Surprise! Instead of going camping we are going on The Disney Magic...Our first cruise trip report.

Well I think I need to start this soon before I completely forget what I want to report...So without further ado here is the story of our cruise, or some of it anyway...

Our family consists of myself, my handy husband whom we will call HH, my 10year old daughter "S" and my 5year old son "W." My HH is not too comfortable with this whole trip report thing so he asked that I not show many pictures of him or the kids. I can work within those parameters...

Anyway, for months we were planning a camping trip on the Oregon Coast for spring break, I had requested March 27th-April 7th off of work and been approved. In early January the "kids sail free" on The Magic out of Galveston offer came across my email. I of course went to the Disney Cruise Line website and checked the dates. There was one 8 night Bahamian cruise that left March 29th and returned April 6th...! I cautiously emailed everyone's favorite Kingdom Konsultant @Disneyfalcon and got some price quotes. It was obviously meant to be because we could afford it! So without giving it too much consideration, lest I talk myself out of it... I just decided to go for it and we reserved a category 10 gty room. Then I found super cheap airfare from Spokane to Houston on Southwest. Then my HH and I decided to not tell the kids...

It was a ridiculously hard secret to keep, especially as we got closer to departure day. I had to pack the suitcases while they were at school and then put them back in the closet to hide them. Finally the morning of March 27th arrived. We had originally planned on not revealing anything until the morning of the cruise...but I just couldn't handle it anymore. So as we got ready to leave for our 5 hour drive to Spokane, my daughter finally asked why we weren't taking the camping trailer camping. I responded, "We don't need it, dad and I decided we would sleep in tents instead." Her face just fell, I guess the idea of 10 nights in a tent during the rainy season in Oregon wasn't too appealing.

I asked the kids to sit down for a minute as I retrieved their Mickey Ears. I looked at them and said in a serious tone, "Dad and I have been keeping something from you for the last couple of months." That got my daughters attention, I think she thought it was going to be some kind of life changing bad news. So I handed them their Mickey "horns" as my son calls them and said, "We aren't going camping, but where we are going you are going to need these, we are going on a Disney Cruise and we are leaving right now!! "

Cue the stunned silence.

After about ten seconds, my daughter said, "What? What?! WHAAAT!!!!!! " Then she started jumping up and down and screaming. I almost started to cry...I loved surprising them with that.

We loaded up for what would be a very long but thankfully uneventful travel day. I took no pictures. We landed at 1am at Houston's Hobby airport and were met by the Supershuttle driver Mohammed (thank you @sweetpee_1993 for recommending I call them) And by 2:30am we were tucked into our beds at the adorable Harbor House Hotel in Galveston Texas.

First real vacation day March 28th in Galveston Texas

This was the view from our hotel room that we woke up to. The Magic would be parked out there to whisk us off on our vacation the next day. We had a whole day to kill so we explored everything within walking distance of our hotel.

First stop the Museum of Offshore Oil Drilling, no trip to the gulf coast of Texas would be complete without it.

All jokes aside, it was actually very interesting. They had an actual oil rig that you could explore.

It was directly next to our hotel. Here is a view of the hotel from The Ocean Star.

On the opposite side of our hotel you can see the sailboat mast sticking up, that was the tall ship Elissa and the Seaport Museum. Our next stop.

You can see all the oil rigs in the bay in the background. And this is the back of our hotel. What an awesome location!

We loved the Harbor House, the building was a renovated old warehouse on the pier. I wish I had taken more photos of the room. They had two queen beds, a couch, a fridge and a microwave. The folks at the desk were super friendly. The continental breakfast was pretty sparse, but it was free so I can't complain.

Directly behind the Oil rig museum was Joe's Crab Shack, we have never eaten at one before and since it was so close, we went over for lunch.

Lunch was good. I don't know if I would go out of my way to eat there again, but it was fun. Our server wrote on everyone's bibs to personalize them. My HH was "The king of all crabs." S's said, "Too cute to be crabby." And W got, "Mommy's little shrimp." I didn't get a bib, because I ordered coconut shrimp and I guess he just thought I was a neat and tidy eater...

After lunch we did a walk around The Strand, which is the older business section of Galveston.

This place was awesome, we bought a bunch of truffles to eat...

Later on we got dinner at Fuddruckers which has really good burgers, we have one where we live...so not very adventurous of us. But we just wanted a good burger...Then my husband and I sampled the local microbrew on the steps of the hotel while our kids ran around and played with rocks...simple minds as they say...

Everyone was excited to get to bed so we could wake up and walk here...

