Disney, The Dream...and WHAT?!? Disney AGAIN!?! *Updated 2/20*

[melmar136]

I just found your TR and your trip is almost over! Love all of your pics I have to go on a Disney cruise one day - love how you and your daughter are enjoying your together and alone times.

so glad you found us! You'll have to stay tuned for details, but our trip isn't quite over! You really should try a DCL cruise. We had so much fun.

Loving your TR!! The Dream seems so beautiful and lots of fun!! We are in MA too. We live in central ma and ended up with around a foot of snow. We are still without power. They are saying Thursday, at the earliest! Can't wait for your next update!! Thank goodness for phones that connect to the Internet! Hope your staying warm! It's way too cold!

Glad you joined in! Where in central MA are you? We are in Barre, and got right around a foot also. Our power came back yesterday, so we were without it for 3 days. I hope you got yours back on! Wasn't that crazy?!?

Well, needed to find a new TR to read, and came upon yours. What a lucky pick!!! I am enjoying it immensely!

I had never heard of an FE before your report, so I learned something new. What a great way to interact with fellow DISers while on a Disney Cruise - pixie dust all around.

I enjoyed your TR in the parks, and am enjoying your ship TR. I especially like your candor as to your opinions on food, rides, interactions, etc.

Looking forward to reading more...

Hi! We're so happy you found our TR, and glad you are enjoying it. I had never heard of the FE before we happened upon the boards. I was excited to find out about it, as it made the cruise even more fun, and we got to meet other DISers that way. Hope you'll stay tuned!

 

[melmar136]

Sorry it's been a while since our last update! We lost power for three days...pure torture!

When we left off, we were finishing breakfast. We decided we would do a few character meets. We got in line for Mickey Mouse.


593 by mlm313, on Flickr

But, his line was closed, so we wound up first in line for Minnie.


594 by mlm313, on Flickr


595 by mlm313, on Flickr

Then, we got in line to meet Captian Jack Sparrow, since we wouldn't get to see him on Castaway Cay.


598 by mlm313, on Flickr

A little blurry! He was chatting with us, and asked where we were from. We said "Massachusetts." He said, "Oh! Massachusetts....never been there." in a voice just like Johnny Depp.

After that, we headed up to Goofy's Sports Deck, to play some mini golf. It's a cute 9 hole course.


600 by mlm313, on Flickr


601 by mlm313, on Flickr


602 by mlm313, on Flickr


603 by mlm313, on Flickr

While playing, we had the awful view of Nassau again, for the second day in a row.


599 by mlm313, on Flickr

Not that it looks like such an awful place, but when you were supposed to be at Castaway Cay, it's pretty awful!

Other ships were arriving near us and we had to compare them to DCL of course. DCL won!


604 by mlm313, on Flickr

We decided to see how long the line was for the AquaDuck. It had been pretty long every time we checked, as no one really seemed to be getting off the ship. It was 40 minutes, but we figured it wasn't going to get much shorter, so we went to change and then joined the line.


605 by mlm313, on Flickr

Meg and I went on together, and it was a lot of fun. But, it's over too fast for waiting so long. I didn't even really get a good look at the part where you are out over the ocean, because it just goes by so quick. Meg liked it, and went on later alone, which she enjoyed more. She said being able to sit in the float alone is better than having to sit in the front when going on with another person. When you are in the front the water splashes up into your face and you can't see too well.

We decided to grab some lunch at Cabanas and sit outside since we were still pretty wet.
I was really expecting them to have a similar menu to the one we WOULD have had if we were at Castaway for the day...burgers, grilled chicken, the whole bbq thing. BUT, no such luck.

Meg's plate:


606 by mlm313, on Flickr

She got some corn, mac & cheese, pasta, shrimp, and a rice dish. It was better than the first day's lunch at Cabanas, but still just ok.

I got:


607 by mlm313, on Flickr


608 by mlm313, on Flickr

A little steak, some fries, mac & cheese, corn, mashed potatoes, and a roll, plus a plate of salad. I thought it was pretty good, and definitely better than the first day. I was actually really enjoying the steak, until we went to the railing to watch the Allure of the Seas pull in next to us. What a HUGE ship!


610 by mlm313, on Flickr


611 by mlm313, on Flickr

Wow! We just might have to cheat on DCL to try that one out someday! There are about 6000 people on board! Meg commented that there were more people on that ship than the population of our town! How crazy is that?!?

So, after we were done gawking at the ship, we returned to eat the rest of our lunch. I heard someone say, "excuse me!" so I turned around. A man let me know that while we had been at the railing, a seagull had swooped in and took some food off of my plate! I checked out the plate to see what was missing, and it was the STEAK! Yeah, the steak I had been enjoying! I had no idea seagulls even ATE steak. I figured if anything he would have taken the roll! What do you know? A seagull with good taste!
I was so thankful that man let me know. I pushed the plate aside at that point, not wanting to eat off of it since the stupid bird had been standing in it!

