Theresa Zoe

I worry. I mean I worry a lot. Anxiety and I go together like peas and carrots (Forest Gump anyone?).  

Ever since I was a kid, I have had anxiety about everything. Sometimes it’s crippling. Whether it’s about work, or family related, or about day-to-day things, anxiety can derail my day.

In my elementary days, going to school every day carried the same fear as if it was still the first day of class. Regular assignments had the same weight of projects that were worth fifteen percent of my grade. While the majority of people would unwind at night, the circus of fear, worry, stress, and uncertainty would go to town in my head. The nights felt so long sometimes.

My faith wasn’t a priority growing up. It wasn’t until I was a teen and in confirmation class that I started my relationship with God. And the only reason I did was because my catechist shared a bible verse with the word anxiety in it.

I was 15, and a metal head that wore band t-shirts, like Marilyn Manson, to class and Mass. I had no interest in church. I remember bluntly telling a Catechist on the first day of class that I didn’t want to be there, that I was going to sit in the corner and listen to music on my portable CD player (dang, I feel old). 

On the fifth class, I realized that I had forgotten my headphones. I felt like the son in the movie, “Little Miss Sunshine” when he realized he was colorblind and couldn’t get into the Air Force. For thirty minutes, I played the drums on my desk with my fingers and counted the dots on the ceiling. Then I put my head down and tried to sleep. Out of boredom, I finally decided, for the first time, to pay attention. What happened next changed the direction of not just my life —but of my eternal destiny. My Catechist grabbed her Bible, and read 1 Peter 5:7.

"Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

My heart was pierced and I was filled with peace. It’s not that I never believed in God but I just never thought he believed in me. It was a Hebrews 4:12 moment. 

“Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.”

I put my head down again and began to weep. I didn’t want the other teens in the class to hear me cry, so I pretended to cough up a storm. When class was over and everyone left, I went up to my Catechist, who was terrified that I was approaching her. With teary eyes, I asked if she believed that God cares — if he really wants us to give him our anxieties. I think she realized that God had spoken to me in that class, and with emotion, she told me she believes He does.

I knew that believing in God and living out my Catholic faith didn’t mean I would never have anxieties, but I was so hopeful it would help me to overcome them. Fast forward ten years later and i’ll tell you that #thestruggle to learn to overcome continues. I love repeating scripture on anxiety to myself whenever I feel worried or afraid.

"Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”
Philippians 4:6

"Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself."
Matthew 6:34

"When I am afraid, in you I place my trust”
Psalm 56:4

I have spent the majority of my faith life wrestling with why I still have anxiety when I know down in my soul that I shouldn’t. I know that when Jesus spoke he was intentional. Behind His words, “do not worry” is an all knowing and all caring God who knows my past, present, and future. He fully knows me. He knew I would have read His words, and He still said not to worry.  I felt at times that I was a bad Christian because I worried, “Do I really not trust God? Does my worry suggest that my faith in him is fake?”. I felt like this more than I would like to admit.  

Last year, my good friend Arleen Spenceley, shared a quote from the Catechism, paragraph 2547, on Twitter.

At first it was a reminder of how much of a bad Christian I must be. But after praying with this quote for hours in my parish chapel, I came to a different understanding.  That is, that a Christian isn’t promised the absence of anxieties, fear, worry, and stress but rather that they can be offered up to lead us to the providence of the Father. 

The anxiety I experience is an opportunity to encounter God in prayer. If every time I experienced anxiety I stopped and prayed, I would be so much holier than I could even imagine. It’s like when St. Paul asked the Lord to remove the ‘thorn in his side’ and the Lord responded to him with “my power is made perfect in weakness.” ( 2 Corinthians 12:9)

Like Jesus who was 100% divine and also 100% human, he also had moments of fear, hurt, and abandonment. He understood the weight of these feelings but also understood how to deal with them.

Now, I thank God and hope when I feel weary that I may feel weary enough to fall to my knees like he did in the garden. May my worry and anxieties lead me to prayer where I can abandon myself to the providence of the Father. May I splint myself to the cross to correct my posture, to help me have stronger faith and give myself more to him.