 

[Sumrdog]

This is wonderful. My DH refuses to go on a cruise so for me this vicarious trip will be the closest I will come. Its a great read and can' t wait for more. Hoping the sun burns were not to bad.

Glad you like it! That's too bad about your husband. Maybe you could go with a few friends sometime.

The sunburns could've been much worse, there was no blistering, but it was a bit uncomfortable for a few days...

 

[Sumrdog]

I'm so sad.....I didn't want to leave. I mean I didn't want you to leave because thats the end of the Castaway Cay part.

I was seriously immersed ( how do you spell that word ) in your report.

Thank you...I didn't want to leave either!

 

[Sumrdog]

What a great surprise for the kids! Awesome pictures, loved your review of Castaway Cay!

Thank you so much!

 

[Sumrdog]

April 1st continued.

Dinner that night was the Island Dinner menu at Parrot Cay. This was my favorite meal of the cruise I think. I had the jerk pork. My daughter had the chicken. W had chicken strips...again. I can't remember what my HH had.

The Caribbean chicken with sweet potatoes.

My pork! It was so good and it came with my favorite side, Polenta!

Dessert was really good as well.

Banana bread pudding!

Ice cream sundae!

After dinner we saw the sunset.

Then we wandered up to Deck 9 for some reason. My daughter's sunburn was really bothering her. And I realized that the back of my legs got pretty burned while I was snorkeling. We were still lamenting the fact that the gift shop didn't stock enough Aloe, when we ran into our dinner companions. They had skipped dinner to go to the early showing of Villains Tonight! They had bought one of the last tubes of Aloe and they were happy to share! So we had a little group Aloe application on the deck in front of the Goofy pool. S felt a bit better. We were exhausted so we decided to skip the show and return to our room and watch it on our TV.

Snake!

We didn't make it all the way through the Villains Tonight show. Hopefully I won't get lambasted for being honest; but we thought it was an odd and disjointed story line.. We were all so tired anyway. I turned it off after setting the alarm for 6am. In the morning we were going to Disney World!

 

[Sumrdog]

April 2nd, Port Canaveral and Disney World...

I awoke around 5:30 am and went up to Deck 9 for coffees. Then I sat on our balcony and watched us dock. Everyone started to wake up around 6 am. I had already put out our clothes the evening before and packed our day bag with the camera and passports.

Because of the sunburns on our legs, I didn't think it was a good idea for S and I to wear shorts. So I found our longest skirts, which are made of a gauzy fabric, mine was pretty Bohemian with a graduated die job from red to orange. Anyway I had to pair this with my most comfortable walking shoes a pair of purple converse all stars and then of course a green Mickey t-shirt. S had on sneakers and a t-shirt with her skirt too. Of course we completed the ensemble with some hats. When I caught a glimpse of her and I in the hallway I realized that we looked like one of those conservative families where the women aren't allowed to wear pants; kind of like that one on TLC with about 28 kids...But what did I really care we were on our way to Disney World!

We went up to Topsiders for breakfast and then headed down to deck 3 to disembark. We had gotten multiple reminders to bring our passports because we were going to have to go through US immigration. That took almost no time, they just looked at our passports and waved us on.

We had tickets for the 7:15 am bus to the Hollywood Studios. There was a bunch of the nice Disney Cruise Line buses all lined up right outside the terminal and lots of people pointing everyone the right direction. We got on our bus and found seats in the back. We were on our way at almost exactly 7:15. I spent the next hour ride trying not to stress about the time.

At this point I need to give a little background. My son is a Star Wars super fan! He practices with his light sabers all the time, he plans to be a Jedi when he grows up, he knows every character's name on The Clone Wars and he believes that he can use The Force to change a red light to green. So it was our hope to get him into Jedi training academy that day. But I knew that the crowds were going to be fierce, I also knew that although the official park opening was scheduled to be 9am; that they almost definitely would open sooner. When I had scoped out the sign ups in February the line waiting to sign up was enormous by 9:30 am and they had filled all the slots by 10. And that wasn't crazy spring break crowds. So of course I wanted to get to the park as early as possible.

The bus ride went by quickly and within 45 minutes we were pulling onto Disney property, we watched America's funniest home videos on the way. I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing when the bus driver announced that our first stop would be Animal Kingdom ! We pulled into an already half full parking lot with hordes of people and I began to of course stress about the time. Almost everyone on the bus got off. At 8:20 we were headed to the studios.

Once we had offloaded, we joined the masses heading toward bag check, my HH who sensed my mounting impatience, had the presence of mind to suggest I give him all the bags and I take the kids through the no bags to check entrance ! So we by-passed literally a million people and walked right up to the first ticket entrance on the far left. And at 8:30 we were in! I took the kids by the hand and briskly drug them to the sign up for Jedi Training which is where Sounds Dangerous used to be. W still had no idea what we were doing.

