney Cruise Line’s Castaway Club Shoreside Survival Kit CD Track Listing
- Welcome Aboard (Ship’s Horn)
- Get the Deck Party Started
- South of the Border Sunshine
- Carefree Castaway Cay
- Serenity Bay While the Kids Are Away
- Day at Sea Daydream
- A Hammock in the Breeze
- Conch Cooler Chill Out
- The Shores of Castaway Cay
For you’re enjoyment, the tracks from the CD are available as individual YouTube videos compiled in the following playlist. For anyone wishing to download the mp3 files, you may do so here.
I am not sure precisely the timeframe when Disney Cruise Line sent out the Castaway Club Shoreside Survival Kit, but the copyright listed for the Windows versions of the screensaver was 2002. These were still being sent out in 2005 as the letter indicates. We did received this following our June 2005 honeymoon cruise which you can read about in our trip reports, but it has been lost in the shuffle during the course of a few moves. As a result, I ended up buying this years ago on an auction site. If you know more about the dates this marketing material circulated please let me know in the comments.
I hope you enjoy the material from Disney Cruise Line’s Castaway Club Shoreside Survival Kit. If you have any cool marketing materials, or other promotional items that you’d like to share in future installments of The Vault, drop me an email.
We received this package and I added the CD tracks to a playlist including other cruising/tropical/vacation songs that is my precruise playlist. Happy music with amazing memories of our happy place.
I still have this CD and play it in the winter when I need a lift and have no Disney cruise scheduled. Not sure when I received it–we cruised late winter/early spring in 2001, 2002, and 2004, so after one of those. This was a really nice gesture by DCL and definitely worked to get us thinking about booking another cruise.
Thank you for posting this, it’s helpfully and uplifting right now.
I’ve that survival kit, also. We got it after our 2008 Panama Canal cruise.
This may be a duplicate. We received the survival kit after our 2008 Panama Canal cruise. The letter was different and included our CC membership cards.
Thanks so much for sharing! The one song I have searched for years for is Adventures’ Away!! I have looked everywhere to find an mp3 of source audio. I even reached out to the composer, and heard back but no luck on the mp3. If anyone here can point me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated! Make everyday a Castaway Cay day!!
Hi Van, I have an mp3 from a live recording, but I do not have any source audio for Adventures Away. I will look around to see if I can find a high quality audio track that I’ll be happy to share.
Much appreciated!