Abraham Villea is the Director of Youth Ministry at St. Mel Catholic Church in Southern California. He became a Pokémon Master at the age of 7 and mastered how to straight razor shave last year. He loves all things hipster and pomade! 

Here’s a memory I have only shared with one other person before:

I was 13 years old, walking home with my neighborhood friends after a long night of our drug of choice: video games. Discontentment abruptly sequestered my mind: Video games. Always video games. That’s all we ever did. 

How pathetic is this? I thought. After a few years of this, I had finally felt the utter absurdity of it all. We hardly even knew each other. We were, I knew, simply alone—together.

Admiring the uncommonly perfect night sky, an absolutely terrifying dread took over my entire being.  What if the next few years are exactly like this, and I have nothing good to look back on one day? How sad will I be when my youth passes? Will I even care? Will I still be alone? What if that’s it? What if I’m always…I’m just alone? 

This dread plagued me the entire summer. 

At the tender age of 13, I encountered a genuine fear of loneliness.

——

Another memory.

I had my first experience of true and radical doubt my senior year of high school. The summer before college featured some of the most difficult months of my life, as the faith I had come to hold so dear (and had eradicated the dread of that summer evening 5 years years prior!) felt so horrifyingly threatened. And worse—I was convinced—no one understood what I was experiencing.

One particular morning, I woke up in my best friend’s basement. This basement had no windows, and when I awoke I had no idea what time it was, as the room was pure, oppressive darkness. I rolled over.  The cable box read 10:30 AM. My friend had apparently already up and left for the day, and as I attempted to clear the morning fog from my mind, a voice spoke a heaviness into my heart that I would carry throughout college and into my mid-twenties: I am so alone.

I stepped out into the warm and clear-skied day, my eyes adjusting to the light, hoping healing would come swiftly, and unaware it would take many more years.

——

In his greatest work, Introduction to Christianity, Benedict XVI provides perhaps the greatest reflection on Christ’s Descent Into “Hell”, or “the Dead”, one can find. In it, he concludes what I had come to know by experience: that all fear is ultimately the fear of loneliness.  More so:

“In truth--one thing is certain: there exists a night into whose solitude no voice reaches; there is a door through which we can only walk alone--the door of death. In the last analysis all the fear in the world is fear of this loneliness. From this point of view, it is possible to understand why the Old Testament has only one word for hell and death, the word sheol; it regards them as ultimately identical. Death is absolute loneliness. But the loneliness into which love can no longer advance is—hell.”

The fear of loneliness reaches its zenith, then, in death. Only I go through my death: no other can accompany me, not even the faithful spouse who dwells by my deathbed in spousal fidelity.  

From here Benedict articulates in his usually stunning prose that Christ’s “descent into the dead” is precisely God’s suffering with and dwelling with us in the midst of this, our most total abandonment and solitude:

This article [of the Creed] thus asserts that... in his Passion he went down into the abyss of our abandonment. Where no voice can reach us any longer, there is he. Hell is thereby overcome, or, to be more accurate, death, which was previously hell, is hell no longer. Neither is the same any longer because there is life in the midst of death, because love dwells in it. Now only deliberate self-enclosure is hell or, as the Bible calls it, the second death … But death is no longer the path into icy solitude; the gates of sheol have been opened. ...The doors of death stand open since life--love--has dwelt in death.

The ultimate (dis)embodiment of human dread and loneliness—death—has been infiltrated by Love. The only true loneliness that remains is “deliberate self-enclosure.”

From this incredible fact flows the necessary consequences. If our very own journey into death is no longer a “path into icy solitude”, then every lesser form of loneliness we encounter likewise has been uplifted, transformed—redeemed. He is always there.

I experienced this profound reality in my recent 8-day retreat. I revisited that damp, dark basement with my spiritual director, in the knowledge that Christ was somehow present in it. After a few minutes of prayerful reflection, he asked, “What are you feeling?”  

I stuttered with my response. “Well—I mean… I can’t resent that morning. He knew I would be here looking back on it eight years later.” 

——

I’ve been thinking about loneliness a lot lately. 

After a year of seminary that featured some remarkable ups and some unbearable downs, the Lord has made explicit his invitation to me to wholly embrace celibacy. Here this summer, at the Institute for Priestly Formation at Creighton, hardly a day goes by without the topic of loneliness emerging in class. It seems to be present on every seminarians’ mind.

