Welcome aboard, Mindy! Disney Cruise Line has so many photo opportunities, and what I love about meeting the characters on the ship is that the lines are much shorter than in the parks!
Disney Cruise Line does not have the same PhotoPass system that the Walt Disney World Resort uses, however they do have something similar. Each guest will have a Key To The World card which serves as your stateroom key, charge card, "ticket" to get on and off the ship at ports, and a photo identification for all the fun pictures that are taken of your family onboard and at Castaway Cay. Like in the parks, each time a Disney Cruise Line photographer takes your picture, he or she will scan your card to link the picture to your stateroom. Along with facial recognition software, this Key To The World card scanning ensures that you can see all of your family's pictures in the same album.
Stop by Shutters, the onboard photography shop, each day to view your pictures either by looking at the prints or by browsing them on the digital photo kiosks nearby. There are different photo packages available, including prints, and images on photo cd. You can read a bit more about this on the
Photography page of Disney Cruise Line's website.
My family ordered the full photo cd on our very first Disney cruise and since we knew we were ordering it, made sure we took advantage of every photo opportunity we had so that we could get as many pictures as possible. I'm so glad we did because we ended up with hundreds of great shots. Since then, we still buy a few prints or a cd package each time, depending on how many pictures we like. It is very flexible since there are quite a few options, Mindy.
Let me know how else I can help before you set sail!