The line was out the building a ways. We took our place at the end as I surveyed the line of hopeful young Jedi's. After 15 minutes we made it into the building...I had no idea where they were at with the shows getting filled until I got through the door, the line continued to grow behind us. A cast member directed us to a podium and they said they were filling the 12:40 pm show, we had made it!!! Then they kneeled down and asked my son; "Do you think you could fight Darth Vader with a light saber?" He didn't hesitate to say yes. We were given a little ticket and told to return to that same place no later than 12:20pm.

Right as we were leaving the sign up my husband arrived, he had been almost 20 minutes behind us. I am so glad he sent us ahead! With Jedi training sign up down, I felt immensely relieved, it had been my only goal for the day.
Naturally our next stop was to ride Star Tours.

My son was so excited!

Before we could get on they directed him to the measuring stick, for half a second I thought that he wasn't going to be tall enough, but I moved his feet back against the stick and he was!

Sorry so blurry...

W loved Start Tours! We went to The Forest Moon of Endor and then crash landed in the water in Naboo. After Star Tours W built his own light saber and so did my HH so they could battle. S built a couple of droids. There was no line for either of these activities at that early hour.

So cute!

After Star Tours we decided to see if we could get on Toy Story Midway Mania...It was 9 am exactly when we got there. The standby line was 100 minutes and the line to get fastpasses stretched all the way back to The Little Mermaid...I hopped in the line to get FP, my husband went up to check the return time and it was already to 7:20pm ! We weren't planning to still be in that park that evening. So we walked over to TOT. The standby line was 90 minutes, FP return was 10:30 am...much more reasonable. So we got the FP's and then went over to watch The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. We got seats in the front row and both the kids really enjoyed it.

After Indie it was time for TOT. S was a little nervous, she had ridden it before and remembered it being scary. But she didn't want to alarm her brother since it was his first time. So she just clung to my hand during the pre-show. W just blindly trusted us that we were going on a ride and it would be fun. Right before we boarded our elevator, a father trying to convince his tearful daughter to get on, pointed out my son. He said, "look at this boy, he is so small and he isn't scared." I think that made W want to stay brave even more, because he was seated next to the crying girl. We were in the back row. S had the death grip on my hand the whole time. The elevator rose and dropped and rose and dropped. When it was over my HH unbuckled W and asked him how he liked it. My son said really matter of factly; "That almost made me sick." Then he stood up and calmly followed everyone out. The little girl was still crying. I was proud of how brave he was, its a scary ride and he didn't act scared once.

After ToT, we decided to get some lunch. We went to the Backlot Express which was really quiet and empty, we had burgers and chicken strips and it was all really good. It was starting to get quite hot out, so I reapplied sunscreen on everyone. Then it was almost time for Jedi Training, but right before we checked in, I ran and got another set of Fast Passes for Star Tours, since the return time would be right after the show was done.

 

[Pooh'sBuddy]

Yea for neighborly dinnermates sharing aloe! Yea for your smart hubby who fell on the baggage check sword! Yea for making neat Star Wars souvies! And yea for being brave! Now, I guess I've got no excuse.

 

[Sumrdog]

We checked in at the podium for Jedi Training and they had my son join the other children in a line seated on the floor. My son sat very still and waited patiently. When all the children were there they passed out the brown Jedi robes. At first they couldn't find one small enough for W, but after some digging around he got his. Then they had the children line up and follow the cast members to the stage, my HH and S had already gone ahead to find a spot in the front. I joined them on the left side.

A photo pass photographer came out and explained to us that there would be two groups one on the ground and one on the stage, he and another photographer would be photographing each group. Then he gave us all special Star Wars photopass cards. During this time I noticed my son had been moved from the back of the line of the second group to the front of the line of the first group. I think this was because he was the smallest kid. Then they were lead up on stage and each child was walked to a yellow circle. W was put on the circle directly in front of me. He gave me a big thumbs up as he was put in place.

The other kids in the second group were lead to blue spots in front of the stage on the ground. So I was glad my son was moved up to the stage. The Jedi Master came out and the children were all given "Practice Light Sabers."

It was all going well until the Jedi Master noticed "A disturbance in the Force" Then Darth Vader and Darth Maul came out. There was some discussion about Darth Vader getting the kids to join him on "The Dark Side." Then the children were lined up to be tested against Darth Vader. I was watching my son, he looked terrified.

The kids on the ground were going to be tested against Darth Maul.