One morning I had a particularly embarrassing realization. The priest teaching the class had just concluded talking about the importance and significance of constantly relating our thoughts, feelings, and desires to Christ throughout our day. “As we begin to relate everything to him,” he said, “we realize that we are never alone.”

Relating thoughts and feelings throughout my day, I thought. That’s how I use Twitter sometimes.

That’s how I use Twitter sometimes.

That’s freaking how I use Twitter.

The absurdity of it all was evident. Every time we return to the isolation of our rooms, every line we find ourselves stuck in while shopping, every seemingly boring and useless moment, every time we wake up at 3 a.m. and the doubts and fears and burdens of life seem inescapable… the devastating silence of the married lying in bed together during a time of difficulty and uncertainty… the pain of the single Catholic waiting for a human love worthy of their heart… All of these: moments totally occupied, either by us tapping on the screen of our phones, seeking to alleviate the boring and dreadful loneliness, eager for the squirt of dopamine from some form of interaction with someone somewhere, or occupied by our own self-enclosed thinking, acting as if we are utterly alone. 

Or Netflix, or music, or books, or whatever our distraction of choice is. Substitute idols for his unsubstitutable presence. Not bad in and of themselves, naturally, but in moments like these we must take watch: “The question is why are you doing this?” Deacon James Keating asked us just this week. “To hide? To kill grief? No. Stop. Go pray. These things won’t kill your grief.”

There we are, stabbing our grief with a plastic knife. All the while Christ is there, speaking powerfully: “My grace is sufficient for you.” 

——

Pascal gifted us this marvelous reflection on Christ’s Agony in the Garden: “Christ will be suffering until the end of time. There must be no sleeping during this time.”  Is this not true of his loneliness also? Those haunting words: “Could you not keep watch with me one hour?” 

Loneliness is now occupied by Love himself. The feeling isn’t going anywhere, not until the Kingdom comes in fullness. But the feeling is, truly, of no importance any longer. It is, somehow, an invitation to intimacy with him.

Yet something in us desperately seeks to avoid this invitation to intimacy. For some of us—please tell me it’s not just me—there is something far more tempting and comforting about the isolation. “Better to dwell in the tragedy of feeling loneliness and inadequacy than trust in the feeling-less reality of his presence,” we convince ourselves. I want God to come close, but this close? I’ll share with him my joys, my successes…but my misery? My boredom? My loneliness? No. Too close.

Ruth Burrows comments on and admonishes against precisely this, if perhaps rather provocatively:

As regards interior suffering…the only way to deal with it is to refuse to have it, to refuse to suffer from it. We are far better off without it. If we can’t get rid of it at will, we can use it by persistently lifting ourselves out of it, moving up into the real world of Truth and Love. This sort of inner suffering is fantasy, it has no reality. Reality is the life, the world, of the risen Jesus, where there is utter security and joy, where all is well and will be well. This is where we must live, not in our miserable subjective states of feeling, measuring life as seems to us, as we feel it to be instead of as it is. For many people, for us all, really, the surrender, the dying to self lies precisely here. It is not understood sufficiently. Masochism, dramatization of suffering is every bit as common and just as much an obstacle as lack of generosity in bearing the hardships of life.

This is no escape from reality, but rather a courageous step into the reality that, in spite of whatever it is that we are feeling, Christ is there. It is a radical claiming of our true identity gifted us in faith as, simply, beloved. It is a rejection of the lie that we are alone. It is the acceptance that the emptiness and solitude we stumble into is—to our surprise!—now inhabited by another.  

Now, only “deliberate self-enclosure” is the hell of loneliness. 

Now we are never alone, feelings be damned.

 

By Greg Hurst

By Angela Dahlgren

Hello all you crafty people! Join me in another Disney It Yourself project: The Disney DIY lamp shade!

Let’s get started!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Scissors or an X-acto knife
• Thicker paper like card stock or construction paper
• Scotch tape
• A lamp shade of your choosing
• A Printer to print out your silhouette

First, select which silhouette you’d like to use. I googled “Disney Silhouettes” and chose Cinderella Castle. I sized it to fit my lamp shade (by pasting the photo in Word) and printed it off.