We finished up, and Meg was sitting there with her sunglasses on.


609 by mlm313, on Flickr

Such a face! (You can see the sunglasses on her head at that point.) They are black on one side and white on the other, and she gets lots of looks and comments. At lunch, one of the servers kept acting very scared of her. He was calling her Cruella, and wouldn't clear her plate. We were cracking up laughing. Finally, another server came over and took her plate, having no idea what was going on. Then, the first server put someone else's plate in front of Meg and acted all scared again. The second server was giving him looks like he was crazy. He finally said to him that it was Cruella! We got a kick out of it!

After lunch, we went to change, and headed out to try our luck at winning more money.​

 

[dizneeat]

Oh, I hear you ........ having to look at Nassau when you could be at CC sucks!
And seagulls stealing your food does too!

Love the photos - you got some nice character shots. We never got in line for those and we never bought any of the photos at Shutters. Maybe we should have ........

Looking forward to more .....

 

[heaven2dc]

Love your daughter's sunglasses! I would never have thought a seagull would snatch your steak - that was too funny!

Isn't that ship huge?!! I don't know if I would enjoy being on such a big ship with so many people - it would be fun to try it sometime but I'd hate to see how busy the pools are. I hope you do get to try it out someday! My only cruise so far was onboard the Grand Princess to the Western Caribbean and I thought it was amazing - someday I'll have to try another cruise.

 

[MAGICFOR2]

Mine! Mine! Mine! Seagulls don't care - they will eat anything! For some reason, we have them here, 4 hrs from the ocean - they must live at the lake - they love to hang out at McD's and beg for french fries
Sorry your power was out for so long - nice you had good friends to help out! Love your character pics - first in line for Minnie!
I noticed those sunglasses in another pic - so cool!

 

[melmar136]

Oh, I hear you ........ having to look at Nassau when you could be at CC sucks!
And seagulls stealing your food does too!

Love the photos - you got some nice character shots. We never got in line for those and we never bought any of the photos at Shutters. Maybe we should have ........

Looking forward to more .....

We only bought 1 picture at Shutters. They are expensive, but I do like the way you just go up to the computer and scan your Kttw card to view them.
Really easy!

Love your daughter's sunglasses! I would never have thought a seagull would snatch your steak - that was too funny!

Isn't that ship huge?!! I don't know if I would enjoy being on such a big ship with so many people - it would be fun to try it sometime but I'd hate to see how busy the pools are. I hope you do get to try it out someday! My only cruise so far was onboard the Grand Princess to the Western Caribbean and I thought it was amazing - someday I'll have to try another cruise.

That was the biggest ship I have seen. Obviously I was distracted to let a bird steal my food! I haven't been on too many cruises, but really do love it!

Mine! Mine! Mine! Seagulls don't care - they will eat anything! For some reason, we have them here, 4 hrs from the ocean - they must live at the lake - they love to hang out at McD's and beg for french fries
Sorry your power was out for so long - nice you had good friends to help out! Love your character pics - first in line for Minnie!
I noticed those sunglasses in another pic - so cool!

Now I know that seagulls really will eat anything. That one got a good meal anyways. It beats McD's fries! He must have been bragging to his seagull friends that night!

Meg says thanks, she loves those sunglasses too!

 

[donnaf516]

Catching up...looks like you're having a great time. We were there right around the same time.

 

[melmar136]

Catching up...looks like you're having a great time. We were there right around the same time.

Thanks for joing in! What dates were you there?

 

[melmar136]

Been a while since we last updated due to the fact that Meg has been feeling awful. She has been having Disboards withdrawls, so we are updating from the laptop in bed.

When we left off, we were headed to Bingo. There was a $5,000 jackpot. How nice would that have been? We got the same package as before for $50. While we waited for Bingo to begin, we ordered drinks.


612 by mlm313, on Flickr

On the left, Meg got the Princess Delight. It was very fruity, and she liked it.
On the right, I got the High Tide. I think it was the drink of the day and it was good.

The room kept filling up and they ran out of seats. Everyone really wanted to win the big money! We played five games again. The CMs were funny and did the same jokes as the day before. "Betty" was not as kind to us today, as we won no money at all. No one won the big jackpot, but on the last game, one guy won $2,000! Nice!

After Bingo, we explored the gift shops again. Since it was our last night onboard, we had to make our final purchases. This was the night I purchased my Disney Dooney wristlet with the money we won at Bingo the previous day. (Picture soon) Meg got a tshirt, we got magnets, an ornament, and a few other little things. The one other thing I got was the DCL Chamilla charm on the first night. I love it!

