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!
 

cfry06

Well-Known Member
Day 2, at sea day #1, cont.

After breakfast I decided to head to the lobby and check with guest services about a mixology class @cfry06 told me about on Castaway Cay. Unfortunately the class had already sold out! I was bummed for a minute but got over it fast and decided to look around. We had plans to do a guided tour of the ship later this morning but I figured I’d get some pregame on. I snapped a picture of one of the fancy chairs and mosaics as well as the chandelier.


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Oh darn! I’m sure you guys rocked the Castaway Day regardless!

I do hope there was a photo shoot in the bike later in the trip! :cool: We laughed so hard posing on this thing!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
following along...
great stateroom you have

do you notice any vibrations from the engines being at the stern?
When making port, yes, there are vibrations. When on open sea just cruising, nope, there is nothing we didn't feel at midship or forward. Like I said earlier, when we woke up to rainy choppy seas I was surprised that we didn't feel it. This is our second aft room and we love them. We're in the same area on our October cruise too.
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 2, at sea day #1, cont.

Just outside of O’Gills is Skyline. This is an intimate little bar that is constantly changing. Every few minutes the theme of the room changes to a new city “skyline”. We will return here in a few when we take the guided tour and find a pretty cool hidden Mickey!

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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
only been on the magic once and it was such a fun time..

so cool you all doing it up big disney style..
The Magic is the only ship we have yet to do! I'd like to get a trip in during 2019 but the itineraries for that ship don't align well with our schedules. The routes out of NYC are tempting but seem more involved with getting a room in NY for before and after the cruise.
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 2, at sea day #1, cont.

So our guided tour was about to start which meant we had to head up to Meridian for it to begin. We would return to Meridian a few nights later for our bourbon tasting. As we took the stairs up we passed this beauty.
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I really love this painting for whatever reason a rainy, dreary, London scene makes me smile plus it also makes me think of PPF which churns up the ol’ nostalgia machine.

Meridian is seated directly between Palo and Remy and for some reason I didn’t get any pictures of the lounge but I think I’ll have some when we return for the tasting. One nice thing about this deck is the high falutin bathrooms they have up here to service the fine dining locations.
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Soon our tour guide started. We started out talking about Palo and Remy, their meanings, and their association to Disney. We even had the head chef of Remy come out talk with us for a few minutes. We, of course, talked about the spaghetti and meatballs chandelier at Palo. More Palo pics will happen when we have dinner here in a few nights.
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We left deck 12 via the stairs and made our way down talking about the art on each wall along the way and its meaning and how it is associated with each deck and Disney. Along the way we came across this piece.
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In this piece are two hidden icons. Can you see them?

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There you have it! Mickey and Walt! I've walked by this piece many times and never took notice of that detail!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 2, at sea day #1, cont.

So we continued on throughout the ship learning little tidbits here and there. Since this was a ”free” tour I didn’t expect a whole lot but it was enjoyable and we did pick up on some new things. Soon we were passing Pepe’s room. I don’t care who you are, you can’t deny this attention to detail was cute as hell!
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We continued on forward and passed an animated mural as well as the Buena Vista Theater.
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We double backed once we hit the Walt Disney Theater and made for Europa. We learned a few more bits about the area here before concluding our tour at Skyline. As I mentioned before, Skyline has a back drop that changes every few minutes. What I didn’t mention was that back drop is also animated as if you were looking out an actual window over a live landscape. This offers a lot of opportunity for some neat Easter eggs. Let’s play another game, shall we? Can you spot the difference?
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If you had a keen eye you would be treated to Mickey dancing a little jig in his hotel room!
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Still to come: Arts and crafts time, more free booze, and some room service.
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 2, at sea day #1, cont.

After the tour we decided to make for O’Gills for some adult arts and crafts. Today’s craft was paper Fantasy’s!
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While the activity director was passing out the supplies another couple walked in with mimosas and proclaimed “Tiffany’s is passing out free mimosas!” I looked at the DW and she was off… I stayed back and held our table. Fortunately, Tiffany’s wasn’t far and soon she was back with the goods.
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With some complimentary libations in hand it was on to the craft!(see what I did there?) I wont comment on which ship looks more awesome or who created it.
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Up next: buying some memories, getting our bingo on and keeping it classy.
 

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