Next, cut out the silhouette and tape it to the card stock. Taping it onto the card stock will ensure that it doesn’t move while you’re tracing and cutting.

Using your X-acto knife (which I would highly suggest for this part), trace and cut out the silhouette. This part will take some patience, so make sure you have some stored up before starting this project!

Pop out the cut-out. If it doesn’t pop out right away, use the X-acto knife to trim away any stuck edges. Here’s what it should look like:Now grab that lamp shade. Place the cut-out where you want it and tape it on to the lamp shade. If you’d like to adhere the silhouette more permanently, try using an adhesive spray. I like using scotch tape because it’s easy to remove if I want to change out the castle for something else.

 

Attach the completed shade to your lamp and you’re done!I love love love this DIY. It is a great project to add a subtle touch of Disney to your decor. It was fairly simple and required materials you would most likely have around the house.

Is this a project you would try out? If you do recreate it, please post a photo to my Twitter @AngelaDahlgren. I’d love to see it!

 

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By Erin Foster

You’ve booked a Disney Cruise Line voyage, yay! One of the first things many guests ask (after “How am I going to pay for this?”) is “What should I wear?” This simple question is a hotly contested topic in some circles. I’m here to talk you through what you need to know.

What should I wear to dinner?

Disney Cruise Line ships each have three main dining rooms (MDRs). You will be assigned to eat at one of the three MDRs every night of your cruise.

The default dress code at the MDRs is “Cruise Casual.”

The MDRs may also have any of several possible other dress suggestions depending on the specifics of your sailing. These might include formal attire, semi-formal attire, pirate attire, tropical attire, Pixar attire, Frozen attire, or Star Wars attire. In the main dining rooms, everything other than cruise casual is simply a suggestion and is completely optional. I repeat EVERYTHING OTHER THAN CRUISE CASUAL IS OPTIONAL.

What does cruise casual mean?

Basically it means regular clothes. In mid-2013, Disney changed its definition of cruise casual to clarify that wearing shorts is OK. The only items now specifically discouraged in the main dining rooms are “swimwear and tank tops.” Jeans are fine. Shorts are fine. Capri pants are fine. Tee shirts are fine. Sandals are fine. Sneakers are fine. Even the “tank top” issue is malleable. Men should probably not wear tank tops, but I’ve worn slacks or skirts with nice sleeveless tops into the MDRs several times with no problem whatsoever. The general gist of the issue is that they don’t want you to wear beach clothing into the main dining rooms. Seriously, wear your regular clothes, minus swimwear, and you’re good to go.

What does formal attire mean?

Formal attire means tuxedos for the men and long gowns for the women.

I have to wear a tux? I didn’t even wear a tux at my wedding. Do I have to rent something just to wear for a few hours on vacation?

If you have a tux and want to wear it, enjoy. But in practice, only a small percentage of guests (particularly the men) will don full formal attire. Remember, I said that formal night is optional. Many guests choose to wear something nicer than “cruise casual” on formal night, but the range of dress is broad. Very broad.

I sailed on the Fantasy last month. Our formal night was Easter Sunday, a holiday on which you might expect a larger than typical portion of the guests to be gussied up. I sat in the lobby atrium for about 45 minutes, specifically paying attention to the clothing choices made by guests. While this wasn’t a scientific study, I can tell you that during my observation time, in which several hundred guests passed my location, I saw exactly three men wearing tuxedos and two men wearing full military dress uniforms (swoon). Perhaps half of the remaining men wore suits with jacket and tie. The rest of the men were fairly evenly split between jacket with no tie, button down shirt with slacks, golf shirt with slacks, button down shirt with shorts, and golf shirt with shorts. A handful wore regular tee shirts and shorts.

That same night, about a quarter of the women were wearing long dresses, about a quarter wore fancy cocktail dresses or pantsuits, about a quarter wore nice skirts or sundresses, and the remainder wore something like slacks or shorts with nice top.

If you want to wear a tux or gown on formal night, knock yourself out, but don’t feel obligated.

What are some good reasons why I would want to dress up on formal night?

