See what I mean about shelves and storage everywhere?! You can’t see it but on the wall to the left of the toilet that’s opposite the vanity there’s hooks to hang stuff. Also, throughout the cruise we laughed and said they needed to have a recorded spiel that plays whenever you push the toilet flusher button before it actually does the flush: “Please stand clear of the lid. Por favor mantengase....” LOL! That thing flushes with a vengeance! The first several times it really startles ya! If I was a little kid I’d be scared to death of it!
The next bathroom is thru a separate door to the right of the potty room door. There’s another sink in here as well as a big, round bathtub and shower. The bathtub isn’t super deep but it’s pretty big around. I could’ve sat down in there if I wanted to. There’s a little recessed area where us ladies can sit down to shave our legs. There’s an adjustable hand-held shower head on the wall PLUS a big rain shower head mounted on the ceiling. Awesomeness!
Not trying to be all gross or TMI because I swear to you it’s a totally innocent thing...but Tracey & I usually shower together no matter where we are. I dunno why. It’s just something we’ve always done. No special ‘activities’ go on. I wash his back. He washes mine. Sometimes he’ll even wash my hair for me which is a nice thing because it’s a lot of work. It speeds up the time it takes to get ready to go somewhere, too. The only reason I’m telling you this is because even on this cruise we still were able to shower together. It was a bit cramped but we weren’t like knocking into each other or anything. We aren’t exactly small people, either. THAT is how big that shower was!
After I took my pics and we explored our room we got busy unpacking the suitcase. We still hadn’t gotten our other checked bag which was the hanging clothes bag we borrowed from my in-laws. We were a little worried. Being our first cruise we weren’t sure if our bags should’ve arrived together or what.
I had read other people’s experiences about getting in their rooms, meeting their wonderful room stewards right away, and having all sorts of details they had questions about handled by this person. Ours was nowhere to be found. We looked out in the hall several times. We saw nobody. I needed to find out about that hanging bag. It had all our dress clothes in it and we had early dinner.
We settled as much as we could then headed out to wander. We headed to the spa to see about getting a polish change on my toes because I wasn’t so thrilled with my current polish job and Tracey wanted me to do something in the spa. On the way we stopped to fill our tumblers so we could start on the first of our drinky-drinks. Mmmm....
Drinky-drinks in hand we looked around a bit. Holy smokes at the crowded pools! It was crazy! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t think they could’ve gotten another kid in those pools if they’d had a barrel of Crisco and a shoe horn. When I looked at those pools all I could think was what a cespool they had to be with all those kiddies in there. Not for me. No way. No how!
This was by the landing zone for the Aqua Duck. Tracey was laughing at the large man in spandex behind him:
When we got to the spa they wanted us to tour the place. Okay. All the while we’re workin’ on our drinks and Tracey is really gettin’ loose. I was just sorta floatin’ along. I knew he was feelin’ right when he let the acupuncture lady do a demo on him. The man is terrified of needles. LOL! After the tour we went to the reception desk to get that polish change scheduled. The girls said something about doing a Fire & Ice Pedicure. I opened my mouth to decline but Tracey beat me to the punch: “Oh yes! She’ll do that!” Okaaaaay...so she gets that scheduled for in the morning. Then she says something about couples massage. Again, before I can utter anything he’s all over it. “Oh yes. We’ll do that after!” I’m totally speechless. The man’s never even had a massage. She started into the whole list of frou-frou massages. This time I finally could interject with something, “Swedish.” God help us and the evils of the drinky-drinks. I know I had to have been feelin’ right, too, because I knew beforehand how much that stuff cost and I didn’t put up a fight. WooHOOOOO!
