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
Day 4 St. Maarten, cont:

So to finish up this pretty perfect day we still had a date with some pirates. We went back to the stateroom to change into some plain clothes and made for topside. We still had about 30 minutes to kill so we took some night shots. The DCL boats might be more beautiful at night than in day.
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They were featuring Muppet Treasure Island on funnel vision to get folks in the pirate mood.
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Soon it was time for Captain Jack to make an appearance quickly followed by the fireworks


After the show we opted to head straight for our room since we had another early day of excursion tomorrow at St. Thomas. Tri's skills were...improving? I cant say I'm certain what this is.
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Still to come: St. Thomas kayaking,
 

AKemily

Well-Known Member
Tri's skills were...improving? I cant say I'm certain what this is.
I’m inclined to say it’s Hank?
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Thanks for all your reports! I was visiting Vancouver, BC this weekend and saw this guy at port:
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It made me think of you and @imahistorygeek. I’ve never had much of a desire to go on a cruise myself but I certainly still enjoying reading about your adventures - both surf and turf! :joyfull:
 
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 5 St. Thomas:

Another great night of sleep. I woke early again but today I did not have to go topside for hot food so I went to the veranda to relax. To my surprise we were already making port! Also to my surprise...it was cloudy and lightly raining but this seemed to be behind us because if you looked forward the sun was peeking through.
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 5 St. Thomas, cont:

Unlike St. Maarten, we would be making port aft first which provided us with a fantastic view of the port and surrounding island.
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So we've been on a cruise "diet" for four days now and were starting to loathe the thought of food, they feed you so well on these things, so for breakfast this morning we went strictly continental which is why I just hung out at the room.
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While eating breakfast a local paid us a visit. He only stayed a short while once he realized we don't feed the locals
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DisSplash

Well-Known Member
Did you hear all of the roosters? It sounded to me when we pulled in to St. Thomas as if every house on the hillside owned one ... it was quite the chorus, and one of my favorite memories.
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Did you hear all of the roosters? It sounded to me when we pulled in to St. Thomas as if every house on the hillside owned one ... it was quite the chorus, and one of my favorite memories.
I don't recall any roosters, maybe because of the light rain coming down around the island.
 

MomofPrincessGrace

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

So to finish up this pretty perfect day we still had a date with some pirates. We went back to the stateroom to change into some plain clothes and made for topside. We still had about 30 minutes to kill so we took some night shots. The DCL boats might be more beautiful at night than in day.
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They were featuring Muppet Treasure Island on funnel vision to get folks in the pirate mood.
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Soon it was time for Captain Jack to make an appearance quickly followed by the fireworks


After the show we opted to head straight for our room since we had another early day of excursion tomorrow at St. Thomas. Tri's skills were...improving? I cant say I'm certain what this is.
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Still to come: St. Thomas kayaking,

I'm thinking a crab with a Pharaoh hat :joyfull::joyfull::joyfull:
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 5 St. Thomas, cont:

So after breakfast we got dressed, collected our gear and made for top deck to look around. It was still a little drizzly but you could also see the sun trying to force it out. While looking around we came upon some CMs getting some maintenance training.
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 5 St. Thomas, cont:

Our staging time was approaching and we had to head forward to the Walt Disney Theater to meet with our excursion group. Team Timon today. We waited about 15 minutes then exited as groups to the port. It was still raining a bit but when I saw our bus drivers name I just knew things were going to change!

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cfry06

Well-Known Member
[TANGENT]

So this just happened!
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[/TANGENT]
Sweeeeeet! Always a great day when new adventures are booked! We’ve been eyeing the Bermuda sailings - especially bc we won’t have to fly. But also because...Bermuda!

We are opening a new facility at work next late summer/early fall. So been holding out booking anything for now until I know more. But maybe we will get lucky and last minute join you!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We’ve been eyeing the Bermuda sailings - especially bc we won’t have to fly. But also because...Bermuda!
We had the placeholder and we had been going back and forth on where/how to use it. Looked at itineraries out of Miami and Galveston to mix things up and to try to get the Magic in so as to "complete the set" but nothing was appealing and the DW wanted Bermuda. I'm pretty indifferent about the island but I liked that it was 5 nights, 7 is a little to long for me I think, and I liked that it would be a whole new experience with having to fly into and sail out of NYC.

So been holding out booking anything for now until I know more. But maybe we will get lucky and last minute join you!

That would be awesome and pretty cool to have someone else on board we knew, again. We thinking this cruise may be pretty adult heavy given the dates and itinerary.
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 5 St. Thomas, cont:

Mr. Mel Brooks got to our excursion safely but not without a few scares that I'm sure is just everyday driving for St. Thomas folks. We met with our tour guides and given instructions on what we may and may not do as well as shown where we would be traveling to today.
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We were then given our life jackets and instructed to head to the boats.
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We were told to practice our paddling in the cove while everyone got into their boats. So the DW and I practicd our teamwork a bit before the journey.

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We circled there for about 10 minutes before everyone made it into the water. The guides hopped into their boats and said "lets go!" The group queued up and followed in line. It seemed on the way out we were fighting both the current coming in and the wind so it didn't feel like we were moving forward very well, plus it took the DW and I to get in sync. Once we found our groove we were on our way!

 
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imahistorygeek

Well-Known Member
Kayaking was so much fun! Like Sean mentioned, the drive to get there was SCARY. There were many sharp turns and steep hills.

I'd never been on a kayak, so there was a bit of getting used to what we needed to do to move forward, but one we figured it out, we were good to go.

These first two videos are the mangroves part of the excursion. This was just the beginning and we were already having a great time. The beauty of this place (as you will soon see) was breathtaking. The trip through the mangroves brought us to something scary (to me) and something amazing: jellyfish and millions of hermit crabs.
 

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