For many guests, the primary motivator for formal dress seems to be getting family photos. If you’re having a family reunion or if you’ve never had real professional formal portraits done, the cruise is a decent opportunity to do this. You’re welcome to go back for photos as often as you like and all the shots can be included on one CD for a fixed price.

Other guests simply enjoy formal dress. I’ve heard several comments along the lines of, “I wear jeans all the time at home, the cruise is my one opportunity to dress up. I love every minute of it.”

If you want to dress in full formal attire, but don’t own the right clothing, try consulting Cruiseline Formalwear for a rental.

What are some good reasons not to wear fancy attire on formal night?

There are several good reasons not to dress up on formal night based on money. Some of these are: you don’t want to spend money to buy/rent formalwear; you own formalwear but don’t want to spend money to alter or clean it; you own formalwear but don’t want to spend money to check the bag required to transport it to the ship; you have a vacation budget allocated and you’d rather spend it on excursions or a nicer stateroom than on fussy clothing.

However, the very best reason not to dress up on formal night is that you don’t want to. Maybe you’re not a tux kind of guy. Maybe you wear suits all day for work and you look forward to the one time of year when you don’t have to dress up. Maybe you just think the entire thing is silly and pretentious.

Again, the dress in the main dining rooms is a suggestion, not a requirement.

What does semi-formal mean?

I’ve never seen an official definition of this anywhere. In my personal observation, most people interpret semi-formal to mean formal, but without the tux or long gown in the mix. For men, this often means a standard suit, with or without a tie. For women, this typically means a cocktail dress of approximately knee length. But as with formal night, you’ll see broad interpretation of style represented.

Will I feel silly if I’m not wearing formal or semi-formal attire in the main dining rooms? Will people judge me if I’m not wearing formal or semi-formal attire in the main dining rooms?

You do you. And if someone wants to judge, that’s their business, not yours.

Honestly, I’ve read some scorchingly mean posts on other forums — people looking down their nose at other guests whose attire is deemed not up to snuff in their “expert” estimation. My advice is to avoid online forums on this topic.

OK, I get that, but I still might feel weird wearing shorts in the main dining room when others are wearing suits.

If you wish, you can opt out of your MDR assignment and eat elsewhere any night or nights that you choose. You’re welcome to dine at Cabanas or have room service on any night. This will allow you to bypass all the dress-up hoopla in the main dining rooms.

But if you want to eat in the main dining room and wear shorts on formal night, go for it. It’s your cruise. You paid for it. Order everything on the menu and don’t give it a second thought.

Are the main dining room rules any different for children?

Nope. Formal night, semi-formal night, and theme nights theoretically apply to anyone on the ship. You will sometimes see seven year old boys wearing tiny tuxedos. This is NOT, I repeat NOT, a requirement, nor is it the norm. Many young boys will be wearing pants and a button down shirt on formal and semi-formal night. Or if the parents are tired, maybe they’re wearing shorts and a tee shirt. Choose your battles.

What’s the scoop with princess gowns?

Just like in the parks, there is never a requirement that a young girl wear any sort of princess attire ever. That being said, a sizable subset of girls under the age of ten do end up wearing some form of princess dress while cruising. This might be for a princess photo session or for dinner on formal night. If it’s not your daughter’s thing, that’s completely fine. If you do decide to have your daughter wear princess attire, you can buy dresses on the ship or bring them from home. In my opinion, some of the most charming princess attire is homemade.

What do I need to know about theme nights?

The most common theme night on Disney ships is pirate night. This happens on almost all DCL sailings in the Caribbean and Bahamas, as well as some other destinations. Disney will give every guest a pirate themed bandana to wear on pirate night. The on board shops will sell full pirate costumes for children as well as faux hook hands, eye patches, and other related accoutrements. As with formal and semi-formal night, how you decide to dress is up to you. A sizable minority of guests wear full pirate attire with custom designed clothing and boots. Another sizable minority wears just their regular clothing, with no nod to the pirate festivities going on around them. The middle group is the largest, with guests making a minor nod to the theme of the evening such as more dramatic makeup, skull-themed jewelry, or some Disneybound piratewear.