One at a time the children were brought in front of the Sith and asked to use the moves they had just learned. W was moved to the very back of the line. Some of the older kids weren't taking it very seriously. But my son looked extremely serious as he waited for his turn in line. When he was lead up in front of Darth Vader the Jedi master looked at W who still looked incredibly frightened, and said "Look at this young Padawan; thirty five pounds of fury!" That got everyone laughing except W, he was struggling to get his lightsaber to flick out of its handle, so the Jedi Master gave him his. And then W started using his; "impressive skills with a lightsaber" (his words not mine) to fight Lord Vader.

When my son had defeated Vader he received thunderous applause. I think because he was so tiny and serious about it.

The kids used "The Force" to throw the troopers back. And then all the bad guys retreated.

The children returned their robes and practice lightsabers. They were all given a certificate making them official Padawans. Then we collected our son. He was in awe of the experience, he said he wasn't scared of Darth Vader at all, I told him I could tell . Then we rode Star Tours again we went to the Wookie planet and then crash landed on Naboo again, so that was kind of a bummer to get the same ending. But it was still really fun.

With all of the Star Wars stuff done, it was time to finally do something S wanted. She had been extremely patient. We headed over to the Muppets.

After The Muppets we decided to take a boat to Epcot. We exited our Friend Ship at the Yacht and Beach club so I could look in the gift shop for Aloe. W had decided to take a little rest.

 

[Sumrdog]

Yea for neighborly dinnermates sharing aloe! Yea for your smart hubby who fell on the baggage check sword! Yea for making neat Star Wars souvies! And yea for being brave! Now, I guess I've got no excuse.

I have to say my favorite part of ToT is the queue! Its super cool.

 

[Tidbit]

yay!!! Sounds like ya'll had a great day at HS.......and shhhhh I promise I will not tell your hunny that you included pictures of your little Padawan kicking Darth's butt!! lol.....Totally love your son's comment after ridding ToT!!!

 

[Disneyfalcon]

Yay! More!
The napkin tying (and your retelling of it) was hilarious!
Hidden eggs in your room! That's so cool!
What an awesome day at Castaway Cay!! Except for the jet skis of course. I've been horrifically sunburned at Castaway Cay! The sun repair product they sell is amazing!
That Jedi Training experience was awesome. Your son looked absolutely adorable. I'm so glad he got to do it!

 

[tink66]

We checked in at the podium for Jedi Training and they had my son join the other children in a line seated on the floor. My son sat very still and waited patiently. When all the children were there they passed out the brown Jedi robes. At first they couldn't find one small enough for W, but after some digging around he got his. Then they had the children line up and follow the cast members to the stage, my HH and S had already gone ahead to find a spot in the front. I joined them on the left side.

A photo pass photographer came out and explained to us that there would be two groups one on the ground and one on the stage, he and another photographer would be photographing each group. Then he gave us all special Star Wars photopass cards. During this time I noticed my son had been moved from the back of the line of the second group to the front of the line of the first group. I think this was because he was the smallest kid. Then they were lead up on stage and each child was walked to a yellow circle. W was put on the circle directly in front of me. He gave me a big thumbs up as he was put in place.

The other kids in the second group were lead to blue spots in front of the stage on the ground. So I was glad my son was moved up to the stage. The Jedi Master came out and the children were all given "Practice Light Sabers."

It was all going well until the Jedi Master noticed "A disturbance in the Force" Then Darth Vader and Darth Maul came out. There was some discussion about Darth Vader getting the kids to join him on "The Dark Side." Then the children were lined up to be tested against Darth Vader. I was watching my son, he looked terrified.

The kids on the ground were going to be tested against Darth Maul.

One at a time the children were brought in front of the Sith and asked to use the moves they had just learned. W was moved to the very back of the line. Some of the older kids weren't taking it very seriously. But my son looked extremely serious as he waited for his turn in line. When he was lead up in front of Darth Vader the Jedi master looked at W who still looked incredibly frightened, and said "Look at this young Padawan; thirty five pounds of fury!" That got everyone laughing except W, he was struggling to get his lightsaber to flick out of its handle, so the Jedi Master gave him his. And then W started using his; "impressive skills with a lightsaber" (his words not mine) to fight Lord Vader.

When my son had defeated Vader he received thunderous applause. I think because he was so tiny and serious about it.

The kids used "The Force" to throw the troopers back. And then all the bad guys retreated.

The children returned their robes and practice lightsabers. They were all given a certificate making them official Padawans. Then we collected our son. He was in awe of the experience, he said he wasn't scared of Darth Vader at all, I told him I could tell . Then we rode Star Tours again we went to the Wookie planet and then crash landed on Naboo again, so that was kind of a bummer to get the same ending. But it was still really fun.

