Trip log, day five. Falmouth, Jamaica.
7-Night Western Caribbean Cruise on Disney Treasure
January 1, 2025
Guests Ashore: 7:30 am Guests Onboard: 4:45 pm
Personal Navigator – Day 5
HAPPY NEW YEAR – 2025 will be a big year with our next DCL Blog Group Cruise in May, potential news about the recently announced ship expansion, and end of year launch of the Disney Destiny and Disney Adventure.
Technically, day 5 of our trip started at the stroke of midnight on the upper deck, but you can read all about that in the day 4 trip log entry here.
It’s a holiday, so I skipped out on my morning office ours in Skipper Society. Emily headed to the gym, and once we were ready, we headed ashore in Falmouth around 10 o’clock following the initial rush of guests heading out on port adventures.
We didn’t book a port adventure today, but you can read about our past excursion in Falmouth to Dunn’s River Falls and Bobsled Jamaica as well as an overview of our day in a previous trip log entry.
Leading up to this cruise, we were sitting at home looking for videos showing an overview of the Port of Falmouth to get a better idea on what is actually available to do if you are not heading out of the port compound. Some of the videos found were older, so we started out filming a loop around the port presented below to offer up an updated port tour to the interwebs. There are a lot of things to know about ports, such as where a pharmacy would be located, or where you can go to refill your allotted beer and wine provisions!
After our preliminary walk around the port, I put the camera away, and we went back to a few shops. The Jamaica Duty free shop in the middle of the port does sell bottles of wine if you are looking for provisions.
During our morning walk, we stopped at Island Brew Cafe for some caffeine. They brew the Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee which is fantastic. I enjoyed a double espresso, and Isabelle had an iced coffee.
We made our way in and out of some of the souvenir/t-shirt shops, which for the most part are homogenous with some exceptions here and there. One shop sold some locally inspired puzzles.
There is a large love lock installation spelling out O N E L❤️ V E in the main courtyard area
If you walk around the installation, you can get some fun compositions.
Adjacent to the love locks is a Little Book Box, where you can exchange or simply donate a book.
This was the second day in a row that we encountered a shuttered Margaritaville; this one was REALLY disappointing as we would have loved to spend the day here. When were first stopped in Falmouth, we saw they had a lazy river and it looked like a fun spot to spend some time off of the ship. It sounds like Margaritaville Falmouth was closed permanently in early 2023.
The port of Falmouth is designed to allow 2 ships to dock and have passengers explore Jamaica via excursions either booked through the cruise lines or on your own. There is not much to do at the port itself other than walk around, shop, and eat; not much of an incentive to go ashore. Today would have been an ideal day to hang out at the port pool, have lunch and some drinks. However, this is not currently an option. The loss of Margaritaville in Grand Cayman is minimal compared to the loss in Falmouth, where it had little to no completion outside of the amenities on your cruise ship.
The next best option was to go grab some beers at the Clubhouse Brewery. The primary location is actually in Kingston at the Constant Spring Golf Club. On the day of our visit, there was a food truck outside to go along with the variety of beers available on tap.
Overall, the beer was good, and they have canned beer available if you are looking for provisions. The food truck smelled amazing and we saw many people enjoying their food.
Our very exciting port day ended after checking out a few more souvenir shops. We dropped our purchases off in the stateroom and headed up to the pool deck for lunch at Marceline Market (for some fresh seafood) and Donald’s Cantina, which we enhanced with our hot sauce purchases.
The Jamaican hot sauces were a great addition to our lunch and really spiced things up.
We returned to the room to watch some college football to discover our cooling box (“refrigerator”) was not very cool. To date, we’ve had good luck with the temperature in the coolers from our past Disney Wish sailings. In the back left, there is a 3-way switch with the labels: ❄️ – OFF – ❄️❄️. Moving from 1 snowflake to 2 snowflakes made a significant difference.
The cans we picked up at Clubhouse Brewery were great even at a slightly chilled temperature. The Clubhouse Sorrel was unique and worth a try. I was not familiar with Jamaican Sorrel until today when we spotted Sorrel tea at the café and again at the brewery. Jamaican Sorrel is Roselle which is a relative of hibiscus and okra and can be used in place of cranberry.
This evening, we are skipping out on the main dining room to enjoy dinner in the stateroom. Our hybrid stateroom dinner included a mix of pizza from deck and room service, while we watched the world famous Ohio State University take on Oregon in the Rose Bowl. The plant based chicken sandwich with sweet potatoes fries continues to be a great option.
If you are patient, you can get a whole pie from Daisy’s Pizza Pies. In my experience this cruise, the cast member will take your order and when the walkup line is fulfilled, they will add a new pizza to the oven just for you. This is also the way to go if you have any special dietary concerns or needs.
I am not the best at watching meaningful football games in public so the stateroom was the safe spot to keep me out of the brig, plus ESPN 2 had on the McAfee Megacast version of The Rose Bowl. On a complete tangent, I much prefer to watch Peyton & Eli or the McAfee Megacast over the traditional broadcast of Monday Night Football and select college games & I’m glad ESPN continues to offer these alternatives.
When the Rose Bowl was finally at a point where I could be in public, we headed out to the Buckeye takeover in Periscope Pub. That’s not a typo on Buccaneer, the pub was predominantly a home crowd.
After the game, we spotted Pirate’s Life For Me in Sarabi, and this was as close as we got to the pirate night festivities on this cruise. I stayed up well past my bedtime last night to ring in the new year, as much as I enjoy the Pirate’s Rockin’ Parlay Party, I’m ready to sleep.
All in all, today was a great of doing absolutely nothing and I would not have it any other way!
Question, when you say special needs on full pizza request does that include gluten free crust? Is that an option at this venue. Also is it the same on the Fantasy? I am adjusting to a new doctor ordered diet and it would be great if gluten free was an option here and at the burger pickup places
You can order gluten free pizza on the Fantasy for sure, I would believe the same is true on all ships. You just have to talk to one of head servers/a manager, and they will help get you taken care of. They will cook it in their allergy friendly kitchen and bring it to you.
I just knew the Disney magic would include food choices for 70+ newly challenged patrons. Just needed a “Why yes they do” from your knowable blog. Looking forward to my twin sis trip Cay to Cay in March on the Fantasy. We hadn’t been on that ship yet and looking forward to getting back to one of the classic designed ships.
We recently decided against going onshore at Falmouth due to the lack of appropriate shore excursions for our 5 year old. The vistas from the ship however were truly spectacular.
The tour of Falmouth is just, ummm, depressing.
We’re there later this year and I have no intention of getting off the ship.
The Covid shutdown really did a number on it, not that is was great before. Margaritaville and a Starbucks does not a port make.
Why are all the Margaritavilles closing?
I believe the Grand Cayman location was a casualty of the pandemic. I’ve been looking for the cause of the closure of the Falmouth location, but nothing yet other than the obvious reason: money.