So when I last left off Jesse and I had just finished getting out butts kicked at Movie Quote trivia. He and I split up and I went to get J out of the Edge and Jesse went to get E out of the Lab. The plan was to meet in the Promenade Lounge to draw Mickey and Daisy. When J and I got the lounge we were told the class had been moved to the Animator's Palate. He and I got there just as the class was starting.
The class works about the same way the animation class at The Magic of Disney Animation in Hollywood Studios works. The person doing the class draws the character step by step and you follow along. The difference is that the person running the class is a crew member and not an animator so they're pretty limited in the characters they can draw. The girl doing our class cheated a bit when drawing circles and traced around a plate. She still did a good job for someone who is not a professional. J and I drew Daisy while waiting for E and Jesse to show up. They didn't show up until right at the end of the session because the line to get E out of the lab had been crazy long and then E had to stop at the bathroom. Of course. We decided to skip drawing Mickey and get some lunch instead.
In case you can't tell by looking at J's face it was a little cold that day. Windy too. If I recall correctly it even started to sprinkle just a bit while we were sitting out there.
I wish I could have this view outside my house.
After lunch we took the kids back to the clubs and then Jesse and I went back to the Animator's Palate so that we could draw Mickey. Jesse is a little bit of a perfectionist and he had three different Mickey drawings going as he tried to get it just right. Then he got really mad when I laughed at his final drawing. Mine was pretty awful too.
Next up Jesse and I took a little stroll around the ship.
It's hard to tell in this picture but there were some good sized waves going on at this time and the boat was really rocking. I was glad for my sea sickness patch as we wobbled our way along the deck.
After a while we decided to check on the kids and see if they would like to join us for Disney Tunes Trivia. E opted to stay in the Club but J wanted to come with us on the condition that we could get some ice cream first. So we headed up to Goofy's Galley and that's where he saw this little guy:
I always wondered about these sculptures. I can't decide what bothers me more. The idea that all that perfectly good fruit gets wasted or the idea that someone would eat it after it's been sitting out for who knows how long and has been touched by who knows how many people.
I stopped worrying about the fate of fruit and we went to the Promenade Lounge to play trivia. This was a cute game. There was someone who played a couple of notes of a Disney song on the piano and then you had to guess what it was. It was really hard! I thought we were going to win this one because like many people with autism J develops intense interests in things and one of his big interests is Disney music. In spite of our little ace in the hole we did not win. In fact we did really badly. Still it was enjoyable.
Then I have a little hole in my memory about what we did next. I have to assume that I was so traumatized by losing at trivia that I passed out for a bit. When I came to we picked E up from the Club and went to the theater to see Twice Charmed.
When we got to the theater I spotted an entire row of empty seats right near the front. Score! We started to walk into the row but as we got in a woman at the end told us she was saving the seats. We asked her how many she was saving and she said seventeen. Jesse started to turn and walk away but I said nope, sorry, but saving seats is not allowed and went ahead and sat down. I know the lady was annoyed and if she had just been saving a seat or two for someone in the bathroom or at the snack bar I would not have sat there but you can't really hold seventeen seats. Worked out for us though, we got great seats.
We all really enjoyed Twice Charmed. J really thought the villain character was funny and we all thought the music was nice. I would see this again on my next cruise. We could really feel the boat moving during this show and I was so impressed with the performers dancing across the stage and the boat rocked to and fro.
Next we had to go back to our room to get ready for our formal dinner.
Someone pointed out to me that this elephant's nose looks a little obscene and now that's all I can think of when I look at this picture.
I want to take a second to talk about our bathroom because that's what I have a bunch of pictures of next. We had a split bathroom which meant we had a sink and toilet in one room and a sink and shower in the next. In the toilet section of the bathroom we each had our own shelf for all our bathroom stuff. I put everyone's stuff in a big plastic bag. This way our stuff wasn't falling all over. (I also have kind of a thing about bathroom air contaminating stuff. I needed my toothbrush to not be out in the open air.)
