Serenity Bay at Disney's Castaway Cay

A Quiet Beach

Laura enjoys the tranquillity of the adults-only beach at Serenity Bay on Castaway Cay, the Disney Cruise Line’s Bahamas island. We spent just a few minutes there on our 2018 Christmas Disney Cruise.

One of the hidden gems of Castaway Cay is Serenity Bay. Yes, there are signs for it, and a tram to take you there, but many people who spend a day at Castaway Cay never go there. But that helps to keep it even more peaceful and relaxing.

Serenity Bay is the adults-only beach at Castaway Cay, reserved for those who are 18 years old and older. But actually, the only “adult” activities that happen there are things like napping and quiet walks on the beach. As you can see from the photo above, there were not even many people walking on the beach or enjoying the water. Most of them were just lounging in the beach chairs just out of the frame to the right.

Few People

On our first two Disney Cruises, when we were there without Jaylin, Laura and I spent most of our Castaway Cay days at Serenity Bay. We enjoyed the beach, the water, the quiet, the peacefulness. Nothing like a little bit of paradise to make your cruise vacation even better.

All of our Disney Cruises after those first two have been with Jaylin, and so we have not been back to Serenity Bay. And that was fine, because we had lots of fun at the main family beach, too. It was just a little louder and a little more busy.

But on our Christmas cruise, the younger kids were in their middle teens, and the older kid was in his early 20s. So while they went off to play volleyball for a while, we and the adult Riedels walked down the airstrip to Serenity Bay, because the Riedels had not been there before. We could have ridden the tram, but we were enjoying a nice, leisurely walk. And the weather was cool enough that we did not feel like we were going to die in the heat.

Here We Are!

Here we are enjoying our time at Serenity Bay. It was a little difficult to get a good photo, because the sun was right in our eyes. But we did not mind the sun at all.

And here are the Riedels at Castaway Cay. Maybe we should have found someone to get a photo of all four of us together, since we do not usually get there.

We enjoyed a few minutes of peace and quiet, and it was good. But we were there on a family vacation, after all, and we thought it would be best to spend time with the entire family. So we went back and found all of the kids, who had finished their volleyball game, and we went back to our spot on the family beach.

But we talked about how one of these days, the kids won’t be coming with us on these Disney Cruise vacations. And we dreamed of spending an entire day at Serenity Bay on one of our future visits to Castaway Cay. I’m sure it will still be just as nice then as it is now.

Bible Verse

Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness—without it no one will see the Lord. - Hebrews 12:14

About the Photos

Nothing all that special went into these photos. After all, when you have a place as nice as Serenity Bay (and all of Castaway Cay for that matter), you don’t have to work too hard to get some beautiful photos.

For the first two photos, I framed the photos carefully to get as few people in the photos as possible. Besides Laura, of course, who I wanted to be in the photos. It was not that hard to avoid people, because most of them were not in the water or walking on the beach. Who says afternoon naps are a bad thing? Especially on the beach.

The third photo was a handheld selfie, as we have been fond of doing lately. However, I do not have a fisheye lens for the Sony camera, so these new selfies end up being a little more zoomed in on us than before. But that’s not a problem.

And then for the photo of the Riedels, I had switched to the 50mm prime lens to get the tight focus on them, which is the look that I like right now. But if I had tried to use that on our selfie, I would have had a really nice photo of just our noses. A few people might prefer that, I guess, but I like seeing all of our faces.

Photo: Each photo is a single Raw exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Sony Alpha A7 II
Lens: Sony FE 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS Lens and Sony FE 50mm f/1.8 Lens
Date: December 18, 2018
Location: Castaway Cay, Bahamas