With all of the Star Wars stuff done, it was time to finally do something S wanted. She had been extremely patient. We headed over to the Muppets.

After The Muppets we decided to take a boat to Epcot. We exited our Friend Ship at the Yacht and Beach club so I could look in the gift shop for Aloe. W had decided to take a little rest.

Yacht and Beach is the BEST hotels ever!!!

 

[Sumrdog]

Yay! More!
The napkin tying (and your retelling of it) was hilarious!
Hidden eggs in your room! That's so cool!
What an awesome day at Castaway Cay!! Except for the jet skis of course. I've been horrifically sunburned at Castaway Cay! The sun repair product they sell is amazing!
That Jedi Training experience was awesome. Your son looked absolutely adorable. I'm so glad he got to do it!

Castaway Cay was so great! And I am so glad my son got to do Jedi training too!

 

[Sumrdog]

April 2nd Continued...

We had just exited the boat at The Yacht and Beach Club in hopes of finding some Aloe in the gift shop. As soon as we walked into the Beach Club lobby I was overcome with the most amazing sense of peace and happiness I think mainly brought on by the smell in there which is distinct. Our last two Disney vacations we have been fortunate enough to stay at the BCV's using our DVC points. So I felt like we were coming home.

We walked into the Beach Club Marketplace and found the section of the store devoted to; all items you wished you'd packed and can't live without and are now willing to pay 4X retail to get them, like diapers, Tylenol and Tampax. Sadly they were totally sold out of Aloe too . I just can't believe they don't seize an opportunity to make some money there. Don't they track every move the Disney visitor makes, every purchase? Don't they realize the profit to be made on sunburn products?!!

We decided to not waste anymore time on the search and go into Epcot. At the International Gateway we stopped and rented a stroller for our son, who was still pretty sleepy. Then we asked S what she wanted to do. She wanted to ride Soarin'. I checked the Mobile Magic app, no FP left and SB wait of 180 minutes. I asked if there was anything else and she wanted to do a Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure, which is now a Phineas and Ferb adventure. So we went up to get our communication device, I forgot the name for it. (We don't really get any cable channels at home so we have never seen Phineas and Ferb, as a result I am sure a lot of the terms were lost on me.)

Anyway we could start our adventure in the UK immediately so we headed over. It was around 3:15 in the after noon and becoming unbearably hot. My HH parked in the shade with the boy and watched as S and I criss-crossed back and forth around the UK pavilion for over a half hour.

We went in and out of the Tea House and had to give a secret code to the cashier, she gave us a tea bag to keep. I honestly did not understand at all what our mission was, part of the problem was that it was so bright out I couldn't really see or hear the cell phone talking to us.

I took some photos of the topiaries for the Flower and Garden Festival that were neat.

I have to say I was relieved when we were done with our mission because I wanted to get out of the sun. S was a little disappointed because she wanted to do a second mission. Had it been night time and about 15 degrees cooler, I would've been completely up for it, however it was almost 90 degrees with blazing sun and I was developing a headache...

I suggested to the kids we go explore the air conditioned oasis of Innoventions. S was happy to do that. On the way we stopped at the coffee stand between UK and Canada and my HH and I each got an Iced Coffee spiked with a little shot of liquor at a whopping 9 bucks each! It was refreshing though. We stopped and did some coloring in a tent for a few minutes and visited with some very nice seniors.

I wished I hadn't felt quite so sluggish and irritable because I really wanted to see all the Flower and Garden kiosks and topiaries. I only took a few photos.

At Innoventions the kids and I went into...

That's always a winner with them. And the place wasn't busy at all. My husband went into the IBM Think thing. He said it was; "lame."

After they all played "Where's The Fire?" Another of their favorites. I sat in a comfy chair and decided to check out the piece of paper that had the return bus information to get back to the ship. ( You can see what I wanted to do).

It was 5pm at this time and there was a bus at 5:15, 6:15, 7:15 etc...until park closing. If we caught the 5:15 bus we would be back to the ship around 6:30. By the time my HH and kids were done playing the fire game it was 5:07 and I didn't think we would make it. But I casually mentioned that there was a bus in less than ten minutes if we wanted to run we might make it. My suggestion was well received by everyone. We jogged to the front of the park, by the time we made it out it was 5:14. So my daughter and I decided to run ahead and try to get the bus driver to wait since there was no way my son was going to run.