Notice that one person (Jesse) did not keep his stuff in the bag. Pretty much every time I went in the bathroom I would find something of his on the floor. The rest of us followed the system and did not have to pick our stuff up off the floor.
Bathroom shot with bonus glimpse of me!
I just noticed the hair brush is sitting out and I am retroactively grossed out.
The bathrooms are tiny, no doubt about it. Jesse and I would each have to get in the bathroom and wedge ourselves between the toilet and back wall in order to shut the bathroom door. It wasn't terrible though. If you wanted to be efficient you could use the toilet and wash your hands at the same time.
The shower part of the bathroom. Obviously.
It's hard to show in a picture how small this shower was. It felt a little bit like showering in a shoe box. I'm very tall with long legs and arms and for me trying to shave my legs in this tiny space was almost comical.
While I documented our bathroom conditions my family sat around and ignored my instructions to get ready for dinner. Well, J listened. J is was my favorite on this day.
My family is not big into dressing up so we decided to take a bare minimum approach. Jesse wore nice black pants, a long button down shirt and a tie. I wore a long green skirt and a black lace top. J wore nice dress pants and a long sleeved button down shirt. E wore pretty red dress that friends of ours got for her in China. I will admit that I felt a teeny bit under dressed as we walked to dinner and passed people in ball gowns and full suits but we were in now way, shape or form the most casually dressed people at dinner. Once we were sitting down it really didn't matter at all. I wish I had not spent so much time before the cruise stressing about what to wear on formal night. Seeing other people so dressed up was nice but it just wasn't for us. We were comfortable and still looked nice so I'm happy with that.
For the life of me I cannot remember what I ate this night. I've looked at some menus online to jog my memory but nothing I'm seeing sounds familiar. I know that we at in Parrots Cay but that's about all I know for sure. I also think I had a steak. I like a pretty pink steak so I ordered mine medium rare and it came out perfectly.
While we were waiting for our desserts to come out our servers gave us some riddles to solve. These turned out to be some really nice ice breakers and we were finally able to start chatting with the other family at our table a little bit. There was one point where all eight of us were staring at a pile of crayons for five minutes trying to figure out a riddle. We started to suspect they were playing a joke on us to see how long we would sit quietly and stare at the crayons.
We found out the other man at our table was dealing with some unpleasant sea sickness so I offered him one of my patches. I couldn't imagine how hard it would be to enjoy yourself if you were feeling pukey all day.
You can get Mickey bars for dessert and smear them all over your face if you like.
We left dinner on significantly more friendly terms with our table mates than we had been when we walked in to dinner. After dinner E wanted to go back to the Lab for Girl's Chill. J wanted to go to the room and rest and watch a movie. I took E to the Lab and Jesse took J back to the room. Then I went to Rockin' Bar D to snag a good seat to see the magician that was going to be playing that night. I got us a seat right up front and while I waited for Jesse I kept thinking how funny it would be if someone came in and took the seat I was saving for him. I would have had no right to complain either!
As I waited to listened to music from DJ Jon Black.
And watched people dance.
Badly. It's ok, I can say that because I look like a three legged elephant when I try to dance. Also I'm sure on dry land these people are wonderful dancers but it's probably hard to dance well when your dance floor is shifting wildly back and forth.
Jesse arrived right before the show started. The magician was Mike Super and I am telling you now that if you ever get the chance to see him perform you must do it. I'm not a huge fan of magicians but this guy really did some incredible stuff. There's probably nothing more boring than hearing someone describe a magic act so I will just repeat that you need to go see this guy.
After the show we went to the Lab to pick up E. She had make-up and nail polish on and she was the happiest girl in the whole world. When we got back to the room we found Mickey cartoons on and J totally conked out in bed. He didn't even stir when we all came in and started getting ready for bed.
With that we closed out our day. Exhausted, happy, full of steak (maybe?) and looking forward to what tomorrow would bring.
Stay tuned because the taco incident is up next! Unless I get distracted with more bathroom pics.