Trip Report The graduation trip that finally happened!

Hello! We are back and I am ready to share our trip with everyone!

Who:
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Me (Amy), my husband Brian, Owen (14), Lily (17), and Logan (19) (And it appears that I am now the shortest in the family!!)

Why: We were celebrating Logan's high school graduation (which happened to be last year, but as most of you already know, our cruise was cancelled last summer)

Where: Port Canaveral, Miami, The Dream, and Animal Kingdom Lodge

When: June 12-23, 2022

Our goal was to leave the house by 1 or 1:30am on Sunday, June 12. My alarm went off at midnight and Brian and I quickly showered and rounded up the kids who never went to bed. We quickly loaded the car and were pulling out of the McDonald's parking lot with 2 large Cokes at 1:20! I always start the drive as I don't sleep well in the car and Brian does, so he sleeps a little longer initially so he can then take over. It was raining when we left and quickly turned into a downpour. Cincinnati is a huge obstacle course of orange cones, lane closures, and lane shifts which is difficult to navigate at the best of times, but was horrendous in the pitch black with the pouring rain! Brian checked the satellite and assured me that it would stop once we got into Kentucky. I was never so happy to see the Brent Spence bridge...only to met by even harder rain in Covington! Brian said, "whoops! I guess it followed us!" He got a not very nice look from me! Luckily, it did stop raining shortly and I got us all the way through Kentucky and into Tennessee. I was still feeling awake enough to keep driving, so I got us to Knoxville and navigated our new route onto 40 to start heading east. Brian then took over and I got a few pics along the way since it was more scenic than our normal trip straight down 75.

You'll have to pardon the bug guts on our windshield! We couldn't keep up with keeping the windshield clean!
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We went through several tunnels.
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The reason they are called the Great Smoky Mountains:
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We saw quite a few hot air balloons at one point.
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We eventually hit 26 and then 95. I wouldn't say the traffic was necessarily any better than 75, but Brian was happy to not have to drive through Atlanta and it was much more scenic!

We finally saw this at about 1:30pm:
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We had stopped shortly before that, so no one wanted to stop at the Welcome Center for me!
We finally were able to experience Buc-ee's for ourselves! It was quite an experience and almost overwhelming!
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We pulled into our hotel in Port Canaveral about 4:30pm.
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We stayed in the Home2Suites side. It was odd to have 2 different hotels under the same roof since they shared the pool and had the same breakfast offerings.
We unloaded the car and debated what we would have for dinner. Some of us wanted pizza and some wanted seafood. The pizza people won out since there was a pizza place right across the street.
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We should have had seafood!!
 

MickeyCB

Well-Known Member
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Once onboard, we headed up to the pool deck and rode the AquaDuck multiple times with little to no wait. And we ingested some more banana ice cream!! We then headed back to the room for some relaxation time before getting ready for dinner.
These photos as you left to go back to the ship are stunning!
 

TheMouseFan

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We headed out to dinner a few minutes early because I wanted to get pics with some of the characters in their pirate costumes.
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Dinner was at Enchanted Garden again tonight with a different Pirate Night menu.
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Brian had Angelica's Lime Marinated Shrimp as his appetizer.
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Logan, Owen, and I had the Deep Fried Calypso Crab Cake.
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Brian and I got the Chilled Mango Soup.
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The water was so smooth this night because we were barely moving since the next day was our at sea day and Miami was not very far away.
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TheMouseFan

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Brian had Jack's Treasure of the Seas (shrimp, scallops, and pasta).
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Lily had pizza off the kids menu.
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Logan and I had Cortes's Cilantro Marinated Caribbean Grouper Filet.
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I'm not sure what Owen ate, but it must have been something he ordered before since I didn't get a picture of it.

For dessert, Brian had the Rum Soaked Chocolate Cake.
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Logan and I had Bananas in Paradise (banana bread with hazelnut fudge filling)
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There was a photographer walking around again.
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After dinner, we found another photographer.
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TheMouseFan

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Owen didn't want to get pics with any characters, but I snuck a few of the characters themselves.
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And we saw Daisy in the wild.
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Back to the room to wait for fireworks.
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We chose to not go up for the pirate deck party since I knew we were on the correct side of the ship to see the fireworks from our verandah. They started just as Brian, Logan, and Lily got back from the movie.
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TheMouseFan

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Sunday, June19

Today was our at sea day, as well as Father's Day. We all slept in a little, some more than others. Brian and I were up by 8, the boys were up by 9, and Lily slept most of the morning which made it difficult to get our rooms cleaned! I started the morning relaxing on the verandah.
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Once the boys were up and moving, we headed to Cabanas for breakfast (Lily chose to stay in bed) and watched the rain/storm in the distance creep towards us.
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We even saw a water spout (on the right edge of the rain in this pic:

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Then we wandered around and did some princess creeping:
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Then we stopped to actually have a picture taken.
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