We had to go past the regular bus zone to a charter bus zone, it was pretty easy to find. We arrived a little after 5:15 to find a bus still there and people waiting. That bus was full and they said that we would have to catch another bus. The people who were waiting in front of us were very upset because when they arrived they were folding their stroller and getting all their 3 little kids arranged and unpacked when a group of people cut ahead of them in line and took the last seats on the bus. So as a result they had to wait another 15 minutes. But I overheard one of the Disney Cruise Line people tell him that Disney would make it up to them somehow. Who cuts in front of a family with small children to get on a bus? After a few minutes the next bus came, there was only us and two other families and we were on our way by 5:30.

We were exhausted and I think the kids slept the whole way back. We were dropped off to a very empty Port Canaveral. Since this was our first cruise we had never been in there before, it was quite a bit nicer than Galveston. I snapped a photo of the ship model.

We went through the Mickey head and got back on the ship. The lobby atrium was empty and when we walked in Goofy was sitting all by himself on one of the couches. He almost looked bored, he was just waiting for some kids to come along. Mine were pretty happy to see him. So they got a couple of pictures and told him a little about there day. Dinner that night was a buffet at Parrot Cay or Topsiders. We went to Parrot Cay. There were no shows that night. We thought of going to the pool but we were all so tired. It probably would've been our best chance to have it to ourselves...

Instead we went back to our room and watched a movie. We were all asleep pretty fast.

 

[Sumrdog]

April 3rd at Sea

We pulled out of Port Canaveral around 1:30am and I sat on the balcony watching for about 15 minutes. It was really warm out. Then I went back to bed and awoke at a more civilized hour, I am thinking just before 8am. I did a weather check and it was still beautiful out!

We spent the whole day cruising only a few miles off shore, so we had lots to look at from our balcony.

That morning we decided to mix things up a bit and have a sit down breakfast at Lumiere's. My HH and I both had Eggs Benedict which I really enjoyed. After breakfast we dropped both the kids at The Lab, which had become the favorite for the two of them. My HH and I went to an adults only dessert making demonstration in Studio Sea.

The Apple Streudel recipe.

The chef demonstrated how to make the dough in front of the audience and there was a camera over his table, so it was kind of like watching a cooking show. Unfortunately he had a major accent and we really could only understand about 25% of what he said.

At the end we were given a sample of the Apple Streudel paired with a Riesling, which was an unexpected treat

Afterward we fetched the kids and went to the Promenade Lounge for Disney trivia. W played with his action figures on the floor. We came in second or third on the trivia, a family behind us knew the answers to some pretty obscure questions. And if anyone didn't know Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy...

At some point mid trivia a crying a little girl appeared, she was lost. My estimate is that she was about 7 years old. I didn't really understand how she came to be wandering the ship alone. But the crew member running trivia was able to identify her using the Mickey Band and called her mom on the Wave Phone. The mom answered and came down to collect her. So it all ended well. Except the next day, my daughter said she saw the exact same little girl lost again and the same thing happened they had to call the mom. Ok once, sure I can see losing your kid, it happens; but two days in a row? Obviously I don't know the circumstances but it just seemed a little negligent to me.

The Queen of Hearts came through and played with the children for a bit while we were in the promenade.

She was pretty interested in W's action figures and she liked his red shirt.

After that I believe we may have had some chicken strips and burgers from deck 9 and then gone in search of black cloth napkins for the pirate party. Which we found at Animators Palate. W and I returned to the room for afternoon nap while my HH and daughter went to pirate crafts. The didn't actually do the craft which was to draw a treasure map, instead my HH had S draw the double eyes on him like Captain Jack in PoTC 2. He said they got some odd looks from fellow cruiser's and the staff.

 

[Pooh'sBuddy]

I'm sad to hear the IBM Think exhibit is lame. I was hoping it would be good. Thanks for the tip on the Agent P thing. We may have to hold off until the later hours so we can see the phone.

Although you had to wait a little, y'all got a bus practically to yourselves! Score! And you didn't have to wait til 6:15.

Nice dessert. And wine, too! Nice.

I will keep my opinions of the chronically unsupervised girl to myself.

Love it! How I would like to see a pic of your hubby with the Jack Sparrow eyes. LOL!

 

[Sumrdog]

I'm sad to hear the IBM Think exhibit is lame. I was hoping it would be good. Thanks for the tip on the Agent P thing. We may have to hold off until the later hours so we can see the phone.

Although you had to wait a little, y'all got a bus practically to yourselves! Score! And you didn't have to wait til 6:15.

Nice dessert. And wine, too! Nice.

I will keep my opinions of the chronically unsupervised girl to myself.

Love it! How I would like to see a pic of your hubby with the Jack Sparrow eyes. LOL!

Yes I would say those World Showcase Adventures are definitely more fun at night!