We browsed around, tried on a few things...


613 by mlm313, on Flickr

Yikes! If Meg wasn't sick, I wouldn't let her put that picture! But she got a smile out of it.

This is the design on the magnet we got. We really loved it!


614 by mlm313, on Flickr

Then we went to meet Chip & Dale.


615 by mlm313, on Flickr

We had some business to take care of at Guest Services after this...which we will tell you about in the next post!​

 

[BerrysGirl]

Yay another member of the Disney Dooney club! And way to leave us on a cliffhanger... a stop at Guest Services. How mysterious!

Hope Meg feels better soon!

 

[melmar136]

Yay another member of the Disney Dooney club! And way to leave us on a cliffhanger... a stop at Guest Services. How mysterious!

Hope Meg feels better soon!

Not that mysterious, it was just that the post got messed up twice, while we were adding more, so we just left it off there!

Thanks for the well-wishes for Meg!

 

[MAGICFOR2]

Well, sorry you didn't win this time. Looks like you had fun shopping anyway! You look beautiful in the hat shot, BTW.

Hope Meg feels better soon, or who knows what she'll post!

 

[melmar136]

Well, sorry you didn't win this time. Looks like you had fun shopping anyway! You look beautiful in the hat shot, BTW.

Hope Meg feels better soon, or who knows what she'll post!

We did have fun shopping even though we didn't win. Although if we did get that jackpot, I would have booked a nice long cruise with the money!

Meg is feeling better, good thing because I'm sure she could find worse pictures to post of me!

 

[melmar136]

Not to keep you on a cliffhanger or anything... We were having issues last night with the laptop, trying to finish that post!

We were headed to guest services to check on our flight home to see if it was cancelled, as Hurricane Irene was headed up the coast to Boston...where we were flying home to the next day. I stood in line at Guest Services while Meg went to watch the (matinee) Farewell Party. I had also pre-paid our tips and got the receipts for the envelopes while we were here to give to the servers and room steward.


616 by mlm313, on Flickr


617 by mlm313, on Flickr


618 by mlm313, on Flickr


619 by mlm313, on Flickr

The Farewell Party was soooo short. I missed the whole thing and I was only in line for about 5 minutes.

The CM said they had not heard anything from the airlines regarding the flights. You would think they would have since you can do the airline check-in onboard. They said they were giving passengers 30 minutes free to call your airline. Calls normally are $6.95 a minute.

We went back to our stateroom so I could make the call to Delta. I spent about 25 minutes on the phone, and found out our flight was indeed cancelled, but they could get us out on Wednesday! I texted my friend to see if she could find any other flights for us. In the meantime, I called WDW as DVC had just closed. I wanted to see if they could tell me the availability of DVC rooms. They couldn't, of course. I think I was on my cell phone for 17 minutes. I got the bill a couple of weeks ago and it was $30 for the call and a few texts from the ship.

Meg was kind of freaked out as she would be missing her first few days in a new school if we did not get out until Wednesday. I told her our plan would be to go to the airport in the morning since we already paid for the transfers and we would figure it out from there.

With all the time spent on the phone, we had to rush to get ready for dinner, and missed the show again (Disney's Believe) for the night.

We had a few minutes before dinner and why not book a cruise for next year? We decided on a 5 day to give us TWO chances to get to Castaway! We got an inside stateroom to save money as we really didn't spend much time in our room enjoying the verandah.

Dinner that night was at...


620 by mlm313, on Flickr

The doors hadn't opened yet and Meg took a few pictures to past the time.


622 by mlm313, on Flickr

Meg kept making goofy faces to occupy herself.

The doors opened and a server led us to our table. We looked around, seeing the changes from when we were there at breakfast.


623 by mlm313, on Flickr


624 by mlm313, on Flickr


625 by mlm313, on Flickr

The "sky" changed to dusk at this point and the flowers changed color and some closed up.

Pla took our drink orders and our dinner orders, as Kruno was tied up at a table with over 12 people, lots of little kids! Poor Kruno!

We got a greater appreciation of how hard the servers really work. Our tablemate happened to have Kruno at breakfast time and got the chance to chat with him a little. He was telling her that if he is sick and cannot work, he does not get paid for that day. They pretty much work breakfast, lunch, and dinner shifts, most days. Most of what they make is from tips. He was sending the money home so his fiancee can go to school (college) and so they could get married.

Our first course soon arrived. Food porn in next post. ​

 

[MAGICFOR2]

What? You left us hanging again!

Yay for re-booking! What better way to use your free time before dinner?

I really want to see that Garden some day soon..

 

[melmar136]

What? You left us hanging again!

