Tonight, of course, was Pirate Night. Usually on the Westerns, Pirate Night is held on Wednesday (Night 5), but as we found out in the Palo line when we boarded, our cruise would be extra special. The move to Tuesday was to accommodate a late stay in Cozumel on Wednesday; we would not be departing until 1:00 AM. This would allow some of the crew and cast members a much needed break and allow them some time to let loose onshore.
After adjusting to the initial shock (yes, shock. Remember how hard I worked on the dining rotations and spreadsheet?) It actually worked out rather well. I think the Pirate theme goes great after a day in the islands. It might have even fit better if the Pirate Ship excursions for that day had not been cancelled, but
.
After the movie, we headed back to our rooms to freshen up just a bit. We were staying casual this time, no Pirate costumes or really even any fully themed clothing. Ron, Brendan, and Savannah were all wearing pirate T-shirts and the boys wore shorts (hey, this is the one night they are allowed in the dining room
we were so going to take advantage of that!). I wore the best thing I could find, a black and grey striped scoop neck top that resembles the attire in the best prisons across the country! Sarah just wore a Carters dress. They dont make much in pirate garb for the infant set, if you know what I mean! We stopped to empty out the Fish Extender, which was packed full of trinkets, tattoos, glow sticks, eye patches, and all manner of booty. One item inside the FE was a small felt do-it-yourself Pirate Flag kit, which Savannah became immediately obsessed with assembling!
Taking inventory of the booty:
Tonights dinner was in Animators Palate featuring the Pirate Menu. It would be our first of two back to back nights in AP, with the show night being tomorrow. The Pirate menu is not one of my favorites, and in fact it had been our practice of scheduling Palo on Pirate Night on our shorter cruises.
We headed down to the dining room and found our table near the back of the room, right behind the service station where our private serving team would stand and watch us all night, waiting until one of us needed something. As I glanced around at the crowd, I was a bit surprised to see most people were dressed casually like us, and not in full out costume. The costumes we did see however were amazing. Kimberly and her mom and grandma were all decked out in their hand sewn costumes that were simply stunning! Hadley and Erik and their respective parties were also dressed to the nines. I did expect more participation to this level on the Magic, so like I said I was surprised to see most people in T shirts and shorts.
Jakub and Candice greeted us; of course they were in their pirate costume. Fitz too, was impossible to miss in his swashbuckler hat that was almost as large as he was (and thats saying a lot!) The room was decked out in festive yellow tablecloths but it really didnt seem right being in Animators. Pirate Night in Parrot Cay is the best atmosphere. Oh well
I tried!
We also noticed a few people at the big table tonight. Remember, that is the 12-top right near us that we assumed (and would be confirmed for us later on) belonged to our serving team. It was always empty, which is why we got the private dining room service. A small family was sitting there, a mom and dad and two very small children (one baby, one toddler). They, however, also had their own serving team and were also appeared halfway through dinner when we arrived, so I dont really know what that situation was all about. Interesting, though.
We got our drinks and bread, delicious crusty Cuban rolls and the soft, amazingly yummy banana bread. As we awaited our appetizers, Kimberly came by to take our picture; she was going around getting snapshots of everyone from our meet thread for her scrapbook (what a great idea!)
We took a few shots, too but I was pretty restrained with the photography this evening.
Showing off their tattoos (I have no idea where they got these. The DVC desk, maybe?)
There were new bandanas also. Not the ones they used to have from Oriental Trading Company. I kind of like the red, and I like the Pirate in the Caribbean logo on it, however these were way too small to tie around a normal adults head properly. They were more like handkerchiefs then bandanas.
As far as the food goes, nothing we ate this evening was exceptional in one direction or the other, therefore not very memorable. The kids selected their usual, Minnies Mini Burger. For appetizers, Ron had the Blackbeards Jumbo Crab Cakes (I dont especially remember anything jumbo about them, but then again I am not a crab cake connoisseur.) I had the Buccaneers Sun-Ripened Pineapple with banana-orange glaze and coconut (the best part!). For soup/salad, I had the Chilled Honeydew and Mango soup, which was very good. (All of the chilled soups on
DCL are awesome!) Ron had the Hideaway Bay Salad, Romaine with parmesan and jerk croutons, which was unremarkable. For entrées, Ron had the Treasure of the Seas Grilled Shrimp and Seared Scallops, again in his opinion unremarkable. I had the Black Pearl Oven Roasted Beef Tenderloin, which was pretty good. For all our ambivalence of this meal, we ended up pretty darn full (really darn full, actually), so it must have been decent. As usual our service was stellar. It moved at a nice rapid pace and we did not want for anything.
Tonight was the night Brendan had selected for his birthday celebration. Candice had mentioned it briefly earlier to ensure this was the night we would like to celebrate and I took that opportunity to let her know that Brendan really did not like that Jell-O mold cake they make. She assured me Dont worry, we dont have that here, we have *real* cake. She had just come over to the Magic from the Wonder and agreed that it was pretty yucky. After dinner, but before our desserts arrived, our team gathered to sing Happy Birthday to Brendan. And sure enough, it was real cake. His favorite, vanilla!
For dessert, aside from the birthday cake which we all shared, I was the only one who selected anything off the dessert menu. This was, of course, the Walk the Plank Chocolate Cake. It was awesome but I seem to recall the serving being a bit small, which probably was a good thing, because I was very, very full.
As we finished our dessert, the loud tropical music began to blare, the rhythmic clapping thundered; the servers gathered
.let the limbo commence!