Pixar nights happen on most seven-night Alaska cruises. In my experience, far fewer guests make an attempt to dress thematically on Pixar night than they do on pirate night.

Star Wars and Frozen themed nights will debut in the coming year. Given the popularity of these franchises, my educated guess is that somewhat more than half of the guests on board will make at least some attempt to dress according to theme, but that means that many guests will also be dressed in normal clothing as well.

If you like dressing up on Halloween, you’ll probably like dressing up for cruise theme nights. If you don’t, then no worries. It’s your vacation, spend it as you wish.

How will I know whether I have a formal, semi-formal, or themed night on my cruise?

To find out exactly what will be happening on your sailing, call Disney Cruise Line at 800-951-3532. However, there are some guidelines:

• Three night cruises typically have: one standard cruise casual night, one pirate night, one semi-formal night
• Four night cruises typically have: two standard cruise casual nights, one pirate night, one semi-formal night
• Seven night cruises typically have: four standard cruise casual nights, one theme night (pirate or other depending on destination), one semi-formal night, one formal night.
• Cruises of longer than seven nights typically include more cruise casual dinners.

Are there times when the dress code is a real rule, not just a suggestion?

Yes. While the dress code in the three main rotational dining rooms is optional, the dress code in the adults-only restaurants, Remy and Palo, is a requirement. The requirement is enforced. I’ve never seen anyone turned away from the main dining rooms for dress code violations. I have seen guests asked to leave Palo when they’ve arrived wearing inappropriate attire.

What is the dress code at Palo?

There is a Palo restaurant on all four Disney ships. The DCL website states that the dress code is:

• Men: Dress pants and dress shirt (a jacket is optional)
• Women: Dress or pantsuit
• No jeans, shorts, capri pants, flip-flops or tennis shoes

The policing of the dress code is basically left up to the staff on site at the time of your visit. In my observation, the dress code is more lightly enforced at brunch than it is at dinner. I’ve seen men wearing golf shirts and slacks at brunch. I’ve also seen women wearing silk capris with kitten heels and a nice top be fine at Palo. The guests I have seen turned away were wearing blue jeans and yoga pants.

What is the dress code at Remy?

The Dream and the Fantasy have Remy restaurants on board. The DCL website states that the dress code is:

• Men: Dress pants with jacket (sports or suit jacket) is required—ties are optional.
• Women: A dress, cocktail dress, pantsuit or skirt/blouse is required
• No jeans, shorts, capri pants, flip-flops or tennis shoes

You really do have to dress up here. Men not wearing jackets will be turned away.

Dining at Palo and Remy is strictly optional (though very worthwhile, in my opinion). If you don’t want bring/wear fancy attire, then don’t plan a meal at these restaurants.

What do I wear during the day on my cruise?

This depends a bit on where you’re going and what you’ll be doing. The answer will be different if you’re an indoor person headed to Alaska than if you’re an outdoor person headed to Nassau.

If you’re going to a tropical destination in the Bahamas or Caribbean, you’ll find that most guests wear very casual clothing during the day. This may be a swimsuit (with or without a cover-up) by the pool, exercise gear, or shorts and a tee shirt. I’m not much of a pool person (I prefer to spend my days onboard at Bingo, trivia contests, and mixology classes), but I still bring a swimsuit for some spa treatments. There is virtually no need for anything other than the most casual clothing during the day on the ship.

What do I wear at Castaway Cay?

Castaway Cay is VERY casual. The most important thing to wear there is sunscreen. Seriously. Other than that, you need swimwear, if you plan to go in the water. You’ll probably want some sort of cover-up or shorts to throw on over your swimsuit if you plan on doing activities such as biking. If you’re running the Castaway Cay 5K, you’ll need running shoes. Those who burn easily will want a hat. Almost all guests will want to have some sort of water shoe or sandal; the pavement can get quite hot.

I’m heading to Alaska on my cruise. Any tips?

You’ll want to check the weather forecasts before you go. The temperatures in early June can be very different than in mid-August. However, in general you are going to want warm clothing.

During my own August Alaska cruise, I wore jeans and sweaters indoors around the ship.