Yay for re-booking! What better way to use your free time before dinner?

I really want to see that Garden some day soon..

Sorry, I know, leaving you hanging before food pics! How could I?!?
We'll try to get those up soon! Hopefully tonite, if we can finish Meg's science project quickly!

 

[melmar136]

Ok, so on to dinner!

First, for our appetizers, we both got the lobster ravioli.


626 by mlm313, on Flickr

They were good, but just not much of it.

Then, I got the Romaine wedge.


627 by mlm313, on Flickr

It was really good, and I could have eaten much more of it. I don't remember what kind of dressing was on it, but I do know I liked it.

Meg got the tomato soup.


628 by mlm313, on Flickr

She said it was no Campbells....it was much better, and was her favorite appetizer of the cruise.

For our entree, Meg got the caramelized scallops:


629 by mlm313, on Flickr

She really liked the scallops, and the asparagus, but the pearl pasta tasted like nothing. And she thought the stuff on top of the pasta tasted like grass.

I got the prime rib. It came with potato and veggies.


630 by mlm313, on Flickr

It was very good. Cooked medium well, not too much fat. I also asked to try the sea bass. I didn't want the whole dinner, just a piece of the fish to try.


631 by mlm313, on Flickr

It was ok. I had never had it, but on our cruise to Alaska last year, I tried halibut that was amazing, and I was hoping it would be similar. Not so much.

Pla took our dessert orders because poor Kruno was tied up again. Nothing looked appealing (again) which is sad cause I just love dessert. But, of course I ordered something. I got the banana foster sundae...but with NO bananas!


632 by mlm313, on Flickr

It was good. Vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce and whipped cream. You can't really mess that up!
Meg got chocolate ice cream. No picture though. If you've seen one dish of ice cream, you've seen them all!

Pla overheard me telling our tablemates about the magic tricks that our server Estewar had done at breakfast, so he wanted to show us his magic skills too. He was actually pretty good. We all got a few laughs trying to figure the magic tricks out.

Pla also brought out a little plate of different candies for us to try.


633 by mlm313, on Flickr

There were chocolate ones that tasted like fudge, but we didn't try the others. I think they were fruity with sugar on them.

We went back to our room, and got the FE gifts to hand out.


009 by mlm313, on Flickr

We did door hangers for the kids, and the adults got a Massachusetts postcard with some Boston Baked Beans candies.

When we were done, we went back to the room, and took a picture of our nightly towel animal:


634 by mlm313, on Flickr

We were packing up everything and trying to get our luggage out the door by 10:30, which is when they were coming to pick it up. They take it, and you see it again at the cruise terminal, so you need to make sure you have clothes and what you'll need for the next day.

I was trying to get things organized and I could not find my sunglasses! They are prescription, so it was kind of a big deal. Meg and I both were looking everywhere. I thought maybe they had fallen into the trash bucket and got tossed. Then, it dawned on me.....let's take another look at our towel animal, shall we?


634 by mlm313, on Flickr

Wow. They were right there the whole time. Duh!

We also got our pillowcase back from Guest services that the characters signed.


635 by mlm313, on Flickr

It came out great!

We had left the tip envelope for our room steward in the room, but sort of in a pile of papers. When we came back, I noticed that it was gone. Which meant that he had taken it from the pile. I found that a little odd. I guess he wanted to make sure he got it, but at least wait until I specifically leave it out. Oh well.

That concludes our last day on the Dream. We had to get up fairly early, as we received tickets that had our breakfast place and time for the next morning. We had to be to the Enchanted Garden for 8:20.

Weather: it was mostly sunny, with a random rain shower, and hot
Best thing today: riding the AquaDuck, and the character meets
Worst thing today: not knowing what was going to happen with our flight the next day, and knowing it was our last day on the Dream

Stay tuned, the next day will be crazy!​

 

[dizneeat]

Having to leave is horrible, isn't it?

The weather was bad for travelling those days. We stayed on for the next cruise as well and there were lots of people who didn't make it to port because of cancelled flights.

Food brings back memories!

Hey, I love the little story about not finding your sunglasses. Same thing happened to me at OKW one year, when mousekeeping used them to decorate the towel animals she had left on the bed. We searched the whole living room and I had to use my none prescripion ones, just to find them sitting on my bed when we got home!

 

[MAGICFOR2]

I'm thinking the stuff that tasted like grass looks alot like grass!

The sea bass does not look good - no sauce or crusting or anything Of course I'm not much of a fish eater, so maybe it looks less apptizing to me.

Too funny about the sunglasses!

 

[BerrysGirl]

What a cute pillow! I love that idea :

That towel animal is crazy Glad you finally found your sunglasses... that totally sounds like something I would do!