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
The shortest 50 minutes just flew by and soon we were cresting the bridge to the port and The Fantasy was in sight!
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As I said before, we typically drive and arrive at port before it opens. We end up entering the port through the upper security checkpoint from the garage bridge. This would be our first time entering at ground level but it was just as easy. We cleared security with our “wine” and beer exchange six pack. We hopped in the Castaway Club queue and within a minute were greeted by Sharon who processed our paperwork and provided us with our room keys, boarding number, and Navigator.
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As we finished with our paperwork they were only boarding up to around group 15, we were 26, IIRC, so we still had some time to read over the navigator and grab a selfie.
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Soon after it was our time to enter!
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Still to come: Cabanas lunch, DVC M&G, and some pool time.
 

wdisney9000

Truindenashendubapreser
Premium Member
The shortest 50 minutes just flew by and soon we were cresting the bridge to the port and The Fantasy was in sight!
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As I said before, we typically drive and arrive at port before it opens. We end up entering the port through the upper security checkpoint from the garage bridge. This would be our first time entering at ground level but it was just as easy. We cleared security with our “wine” and beer exchange six pack. We hopped in the Castaway Club queue and within a minute were greeted by Sharon who processed our paperwork and provided us with our room keys, boarding number, and Navigator.
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As we finished with our paperwork they were only boarding up to around group 15, we were 26, IIRC, so we still had some time to read over the navigator and grab a selfie.
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Soon after it was our time to enter!
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Still to come: Cabanas lunch, DVC M&G, and some pool time.
Man, what a sight to pull up and see the cruise ship just sitting there in all its bad-azz'ness Those pictures are great!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Boarding group 26???

My girls cruise group totally freaks out if we don’t get BG 1 :cautious: I honestly had no idea that the BG numbers went that high. :joyfull:
Me neither! Like i said, we’re usually there knocking on the door to open the port so this was new experience for us. Even with the high boarding number we were aboard shortly after they started boarding folks.
 
So still sulking a bit from PotC being down..again, we walked our way over to BTM to get our wildest ride on.
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We leisured around a bit, checking out some pins and gifts near Liberty when I noticed that Pirates was showing a wait time on the Disney ap! We banged a uey to head towards the ride when we were met with this cuteness overload.
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Mom and baby were just doing their own thing and were kind enough to slow down for a quick pic before they…high tailed it away…ha! @Zipitidoda knows what I’m talking about.

So onward to PotC with low expectations of it being open. Score, they were still accepting new recruits!
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Feeling satisfied that we got a pretend boat ride in before our real boat ride we made for the front of the park. We pulled into some shops along the way since we still had some time to spare before our pick up. View attachment 287752
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While looking around I noticed something I never had before. I really took a liking to this piece of theming.
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Up next: Busses, boats, and booze…Oh My!
Banged a uey! Boston slang!
 

pezgirlroy

Active Member
And he loves Ricky Martin! He touched on Titanic a bit during our cruise during one of the trivia events.
We are going on the Magic in April and I just have my fingers crossed that for some weird reason he will switch boats. What I think was even better about his rant was the fact that the sound guy was right on top of things and just kept playing that awful (in my opinion :) ) celine dion song. It was just great.
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
So our boarding group was called. We queued up an tapped our key to be allowed on the boat. We were immediately herded to the picture op before finally making it to the atrium. Now, if you’ve followed along on any of our other SnT trips you know what’s happening next. For those not in the know, on our first DCL trip a few years ago we decided to have some fun and make up a name for them to call out as they introduce the families as they enter the boat. It stuck and this marks the 6th appearance of the McGillicuttys


As is also tradition we immediately made for Cabanas for some food. Not many pictures of the restaurant at this time but more will come. Cabanas is pretty much the same from boat to boat, though.
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As we were seating we noticed you can see NASA from the boat!
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And some other things
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While at Cabanas I went ahead and picked up the only missing ingredient for my Castaway Cocktail, POG juice:
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AS we were finishing up our food the announcement was made that the rooms were ready!

Still to come: 8188, Pluto, and beer!
 
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Besides the sweet balcony one of the main reasons we liked room 8188 was its proximity to the adult entertainment and Cabanas. We could get to either really quick via stairs or elevator and when you see how we do breakfast you will see why this was important to us!
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We ended up taking the stairs down too excited to wait for the elevator. Our excitement was completely warrented!


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All I an say is DANG! I knew the veranda was going to be extended but the real-estate we had to ourselves was awesome! We also had some CC swag waiting for us on our bed:
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It was still early so we decided to head for the pool for a bit before we had the DVC M&G and Beer exchange. We went ahead and spruced up our door first!
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Still to come: Beer, more beer, and making new friends!
 
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
OMG . . . did you think you died and went to heaven?! :jawdrop: What a great room and balcony!! And did I see this correctly--there are TWO full bathrooms in there, too??!!
It seems that way but they are not full bathrooms. There were two seperate sink/mirrors but one room held the shower and the other had the toilet. It still made getting ready in the morning and before dinner easier since we didn’t have ti ahare a sink and mirror.
 

fractal

Well-Known Member
Besides the sweet balcony one of the main reasons we liked room 8188 was its proximity to the adult entertainment and Cabanas. We could get to either really quick via stairs or elevator and when you see how we do breakfast you will see why this was important to us!
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We ended up taking the stairs down too excited to wait for the elevator. Our excitement was completely warrented!


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All I an say is DANG! I knew the veranda was going to be extended but the real-estate we had to ourselves was awesome! We also had some CC swag waiting for us on our bed:
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It was still early so we decided to head for the pool for a bit before we had the DVC M&G and Beer exchange. We went ahead and spruced up our door first!
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Still to come: Beer, more beer, and making new friends!


Wow!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
OK, so I finally got off hold with members services to renew our DVC Aps, back to this trip!

So it was still before 2 and we had time to kill before the DVC M&G. Folks were still boarding the boat and migrating to Cabanas for lunch. The kids pool was starting to blow up but the DW and I headed for our sanctuary!
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While its not the largest of pool areas its almost perfect. We will end up spending a ton of time here this trip and I’m just fine with that! We weren’t the first folks by the pool but we were the first in it. Since this is the adult area kids are not allowed to hang around since they have 2 other dedicated water areas. Families do pass through the area since the forward elevators are on the other side of the adult area. I won’t lie, there is a certain amount of pleasure seeing the little shi..angels run up to the pool and point only to have their joy temporarily sucked away when mom and dad tell them they cant swim there :p.

Since this was our first time on the Fantasy we were still learning of what offerings were available since it did differ greatly from the Dream despite having the ame general layout. One of the differences noticed was the overall beer offereing! As we walked past the family pool area I noticed Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale tap. When I first ventured into the craft beer snobbery KBBA was one of my early favorites so seeing that tap made me nostalgic happy! Of course I had to get a pour! IIRC, the DW got the drink of the day or a mojito, but I didn’t get a picture of it, shame on me…
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We lounged in the mist for a while sipping and relaxing. The DVC M&G was approaching so we dried off, snapped a few port pics and made for The D Lounge.
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Despite the sales pitch that occurs the DVC M&Gs are actually well worth attending. Firstly, free adult and kids drinks for everyone, multiples if you like to hammer curl. Then there are the free bottles of Evian water, we typically walk away with 3-4 bottles for later use ;). Probably the biggest draw is the swag they give out and the chance to win $250 in on board credit for just sitting there for 45 minutes. Oh, and there is always this:
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It was coming up on 3:30 and I had a beer exchange to get to so I left my better half in charge of winning on board credit as I headed to the atrium to make some new friends.

Still to come: swill, sweets, and sunsets
 
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