SO grateful to this board and especially
lurkyloo for all the wonderful advice and help!
We had two cakes delivered on our Illuminations Cruise, both as a surprise. The first was a mini cake for our DD's birthday and the second a celebratory cake for DH's graduation.
When I first called YC for the cakes, I was able to give the info for the mini cake and left it really open - I picked colors and flavors, but told them to just do what worked best. I'm super happy with the results:
Mini cake
DD loved it and it wouldn't been large enough for 3 or 4 easily.
Our second cake was more 'fun'. DH is a pilot and his FAVORITE cartoon as a kid was TaleSpin. When I spoke to the first CM at YC, they took some basic info but told me I would receive a call back to go more in depth. That same night, they called me back and the CM I spoke with was thrilled to do a TaleSpin cake (it had been a fave cartoon of hers as well). I explained that I wanted Baloo as the main focus of the cake and that my MIL had two small figurines that we wanted to add to the cake. From there, they came up with this:
Top of cake
Side of cake
It was AMAZING! The characters were all on white chocolate and the cake tasted DELICIOUS! The cake was marble and the frosting a buttercream and the white chocolate shavings really added to the flavor! Best of all, DH was stunned into silence and I could tell he was amazed at the nostalgic theme.
Just a heads up for those thinking of delivering to outdoor areas during the summer -- humidity made everything start to sweat fast! Luckily, our boat driver was on top of it and was able to keep things cool and box the leftovers back up before they wilted much.
We had 9 on the cruise and more than half the cake left - I believe the larger cake was a 10" but honestly don't remember... it's a lot of cake and even the day after tasted wonderful! I was thrilled with the results and both cakes and delivery to the boat was about $125.
Thanks again to everyone who had advice/suggestions/experience for helping make this night a wonderful surprise for my family!!!