Food service is operated as an extension of the cruise package.
The facilities are maintained like any other Disney theme park the shops accept guests' stateroom keys for payment. The island is developed in the theme of a castaway community with buildings made to look as if they had been improvised after a shipwreck. Facilities Ī post office on the island has special Bahamian postage and postmark specific to Disney Cruise Line.
Īn additional race, Castaway Cay Challenge, was added to the Walt Disney World Marathon weekend series in 2015 with the 5K race taking place on Castaway Cay. The pier and its approaches (a 1,700 foot channel) were constructed to allow Disney ships to dock directly alongside the island, thus removing the need for tenders to get the passengers ashore. This included dredging 50,000 truckloads of sand from the Atlantic Ocean. The company spent $25 million over 18 months of construction. In 1997, the Disney Cruise Line purchased a 99-year lease for Gorda Cay from the Bahamian government and renamed it Castaway Cay, intending for it to be the line's private island. The beach where Tom Hanks first encounters a nude Daryl Hannah in Splash is on the island, and parts of the film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl were filmed on the cay as well. Gorda Cay had also been used for filming. Gorda's airstrip (now Castaway Cay Airport) was once used as a stop in the 1930s for bootleggers and later, drug runners.