It's possible that the IBM Think exhibit isn't lame...I am not sure if my HH was really in a state of mind to give anything an honest assessment. We were both pretty tired and irritable at that time of day. I never did get a chance to ask him what was in there and why he said that.

 

[Pooh'sBuddy]

It's possible that the IBM Think exhibit isn't lame...I am not sure if my HH was really in a state of mind to give anything an honest assessment. We were both pretty tired and irritable at that time of day. I never did get a chance to ask him what was in there and why he said that.

Worst case scenario - we'll breeze right through it. All I'll have to ask is whether anyone wants to go to Karamell-Kuche.

 

[Alley7728]

Still enjoying every word.

 

[Sumrdog]

April 3rd continued...

It was the day of the Pirate Party and our dinner seating was at Lumiere's. All the characters had amazing pirate costumes and I really wished we had been slightly more organized to get in the lines sooner, but every time we approached a line we were advised that the character wouldn't be greeting anymore guests. We were lucky enough to cross paths with pirate Mickey in the hallway and my son gave him a hug. And on the way to dinner we ran into Chip and Dale with no line. W was super excited and he ran up to get his picture with Pirate Chip and Dale. I stood in front to take a couple of photos. Then the photographer asked me if I could move aside a little. I was slightly irritated by this because A) I was in the middle of taking a picture of my child and B) I had already politely told her that there was no need to swipe my room key, I wouldn't be buying photos. So I ignored her took my photos and we left for dinner.

Time for a small rant* skip this paragraph if your not interested.* The photo situation on the ship was arguably the only thing that really bothered me on the vacation. The photographers took many photos, they were every where and most of the time we just posed to humor them rather than explain to them we weren't interested. I knew there was no way I was going to pay the 349$ for all the photos from the trip. Which is probably a good deal if a family wants to seek the photographers out on a regular basis and pose for professional style photos, but it just wasn't in the budget for us. Anyway we would occasionally wander through Shutters and look for our pictures which were already printed out. One day there was a really cute one of my daughter and I on Castaway Cay that I wanted to buy. So I went up and asked the price and it was $20 for a 5x7! So the picture is already printed on a piece of .10 cent photo paper. Its of absolutely no value to anyone but me and there are thousands of these pictures printed and displayed daily. If they don't get purchased they toss them in the trash. If I want it, I have to pay 20$ but if I don't want it neither do they and it goes in the rubbish. So why not lower the price a little, they could sell these already printed photos for 5-10$ bucks and probably sell four times as much. I know I would've bought mine. They would make more money and that much less of an impact on our landfills, I don't get it...*rant over*


Time for dinner!

I had the seafood pasta, my HH had some kind of fish I believe; it was way overdone so he exchanged it for a steak. The hands down winner of the meal was the pot stickers!

My daughters fruit appetizer.

Towards the end of dinner the servers got everyone up for some limboing.

I had the dessert trio, which they offered almost every night; as a small sampling of 3 of the desserts. My favorite part was the sauce within the meringue cup. There was also berry cobbler and chocolate cake.

As had become our custom at table 3, we left some artwork behind.

After dinner we went to the show which was described as a comedy percussion show, it was called Buckets n Boards. We loved it! I laughed so hard...The guys were just so funny and it was obvious that they were just saying whatever they thought of on the spot. It was definitely my favorite show of the cruise.

Then it was time for the pirate deck party. We had already been advised by Evandro and Marcus to go up to deck 10 starboard side of the funnel to get the best view of the fireworks. Unfortunately everyone else was up there too, we found a spot near the rail but the gazebo over the hot tub blocked some of our view of the stage. A bunch of people filled in around us and before we knew it we were jammed in jelly tight.

We endured 25 minutes of hip-hop before the fun began. No offense to anyone who likes that kind of music...We just don't. I don't understand why we can't all dance to recordings from a band that plays real instruments, singing songs with lyrics that don't degrade women, but I digress...

Finally I spotted Mickey on the funnel above us, Mickey was going to save us from the bad pirates!

Mickey zip lined to the stage and then there was celebratory fireworks!! Awesome! I love fireworks and fireworks at sea are super fun!

S and I took one for the team and decided to get a couple of plates of snacks from the late night pirate buffet while my HH and W waited in the room. The buffet had some Mexican foods, and the giant turkey legs like they have in the parks. But we were in the market for desserts. The line was enormous and we found ourselves behind the Buckets n Boards guys. We told them how much we enjoyed the show and talked to them for a few minutes. They gave my daughter a Buckets n Boards bracelet too. She was excited to meet them. They were really funny.

We got some cookies and made our way back to our room for cookies and movie time.

Monkey!