As I mentioned, we were way in the back of the room, tucked behind a service station, so we were in an awful vantage point. I was the only one who could see at all, and that required bending halfway over backwards and craning my neck to a painful position that no creature aside from an owl should attempt. While the last Pirate Night limbo we were at seemed to go on forever (those of you who read my first trip report may recall that is when Brendan overate and he had a Code V right in the limbo parade), this one was over very quick. The kids never even made it up there, the crowds backing up behind the limbo were huge (extending to the side walls of the room on both directions) and it seemed like people were spurting out from under the bar very slowly. In all actuality, it was a good thing the music stopped abruptly, as several decks up the Pirate in the Caribbean Deck Party was already in full swing.
And boy was it! After a very brief stop at the rooms for a potty break/diaper change we headed up to the party. We decided to strategize a bit and after being in the pool area of deck 9 last time, we decided being up on deck 10 would afford us a better vantage point. Since we had Sarah in the stroller, we had to think ahead about how we would get up there (not all of the elevators go to the top floor, literally and figuratively). We walked all the way aft on 6 through the narrow hallway past all of the stateroom hosts carts, room service trays, vacuums, and the like to take the aft lifts up to deck 10. We emerged outside of Palo, and the elevator lobby area was deserted
save one cast member holding a fire extinguisher. We started to head in one direction before she stopped us and let us know we could not go out that way. So we headed back to the other direction and all the way around the back. As we passed the Mickey pool are we could see a bit of congestion ahead, but it still did not seem unreasonable.
UNTIL we passed the stack. OMG! It was utter insanity! Wall to wall (or rail to rail) people, just stacks of them! It was impossible to get through, but we tried anyway. We werent going to stop and try to get a spot there (or TAKE anyones spot there) we just thought wed move through the mass and it would be clear on the other side. Everyone there was having none of it though. As we tried to squeeze our way past (it was a walkway, after all) there was plenty of grumbling, groaning, eye rolling, and glaring coming from the crowd ahead of us. GUYS! This is not Main Street and we are not plopping down in front of you for the parade at the last minute, I PROMISE! We are not those people!. We were just trying to get through. Most likely though, there was no room on the other side, but we could not see that from where we were in the midst of the throng. I had the stroller and as I was inching it forward a lady took a big step back into the hole another person made so I could pass, and as she did, well her ankle hit my wheel (I *swear* it was her, not me!). She gave me the You will NOT take MY spot! glare, and it was right then I decided this was ridiculous, we were NOT going to get past this crowd, so I turned the stroller around and headed back aft. Thats what they need, though, is Parade Control! And ropes!
Our plan having massively failed, we decided to head back down to deck 9 and take our chances down there. As we headed back toward the Palo elevator, there was a CM with a fire extinguisher now there on deck, blocking the path. Im sorry; you cannot go this way for your own safety. UGH. Now we were really stuck!
So we walked back in the general direction of the Goofy deck area. Ron said, Go down! and motioned to the stairs. We went down, and he followed, carrying Sarah in the stroller. (Yes, if you were looking on in horror, that was us!)
Once down on deck 9, it as readily apparent what was going on up on 10. The deck was totally full! Completely surrounding the Goofy Pool area, it was shoulder to shoulder five to ten deep, just a massive wall of humanity! Looking at it from below, I am impressed we managed to get as far as we did, and I was also glad we decided to turn back when we did. Deck 9 was no ghost town either, in the center the crowd extended all the way back to the hot tubs. In fact, I was more than a little bit in awe of the crowd. This was nothing like what we had experienced on the Wonder! There were spots along the edge of the deck by where the chairs were piled up, so we hung over there (not like we had much choice). We got ourselves a drink (cant remember what, but it was tropical and fruity!) and finally took a breath.
Who needs glow sticks when you have glow baby!
Heres a quick pan of the ginormous crowd (which really, really does not do it justice):
The party was in full swing up on stage. The bad pirates had taken over and after a little more dancing it was time for the good guys to save the day!
Let a Hero show you how its really done! (Ahem, spoiler)
I had my shutter speed set too slow for fireworks shots so a lot of them ended up like this, which is actually kind of cool IMO:
After the fireworks there is a mad dash for the buffet, obviously from the folks on the early dining rotation because we could not even stomach the idea of more food yet. Normally I would have grabbed a dessert plate for later but the crowds were huge and I decided it just wasnt worth it. When the massive throng had dissipated enough for us to walk across the deck to midship, we were exhausted and relieved!
We headed back to the rooms and fed Sarah, then decided it was well time to finish our Fish Extender deliveries. We had only gotten deck 8 done the day before, so we had all the rest of the ship still to go. However we had gotten oriented to the map and now had a good system of covering the floors. It was a whole lot of fun to look at all the doors and to cover areas of the ship we hadnt seen yet. There were some really neat (and unusual) FEs. We saw some amazing door magnets and decorations.
It took about an hour to complete the drops. I was utterly exhausted by the time we made it back to our rooms, and collapsed into bed. In bed with all of us tonight: wascally wabbits!
All in all, yet another amazing day aboard the Magic.
Up Next: Mexico (Ive never really been, so I dont really know)
I'm so excited that we'll be on a cruise with you next year.
I had no idea any of the Margaritavilles had pools.
That will be a fun place to hang out after any excursions since I am rather fond of margaritas.
You're iced T and my margarita came out to over $20. 
Lois too! 
