Disney Cruise Line in a Jiffy: What Are Towel Animals?

Every night of your sailing on Disney Cruise Line, your stateroom host will leave you two little gifts in your stateroom: bedtime chocolates (one per person) and a towel animal. Towel animals are broadly what they sound like, animals fashioned from towels, but you’ll often find that your “towel animal” is formed from a blanket and sometimes the “animal” is really an object rather than a creature. In addition to towels and blankets, your stateroom attendant may also incorporate small stickers, the packaged chocolates, or even your sunglasses to be something like eyes or claws. Below are some examples of common towel animals.

Pre-pandemic, you might have found a towel animal in your Walt Disney World hotel room, but I haven’t encountered one on land in years. The good news is that towel animals are alive and well at sea. Its great fun to return to your room each evening and see your surprise new roommate. And it’s even more fun to try and speculate what the towel creation is supposed to be.

Towel animals have become so popular that DCL actually created two plush toys that look like towel animals (a monkey and an elephant), available for purchase.

If you’d like to know how to make towel animals yourself, take a look at your Personal Navigator app schedule. DCL sometimes offers towel-folding classes that result in animals. But be aware that, as my family found out, actually making towel animals is harder than it looks.

Disney Cruise Line in a Jiffy is an offshoot of our “Disney in a Minute” posts, “In a Jiffy” posts are bite-sized nuggets of information that can better help you understand a Disney term or planning topic, but here we focus on all thing Disney Cruise Line (DCL). Have a question about a DCL term that is unfamiliar to you? Suggest it here for an upcoming segment.