Trip Report #tonyfromspain: A Prophet Surf ‘N Turf story

Whelp, now that the Freestyle/Greco season is over, I’ve completed my course setup for my summer class, and I’ve finished my laundry I can kick this beast off!

!!!DISCLAIMER!!!​

For those overly sensitive to satirical sass, poor spelling, and overall weak grammar then please feel free to excuse yourself now because all bets are off from here on forward… As @Zipitidoda would say, there are plenty of prophetisms to come.



Still here? Swell!



Most of the backstory can be found here How to celebrate a proper 20/40 in just 18 months.... For those suffering from krikosophobia (I’ll let you stew on that one), the long and short of it is that we’ve been planning this trip for over 18 months and we are celebrating our 20th anniversary and our 40th birthdays since they both occur this year! I have mentioned that one of us has yet to hit that milestone and the other is indeed a full 40? I can tell you who still 39 but that would just lack class…it’s me…I’m still 39 and she’s older me! ;):D Anywho, there will be some park visiting, WDWMagic member meetup, and a 7-night cruise in this TR.



Anyway, this journey starts out with a late flight out of the busiest airport in America. We worked to late afternoon and drove down the northern most Marta station. We took Marta down to ATL thinking this would not only save us money on parking, which it did, but also time since Hotlanta has some of the worst traffic, ever. Sadly, we didn’t win the “saving time” game as about half way down a train on the same track broke down causing some delays that put us at the airport less than 2 hours before our flight. We quickly checked our bags and waded through security. We had planned on having a nice sit down meal at the airport but settled for Jersey Mikes since we were now time strapped.
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Unfortunately, 24 hours prior to our flight we forgot to log into Southwest and complete precheckin and we ended up with a real late boarding group. I was legitimately concerned we would not be sitting together on this trip but thankfully we found a pair of seats together near the rear of the plane. I’ll let the DW speak to how this affected her trip. IMO this was one of the BEST flight experiences we’ve had! The head attendant seemed like he was classically trained in the Jungle Cruise Skipper arts and was VERY entertaining. There were no issues with our flight at all! We even got to see the HEA fireworks as we approached MCO! As we made our descent we were notified that it was one of the attendants birthday and a request was made for all of us to turn our flight attendant lights. We all followed the request and they then turned off the cabin lights as we all sang happy birthday to the birthday boy. He then “blew out his candles” as we all turned off the lights as he blew, a very cool experience! As we disembarked I, of course, had to get a photo with the birthday boy and his crown!
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We took the MCO monorail to the main hub and collected our bags. We were flying later than normal and I didn’t want to leave bag pickup and delivery to the Disney folks because I didn’t want to be woken up at 1am when our bags got delivered to our room. Our luggage was on the carousel quickly but I got us turned around and took a small detour before we finally made it to the DME queue:

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Thankfully they opened another line up and we were quickly waiting in our bus queue. There must have been a slew of cheer and or teen events going on this week because the DME lines were chalk full of rowdy teens and inappropriately dressed 7 year olds. Soon we were on our bus with about 12 other people but then just sat there for at least 15 minutes. We waited and waited and then, all of a sudden, a mass of teen conventioneers with a few parent chaperones walked on and filled up the remaining seats. Finally we pulled away with the notice that we would be hitting POR first before making our way to the POLY. It wasn’t long before were in the bubble! We unloaded our teen patrons and made for what should have been a short trip to the POLY but the Mouse’s road construction turned it into an almost 30 minute drive! We finally arrived at the Polynesian sometime between 11:30 and midnight!



Still to come: Our room!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Maybe you're planning on talking about it in your next update, but was there a lot of damage on St Maarten from the hurricane?
There was! The video I took, and will eventually post, shows all the damage to the boats around the island. The damage on the island itself is pretty substantial too. One difference we noticed between St. Maarten and St. Thomas was that it it looked like the St. Maarten folks were just living with the damage not really fixing anything while the St. Thomas folks were hitting it hard getting things repaired.

Well that looks pretty awful!!!
Yeah, so many people in two pools. So thankful for the adult pool area.


Day 4 St. Maarten, cont:
So we still had a bout 30 minutes before our excursion group was to meet so we went topside and took a few more pics. As you can see, The Love Boat was in port too.
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The day was still shaping up to a beautiful one! Finally it was time to make our way to the D Lounge to group up with our excursion team. We were tagged with Tangled stickers to identify us as the rhino boat group.
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We grouped up and walked off the boat together and staged up on the dock before making for the bus pickup.
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 4 St. Maarten, cont:

It was early and it was already pretty dang hot so thankfully we didn't have to wait on the dock long before being handed off to our first guide. We walked the length of the dock, obviously, into a little port marketplace, that we will talk more about later, and on to the excursion bus area.
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If you look closely you will see a unique little tram with some Mickey appeal.
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We were quickly boarded on to our bus and reminded that we would need our IDs to even make it back into the port area. We all checked out and were ready to roll! One thing that caught me off guard was this. Its been so long that I've seen an ashtray in a car that I did a double take
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 4 St. Maarten, cont:

So we were on the bus for about 15-20 minutes driving through some very rough parts of St. Maarten. I didn't take any pictures or videos of the drive. Soon we were at the rhino boat company. WE were quickly greeted by liability paperwork and this cutie who was not afraid of the new visitors.
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As my wife would say, it looked like it was coming up a cloud but thankfully it was all bark and no bit and quickly went away without a drop.
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So they armed us with vests and then sat us down to explain where we were going and what signals to use during the journey. We started at "Rhinos" and went all the way up to "Happy Bay"
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After our briefing we were each assigned a rhino boat and told to go circle in the harbor to practice while they got everyone in a boat. Soon we were off! Sorry about the three videos but the GoPro broke them up and I didnt join them back up before uploading them to YouTube. I couldn't believe how close they allowed us to get to the wreckage and I couldn't believe how many boats were just left there to rot.



 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 4 St. Maarten, cont:

So we weaved and turned our way up to Happy Bay and regrouped with our guides who passed out some hydration as we tied our rhino boats to each other about 30 yards off shore. We were told we had about 30-40 minutes to swim, walk the beach, or just relax. I tossed off my vest and swam for shore.
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The water was clean and beautiful, the shore...not so much. There was plenty of storm debris all along the shore line but the sand was still very clean and soft to walk on.
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I even found a Hammer along the way but the DW wouldn't let me keep it...boo.
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I explored the cliff a little bit because, ya know, I like scaring the out of my wife who watched most disapprovingly.
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I eventually made my way back for one more selfie before we were called back to our boats for the journey home. No video of the trip home but I'll say this, they let us open up on the ride home, very exciting. Soon we weer back and everyone in our group was lamenting it being over because we all had a great time. We showered off the ocean and noticed they had some adult refreshments and we partook. This was my first Presidente and I dont know if I was high off of rhino boat, dehydrated or just really found this beer to be good but my Untappd notes read 3.75/5 "a perfect cervceria after a day of jet boat action". It really was a perfect hot weather beer that hit the spot. I wont lie, I wanted another but they were calling us to get back on the bus. That's when we were reminded that we weren't in Kansas anymore! The shop owner said "last call for drinks". To which I replied "we can take them on the bus...open!?!?" He replied, with a smile, "Sure!" Boom! Mind blow! Open container on the bus ride back it was! Kids, don't do as pro9het does!
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imahistorygeek

Well-Known Member
Maybe you're planning on talking about it in your next update, but was there a lot of damage on St Maarten from the hurricane?

We have nothing to compare it to, but it still looked like a lot of damage, except for the port. It was nice and gated. As we drove to our excursion, it was very run down. There didn't seem to be any work being done to repair the buildings. Maybe this is because of the lack of funds, I don't know. You'll see in one of the videos that we drove through some sort of boat graveyard. I may be wrong, but I believe some (if not most) were placed there for effect. There were almost too perfectly spaced.

St. Thomas, on the other hand, seemed to be doing a lot better. From the ship, you could hear construction, see traffic lights, the flow of traffic, and for all intents and purposes, it looked like a typical city. St. Thomas appeared to be actively rebuilding.
 

imahistorygeek

Well-Known Member
I remember drinking the beer after our St. Maarten excursion and trying to down it fairly quickly because it's so ingrained that you cannot drink in a vehicle that I felt weird about it.

The shuttle to get to the excursion...I seriously thought we were going to drive off the side of the mountain several times. I thought I had experienced aggressive driving when we visited Massachusetts, but that was nothing compared to what we saw on St. Maarten and St. Thomas.
 
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imahistorygeek

Well-Known Member
I have to agree with @fractal. Those Rhino boats look so awesome! Definitely a heck of a lot more powerful than the SeaRaycers at WDW. :hilarious: To me, it seemed like the Rhino boats were more like jet skis.

I chose this excursion because it really did look fun and had great reviews on TripAdvisor. They were pretty fast and stable. Of course, I may or may not be heard on the video Beverly D'Angeloing it, in the style of National Lampoon's Vacation, by saying "SLOW DOWN."
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 4 St. Maarten, cont:

Soon we were back at the port checkpoint having our ids and room keys checked. As you pass through the gate to the port its like moving through a time machine. The port area is so clean and modern unlike where we were coming from. There is a little market place available at the port that we were going to check out but nature called. Sometimes being a dude has its benefits...
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While my bride was waiting to go I grabbed a few pictures.
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Finally I was joined by my better half and we made to window shop.
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We took some time checking out the shops and the drink shacks. There was some high end retail spots, some typical tourists shops, and a package store. I'm always looking for "new to me" beer and the shop had several I've never had before. I'll talk more about them later. We also picked up a bottle of port to enjoy later on.
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 4 St. Maarten, cont:

It was around 2:00 and we kinda reached a point of no return for lunch since we had a Palo dinner planned for tonight and didn't want to ruin our appetites so we grabbed some some sweets from Cove Cafe and some caffeine to wash it down with. We were also sure to get a CC frequent visitor card for this trip since we were pretty sure we would be getting enough coffee's here to earn a free one. Everything, as usual, was excellent.
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Adequately fueled up for the rest of the afternoon we decided to relax by the adult pool and enjoy some of recent purchases.
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My Untappd notes from this fella were surprisingly good! 3.75/5 nice malty flavor, a good middle of the road beer. Like the Presedente, I could drink this guy on the regular and I don't know if the beer was genuinely good, I was dehydrated, or I was still in a sugar fog from our CC visit.

We spent some time by the pool for a while and felt a nap coming on so we made for our stateroom an rested for a bit. We had plans to participate in the 80's music triva challenge later and needed some rest. After a bit we were ready for the trivia challenge and I decided to get my pregame on before we left our room.
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My untappd notes read 4/5 nice moca/coffee notes with a little malt action, repeatable.

We made for O'Gills and claimed a table and started round two.
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My untappd notes read 2/5 flavored water.

So the game began and we started strong but struggled with the last few songs. There was a couple there that were a true 80's kids and they smashed it with a 50/50 score. Hopefully we would redeem ourselves when the 90's challenge comes up.
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Up next:
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DisSplash

Well-Known Member
We have nothing to compare it to, but it still looked like a lot of damage, except for the port. It was nice and gated. As we drove to our excursion, it was very run down. There didn't seem to be any work being done to repair the buildings. Maybe this is because of the lack of funds, I don't know. You'll see in one of the videos that we drove through some sort of boat graveyard. I may be wrong, but I believe some (if not most) were placed there for effect. There were almost too perfectly spaced.

St. Thomas, on the other hand, seemed to be doing a lot better. From the ship, you could hear construction, see traffic lights, the flow of traffic, and for all intents and purposes, it looked like a typical city. St. Thomas appeared to be actively rebuilding.

This was our exact reaction and experience in January. We did the Two Island Tour, and ride a bus over to the French side - both sides were quite a mess with debris everywhere and boats on land (sporting For Sale signs), or half sunk in the water. But no one appeared to be out repairing anything - the people we did see were carrying empty bottles/receptacles which I presumed were for collecting water. I will say that all of the locals we spoke to were extremely happy to have us there though.

And yes, a completely different experience in St. Thomas, which was in active rebuild mode, and wayyyyy cleaner from a debris standpoints. The only hiccup we had there was that the taxis in port could not take credit cards as their system was still down. So it was cash all the way in January.

It sounds like not much changed in 5 months time!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 4 St. Maarten, cont:

So our Palo dinner had come and, as is tradition, we chose our Palo night to coincide with Pirate Night. I took me 6 cruises to realize I could use the DCL provided pirate bandanna for something other than a head garrrrgment.
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Ok, enough of that. We had a short walk to the restaurant and you just cant walk int this place without taking a picture of the spaghetti and meatballs.
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We checked in and were quickly seated. We scored a wonderful window seat that provided a view that got progressively more beautiful!
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 4 St. Maarten, cont:

We spent some time looking over the menu there were so many good looking options that it was hard to choose. We'll talk more about mains soon. For starters they presented us with bread service and we each received a plate of antipasto.
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Also, as is tradition, we try a different bottle of wine each trip. I don't have any notes on this selection but I do remember enjoying it and would absolutely get it again
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For our apps we shared the arugula salad and the mozzarella with plumb tomatoes.
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Dinner so far was going perfectly. after our apps they brought out a palate cleanser
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 4 St. Maarten, cont:
Like I said, the menu at this place is awesome and selecting one thing is TOUGH so why stress it and just get what you want! For our main, mains ;-), the DW went with the roasted chicken.
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I cant break from tradition and had to go with the Palo
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We asked to sample some other mains as well and requested samples of the Chianti Braised Beef Ravioli and the Wild Mushroom Risotto
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All the food was outstanding and we were teetering on not getting dessert but who are we kidding, were getting dessert! Actually we were kinda already committed to it since we ordered the souffle about 30 minutes earlier since it takes a while for them to make it to order. NO REGRETS!
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We closed our meal with shot of apple icewine.
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In all our dining experience lasted over two hours that felt like a few minutes. It was another wonderful Palo experience. This place has never come close to failing. In 109 days we will break with tradition and give Remy a shot on our Halloween cruise in October.

Still to come: Pirate Night.
 

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