It was about 4:00, time to do the muster drill. You know, it’s where you would report in case of emergency. The instructions said to bring only your room keys, nothing else. We didn’t need to bring the life jackets that were in our closet in our room which was nice. Those things are pretty big. And square. Don’t look too comfy. We met the boys back at the stateroom then headed down for the drill. We left our drinky-drinks in the room. It was neat how they opened up all these hidden emergency and/or crew stairways that aren’t normally part of the guest areas. To get everyone to report they have you use these alternate routes because that would be how you would go if there was an emergency. We get down to deck 4 and find our spot. It’s the big letter on your room keys. They swipe each person’s room key then make everyone line up your family tallest to shortest single-file. We all have to scootch up close to the family next to us. The meeting spot is outside in the sweltering heat so you get reeeaally cozy with the families next to you. Of course little kids don’t find this all-too fun so you get crying and fussing all around. It felt like some sort of cruel joke. We were standing there a good while. We saw random guests sacheting past with drinks, etc. like they didn’t have to join in the fun. It kinda irritated me. Actually, I had the urge to shove one lady and her mother-load of crown jewels she was wearing right over the side. Just when you’re starting to discuss mutiny with your neighbors there’s a CM with a bull horn who says something but what was said I couldn’t tell you. He could’ve been telling us they’re enjoying our misery in the moment and if the ship goes down it’s every man for himself. I dunno. I couldn’t understand a word of it. Just a bunch of garbled mess that sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher talking. Eventually he stopped talking. There was an announcement over the PA that said the drill was concluded. Then the orderly rows of people turned into a huuuuge mass of people shuffling towards 2 or 3 doorways. It reminded me of leaving the MK after Wishes. Where were all those hidden doorways and extra stairways that we just came through??? This is a big gripe I have and a suggestion for DCL: keep the extra passage-ways open for 15-20 minutes AFTER the muster drill so you don’t have every passenger onboard funneled into only 3 passage ways.
We made our way back to our stateroom. Guess what? Our hanging clothes bag arrived while we were mustering! We put all that stuff away and stored the bag. We grabbed our drinky-drink cups and headed up to deck 12 for sail-away. I don’t know where the boys went. They weren’t with us. We wandered decks 11 & 12 for a few minutes and took some pics:
A look up at the section of the Aqua Duck that swirls out past the edge of the ship over the water below:
See? It’s over the edge!
We made our way up to deck 12 to watch us push off from the pier. We could hear the sail away deck party and saw a little on the funnel-vision but
we were more interested with the scenery. We had no idea where the boys were. We did run back into Kelly who told us she had seen Chandler & Cam run off somewhere together. Cool.
Scenery:
While we sailed out I made sure to stay by the rail until we passed Fishlips which is where the webcam is. If you haven’t watched the ships sail out yet, it’s cool. They often zoom in on the people at the rails. If you’re going on a cruise, there’s no better way to get excited as you count down to your sail date. The webcam can be found at
www.portcanaveralwebcam.com. I made sure to stay by the rail and wave my arms off. But then I later found out the web cam was down when we sailed out. Dangit!
As we sailed out we saw some manatees by some of the other docks. That was neat. I love manatees. Always have since I first saw them in person as a teenager at the marina where my best friend’s dad kept his sailboat.
I could’ve stood there for hours but Tracey reminded me we had like 20 minutes until dinner at Enchanted Garden. Yikes!
It was a mad rush to dress for dinner but we made it only a few minutes late. Thank goodness Tracey has such a keen sense of direction because we ran out our door and were in the elevator before the panic of not knowing where Enchanted Garden even was hit me. LOL!
So here’s where I got my introduction to cruise dining. Dress tonight was “cruise casual”. This was khakis & polos for the guys, a maxi-halter summer dress for me. When people gush about the food and dinners on their cruises it is NOT because there’s nothing to do but sit around eating all the time. No. Dinner in the dining rooms is more of an event in itself. That’s not a bad thing. Think about that. You actually dress for dinner. You gather your family together around a table in beautiful surroundings and a team of amazing people cater to your every whim. No, it’s not a single server. I said “team”. Each team consists of a Head Server, a Server, and an Assistant Server. There are “courses” and time is spent taking in the entirety of the experience. This time is a wonderful opportunity unto itself to spend talking and enjoying each other’s company. I’m the most anti-formality person I know and I hate to be required to “dress” for anything. However, dinners on the cruise were a true delight and something I looked forward to each day.
With that said, we met our wait staff tonight. Our head server was Fitz, server was Ali, and assistant server was Raluca. The head server we only would see once or twice when he’d pass our table to make sure we were enjoying ourselves but we always saw him moving about in the service area working and overlooking things. The server is the main guy. He takes orders, makes sure things are perfect, helps you make choices, etc. etc. Then the assistant takes care of all the drinks making sure no glasses are ever empty or watered-down. She’s making sure you have the proper flatware or utensils, bringing condiments, making sure things are perfect, etc. I’m not sure about other cruise lines but with Disney your wait staff are yours for your whole trip. When you rotate to each restaurant they rotate with you. The big perk in this is that they get to know you and what you like. As the trip goes on they become a welcome part of your cruise and like family. You’ll see when I get to other dinners just how awesome having these people stay with you really is!
We had a 4-top table so we didn’t have to share with any other families. Some of the seating is multiple families at a big table. That wouldn’t have been an issue for us since we love to meet new people.