 

[Sumrdog]

April 4th Key West in the morning

I was really looking forward to our morning in Key West. We were only going to be there from 7:15-12:45. So we decided we would just walk around, maybe visit the aquarium and see where the roads took us.

This little island was right outside our balcony, we watched a whole parade of fishing boats head out before we went to breakfast. Most of them passed quite close, checking us out as much as we were looking at them.

We went up to deck 9 for breakfast. We sat outside because there was very little wind.

My daughter and I both had bagels and smoked salmon for breakfast which was the only time I ate this on the cruise...

After breakfast we packed a little day bag and went down to deck 1 to get off the ship. We were docked at the naval base and would be taken to Mallory Square via a free trolley. We boarded an empty trolley and as soon as we sat down, my daughter turned to me and said she didn't feel well. She was pale and she said she felt nauseous, I asked if she wanted to go back to the room. She said no she just wanted to get off the trolley for a second. So our whole family got off, one of the crew members noticed her kind of hunched over sitting on a concrete block and offered her a bottle of water. As she was saying that she didn't feel well, I realized that I felt a little nauseous too. I immediately blame my breakfast of smoked salmon, which is something I normally love, but it seemed the most likely offender.

Anyway after about 10 minutes S felt better. I was still just a little nauseous, so we decided to take the trolley into town. We were asked to not take any photos of the navy base where we were docked. After a short ride through an adorable neighborhood we were dropped off.

We have this same breed of chicken at our house.

We call our son W "The Chicken Whisperer" because he can pick up almost all of our hens. He plays with our hens at home all the time and made up a game with them that he call's "Chicken Tag" which he says they love. Anyway my kids were delighted to see all the chicken's running around Key West because it reminded them of our flock of 15.

Momma and babies!

*warning this next bit is slightly personal in nature, so skip this paragraph if your not interested*

I was not feeling well and went in search of a bathroom. I found one, next to an area filled with deeply tanned older men, who appeared to be homeless. They didn't give me a second glance and I was feeling far too nauseous to care if they had. I spent a few minutes using every ounce of willpower I had not to get sick. I used to be of the opinion that if something didn't agree with my stomach it was best to get it out. That changed after one fateful thanksgiving when we were on vacation a few years ago. I got sick so many times, I thought the soles of my feet would start coming up. I think it would be safe to say that after the Thanksgiving experience I have developed a phobia of vomiting. As a result, I always travel with several anti-nausea meds...All of which were safely tucked away in my stateroom.

I splashed some water on my face and found my family checking out the chickens. Thankfully S was improving, I was on the fence about how I felt. I tried to distract myself by taking pictures.

We walked down a few streets, it was still before 9am, so too early to go into the aquarium. We found a guy renting little golf cart things and my HH wanted to rent one. It was around 100 bucks for 3 hours. He wanted to take it over to the beach. I was having a hard time holding it together and I told him I wasn't sure I was going to make it another 3 hours, but if he and the kids wanted to do it...He decided against it since I wasn't feeling well. I felt bad for ruining the fun. We walked back toward Mallory Square and the aquarium was open.

We paid our entrance fee and went inside. It was really small inside, but they had lots of tanks fit in and several touch tanks which are always popular with my kids.

We saw this guy, but not Ursula...

We went outside where they had a sting ray touch tank. I found a bench and began a twenty minute battle of trying to will my nausea to go away, while my kids pet the stingrays. My HH came to sit with me and I admitted that I was miserable and I wanted to return to the boat. He said he would take the kids around a little longer and meet me back in the room.

I left the aquarium and sat down on the steps of a sponge and shell store and waited for the next trolley. While I was waiting my HH and kids joined me. There wasn't anything else they felt like doing if they weren't going to the beach, which they didn't think there was enough time for. So we all got back on the trolley and returned to the ship. As soon as we got back I took some anti-nausea medicine. My HH kept the kids busy so I could rest, he is a good guy. I read my book and then napped for awhile, I awoke around 3pm feeling better. I was cautiously optimistic that I had adverted a disaster .

I have no idea what my family did that day. My HH had dropped the kids at The Lab and we spent a few hours reading together on the balcony. The water was scary calm.

We went down to dinner and I had a little bread. I ordered the vegetarian risotto thinking that something plain would be best. I can't really remember what everyone else got, I was still feeling kind of depleted. Unfortunately my risotto wasn't cooked all the way, so I only ate a little bit. I went back to the room after dinner and spent a few hours reading. My daughter went to the show with our dinner companions family after she made Flubber in the kids club. Which was apparently really fun.

That night there was lots of thunder and lightning. The lightning was really crazy! I love weather.