On the Tracy Arm glacier observation day, I wore jeans, a long-sleeve tee shirt, a mid-weight sweater, hiking boots, a mid-weight down parka, and gloves. I was fine when I was in the sun, but when I sat on the deck in the shade, I was chilly. This is also what I wore for dogsledding on Mendenhall glacier.

In Ketchikan and Skagway, I swapped the parka for a lightweight waterproof windbreaker. Expect rain in Ketchikan and be pleasantly surprised if you don’t get poured on.

Swimsuits are less of an imperative on Alaska sailings than they might be on other itineraries. On my Alaskan DCL cruise, there were many children in the pools on our embarkation day in Vancouver. After that, I saw just a handful of guests using the hot tubs on deck and very few people using the larger pools. If you’re not a hot tub or spa person, it might be possible to leave your swimwear at home for this trip.

What should I wear for a Mediterranean cruise?

This really depends on what you’ll be doing during your trip. When you’re on the ship, the clothing on a European sailing is similar to that of any other DCL voyage, quite casual other than the formal and semi-formal nights when many guests do take it up a notch.

If you’re going to the beach or hiking in Mediterranean area, wear what you’d wear to go to the beach or hiking anywhere else. In Mediterranean port cities, you’ll find that Europeans dress with a bit more polish than Americans. During my DCL Med trip, our stops included Monaco and Rome, where even casual is stylish. We rarely saw non-tourists wearing sneakers or athletic clothing, which might be typical of American dress. You can choose to wear very casual items, but if you don’t want to be immediately seen as a tourist, leave your sneakers, backpacks, and logo tee shirts on the ship. Of course, if you’re in a large guided group, it’s probably pretty obvious you’re not a native anyway, but if you want to spend time on your own and you want to blend in, think simple, light clothing without obvious labels.

Be aware that there are dress codes in most European houses of worship. If you’re visiting a church or cathedral, be prepared to have your shoulders and knees covered at all times while you’re inside. On the day we visited Rome it was 105 degrees. My daughters and I wore sundresses for most of our touring; very light and moderately fashionable. When we were about to enter a church, we quickly slipped on leggings and threw scarves over our shoulders, which we removed immediately once we were back outside in the heat. The casino at Monaco has a strict business attire dress code in some playing rooms. Please check your excursion requirements before packing.

Most DCL European destinations have stops in ports with lots of cobblestone streets or other uneven pavement. You’re likely to be uncomfortable wearing flip-flops or other non-supportive shoes.

What about Northern Europe?

Depending on your exact sailing, the required clothing will be a hybrid of the Alaska and Mediterranean recommendations. If you’re on an excursion to the Arctic Circle, dress in warm layers. If you’re touring a metropolitan city like Stockholm and want to blend in with the locals, step up your fashion game a bit.

Any other types of clothing I might want to bring?

On most cruises of seven nights or longer, there is the opportunity for guests to participate in a family friendly talent show. If you’d like to take part in this, be sure to bring any special costumes or shoes that you might need.

Any more advice?

Be aware of your own personal idiosyncrasies. For example, if you typically get chilly in air-conditioning, bring a wrap or light sweater to wear in the theaters and dining rooms. If you’re not 100% steady on heels, perhaps save them to wear at a time when you’re not on a moving vessel. If you have sensitive eyes, sunglasses are a must for the tropics and Alaska.

Be sure to consult the guidelines of any excursions you’ve selected. For example, zipline excursions often require that you wear closed-toe shoes. Make sure you bring any required items.

If you’re trying to pack light, feel free to repeat outfits. For many guests on tropical sailings, the only time they change out of their swimsuit is to go to dinner. If you’re just wearing your golf shirt and slacks for an hour to eat, there’s no real reason you can’t wear the same thing on multiple nights.

Also, remember that there are onboard laundry facilities. Each ship has several guest accessible laundry rooms with washers, dryers, and irons. The cost is about $2.00 for each wash and dry. There is also a full drycleaning service onboard, with a turnaround time of less than 24 hours. Drycleaning a two-piece suit currently costs $7.00. Pressing-only is half that rate.

Cruise veterans, what did I forget? Do you have any tips for how to dress on a Disney cruise? Is there anything you wish you knew about what to wear before you took your first Disney cruise? What questions do you have? Let us know in the comments below.

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