DCL Duo

This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Sam and Brian of DCL Duo podcast. Their impressive website describes them as follows: "The DCL Duo podcast is a Disney Cruise Line-focused podcast, with occasional detours into general cruising and Disney topics. We’re fans of the Disney parks, Adventures By Disney, Run Disney and Disney Vacation Club."

I’m thankful forDCL Duo’s occasional detours into general cruising because they had me on their podcast a couple of years ago—and my only experience with Disney Cruise Line was a single cruise on Disney Dream. I took my grandkids on their first cruise, and there was never any consideration for another cruise line for my grandkid’s first cruise.

I like to say to the cruise personalities I write about in the books, that we are forever connected—many years from now their friends and relatives will be able to read about them in a book written by me. And that is true for Sam and Brian, as DCL Duo is featured in my new release, The Joy of Cruising Again in a section called The Communicators. But my connection withDCL Duo is extra special and it relates back to that aforementioned appearance I made on their podcast in 2020. I had written more than half of my second cruise book, which at the time was called More Joy of Cruising when the world changed due to the pandemic. People were dying, cruising shut down, and there wasn’t much joy anywhere. I stopped writing completely and did a lot of moping around as my passions of cruising, and writing about cruising were taken from me. And then i receive a message from someone i didn’t know. It said: “Big fan of The Joy of Cruising;  heard you recently on a podcast. My wife and I recently started a podcast of our own, the DCL Duo . Was wondering if you might be willing to come to our show to talk about your book? We found it super interesting as avid cruisers. Hope you’ll consider it and would love to have you on!” Of course, I jumped at the chance to talk about cruising, and Sam and Brian’s “glass half full” outlook was infectious. After the podcast—even though a restart of cruising was nowhere on the horizon—I restarted writing, More Joy of Cruising became Cruising Interrupted, and was released six months later—when cruising was still shut down. For that lifting of my spirits and shot of confidence and motivation when I needed it most, I am forever grateful to DCL Duo. DCL Duo podcast is now over 300 episodes. Their milestone 300th episode was just a few weeks ago, and I was honored to be the guest on that show.