We rushed down and got sat at our table, #109. Raluca and Ali introduced themselves and we were just dazzled. We made sure to tell them right away that we had never cruised before so they would understand if we didn’t know how things should go. They were so good to us and proved to be a fabulous wealth of tips in the days to come.
We ordered our drinks and started to relax. The ship was really moving now. I guess we finally were still enough to notice the motion. When Raluca brought our drinks she was very concerned about Brian. In all the days excitement I forgot to break out the seasick meds. I had gotten prescription patches from the doctor and bought a bottle of Bonine (meclazine) just in case. We weren’t sure how the kids would react to a ship. They did just fine on Tracey’s bass boat even when the water was real rough. It’s crazy, though, how we were sitting at the same table as him and didn’t even really notice how pale his face was. Yikes! We asked him what he was feeling. He said he felt a little icky, not sick, just kinda weird. He said, “Gosh, the boat mooooves.” Uh...yeah....he needs meds. We sent him back to the room to get the meclazine. I gave him a tablet, handed one to Chandler (who now was saying he felt a little weird), and I took one. The only “weird” I felt was my buzz from earlier leaving me but I wasn’t taking any chances.
I wish I’d taken pics of our dinner. It was all heavenly! I had the lobster raviolli I had been reading about, the spinach salad, prime rib, and dessert trio. Oh yes. It was all dang good.
At the end of the meal we sorta sat there basking in the glory of it all. We weren’t sure what the procedure was. Think about it: whenever you eat in a restaurant there’s a check or some sort of final thing that has to be done. It just seemed like we needed to wait for some final thing even though we knew the meal was included in the price of the cruise and we hadn’t ordered any alcoholic beverages with dinner. Ali checked on us again and we politely asked if they need anything else from us before we leave. Nope. Ali wished us a good night and said he looked forward to seeing us tomorrow at the Royal Palace. Wow. Just wow.
We had the main seating for dinner. 5:45 is the dinner time but we didn’t get sat down until closer to 6. We left around 7:45 or so. Everyone headed back to the stateroom to get out of our dinner clothes and get back into our shorts. The boys both wanted to go do their thing instead of join Tracey & me for the show. They took their Wave phones and off they went.
Tracey & I put away the dress clothes then headed out to the Walt Disney Theater to see the 8:30 showing of the Golden Mickeys.
I gotta say, the show was impressive! The pre-show was fun with the whole red-carpet interviews with the children. The show itself was like what people call a ‘Broadway’ show (I’ve never been to a ‘Broadway’ show but that’s what everyone calls it). Before the show when the cruise director was on-stage yammering on and on and on...yeah, that part we could’ve done without. After a while you start to wonder does this woman enjoy hearing herself talk or what? A lot of it is jabber about the spa, etc., stuff you would have to pay extra for, so it comes off like she’s advertising shamelessly. I dunno. Just didn’t like that part. We liked that the captain of the ship addressed the guests in person before the show and various officers were introduced in person. That was a nice touch to a first-time cruiser. It was all well worth the wait, tho.
During the show I could really feel the ship moving. The swaying of the curtain between numbers was cool. Tracey said he noticed some of the performers move to maintain balance. It wasn’t like crazy rock’n & roll’n. It was enough that you were aware. Still, I liked feeling the motion of the ship. To me it was an added element of fun. I know, I’m nuts.
When the show ended we were on cloud 9 with the warm-n-fuzzies. Truly. What an amazing production!!! It sure knocked our socks off! Loved every moment!
After the show we hit the shops. This was a big moment for me! In the months leading up to our cruise I had dug out all my old Coach bag sets that I haven’t used since I started collecting Disney Dooney & Bourkes, meticulously cleaned everything, then sold it all on eBay to generate the funds for my special purchase: a new, exclusive Disney Cruise Line Dooney & Bourke bag & wristlet in the special cruise sketch pattern. Oh yes! This is what I was looking forward to! I went in the shop but wasn’t exactly pleased with the print arrangement on the few bags that were out. I asked a sweet CM and she went “down” to bring out more for me to choose from. She returned with 10 more of the style bag I wanted for me to choose from. Awesome! Then I started sifting through all the wristlets that were out. Again, not pleased with the print placement. My CM friend ran back “down” and brought back probl’ly 15 to 20 wristlets for me to choose from. Amazing!!!! I made my purchase in absolute bliss! Here’s a pic of my bag & wristlet that I took after we got home:
Tracey & I perused all the merchandise in all the shops. Oh my! We could sooooo blow our budget here! There’s so much killer stuff to be had!
I always put them in the dishwasher, by the way, and they still look great!
during peak dining hours... the place is a madhouse but the food has always been good for us.
