Magicians, Hypnotists and Gaga Ball on the Magic

[Linda67]

Great update - in fact it was the bomb-diggity

 

[jjje]

Thanks for sharing. I'll keep looking for us in pictures.

You're so brave! I am so worried I will find myself in someone else's cruise pictures and it will have been taken at the exact second I decided to pick a wedgie or something.

Please continue soon with your TR......we need answers to these questions!

Working on it right now!

Nice update. I'm really interested to see how the table mates thing works out. I can't decide if we should request to sit by ourselves or not. My DH is not a "group" person, but I think the kids might really like sitting with other kids ...

Spoiler alert: In the end we loved our table mates. In fact we've talked about cruising together again.

Great update. Good idea about bringing an extension cord. My husband uses a Cpap machine also, did you bring distilled water or did you request it to be on board? We will be traveling next yr on the fantasy and wanted to get an idea.
Thanks

You can request distilled water and they will bring it to your room for no charge. Easy-peasy.

Great update - in fact it was the bomb-diggity

Lol. I will take that compliment happily.

 

[anibur315]

I live in about half way between Galveston and Houston, and I can confirm those were Dolphins you saw. Don't worry about them too much. They are very social and fun loving so they like to hang out in the ship channel. They can swim out to the Gulf any time but choose to be near the ships. I agree, the port isn't very pretty, but it is fascinating. The large structure you are looking at in one of your pics appears to be an old deep-water oil drilling rig. Pretty sure that's a museum. There's also dry docks, the tall ship Elissa (150 years old?) and all the active loading and unloading of cargo ships. My son (age 5) loves it. I'm LOVING your posts. We sail on SATURDAY! 5 days. I'm super excited! Thanks for sharing your trip.

FYI... As an adoptive mom, I want to thank you for being a surrogate. That is quite literally something I could never do. It is so beautiful that you were willing to go through all that "stuff" to fulfill someone else's dream. I am in awe of anyone who surrogates or makes an adoption plan for their child.

 

[jjje]

Our second day started pretty early in the morning. The one downside to an inside cabin (we thought) was that you would wake up and have no idea if it was 3am or 10am. I think we all woke up around 6:00 but none of us could go back to sleep because we were all excited to start our day. We took our time rotating through the split bathrooms and watched some Mickey cartoons. We were scheduled for a late character breakfast so we were in no hurry to run off and get something to eat. Once everyone was ready we walked up to the drink station to get some coffee and hot chocolate.

It was at this point that my kids realized we really were in the middle of the ocean. They just couldn't get over how no matter where they looked they couldn't see land. E kept looking out and and saying "WE'RE ALL SURROUNDED BY THE OCEAN!" like she was shocked each time she realized it.

We sat like this for a long time.

Next it was time to go to Parrot Cay for our character breakfast. I know some people aren't crazy about the decor in Parrot Cay but I liked it. I thought it was fun.

See that door on the right? It kept opening up so the whole meal I was treated to the sight of empty crates and boxes. I have to say I had one complaint about our dining experience on this cruise. At every restaurant we were shoved back in a corner and wedged in right next to a loud and busy serving station. I know someone has to sit in these seats but it would be nice if there was some sort of rotation so that people who have to sit in these tables in one restaurant could get a better table in another restaurant. It wasn't enough of a problem to take away from my enjoyment of meals but it did seem a little less than "fair" that certain people always had "bad" tables. But seriously, we were on a Disney cruise and the worst table on a Disney cruise is better than eating at home after you have to cook and serve and clean up after. I'm not going to complain too much.

I don't remember what I ordered for breakfast. Maybe a bagel with lox. My main focus was on taking pictures. If you're looking for in depth interactions with the characters the breakfast is not the time to get it. Obviously we knew that going in but wow, even I wasn't prepared for how quickly they would move. Sometimes my camera would flash and before I could even lower it the characters would be off and running. It wasn't really a problem for us since my kids aren't really so into meeting the characters.

Just focus on Minnie and not on that metal door on the right that kept banging open and shut during our entire meal. (Ok, I really am done complaining now!)

The real fun of a character breakfast is the napkin hats that the waiters make for you. I knew about this in advance but no one else in my family did so they were all surprised when the servers starting putting stuff on our heads.

In general J does not like people touching him unexpectedly but we were all laughing and having such a good time with this that he forgot to be anxious and he didn't mind at all when he got a Peter Pan hat.

The dads at our table got the most elaborate hats with Jesse getting something that looked like dreadlocks and the other dad getting a complicated contraption with two metal tray covers tied on to it. They were both good sports and left their hats on for a long time.

E models Jesse's hat.

Side note - this is the first time we ever let E drink Sprite and every time she drank it she got a little crazy. We called this her Sprite Face. She looks like this in a lot of our vacation pictures.

After breakfast E wanted to go to the Lab to try out this Gaga Ball she had been so curious about and J wanted to go do some Disney trivia in the Edge. On the way we had to stop and look again at the ocean.

After we dropped the kids off Jesse and I stood and watched the princesses in the lobby for a bit.

I liked how all the princesses had perfected sitting down while poofing their dresses out around them exactly right. These ladies are fantastic with kids. Getting right down on their level, dealing with both the super shy kids and the over-exuberant ones without batting an eye. I think it takes real skill to be a Disney princess.

I think these banners were up because it was our formal dinner night.

We didn't leave the kids in the clubs long because we all wanted to go make animal masks together in the Promenade Lounge. Jesse want to get J and I picked up E. When I got her she was all red faced and breathless. It turns out that not only did she like Gaga Ball but that it was the Best Game Ever. From her description it sounded like a more gentle version of dodge ball. Sort of. All I know for sure is that for the rest of the cruise she did not miss a single session of Gaga Ball. We had to plan her whole day around it.

But for now were were going to make animal masks. If your kids like crafts you should really keep an eye on what they have going on in the Promenade Lounge during the day. I think every day there was at least one craft making session. Sometimes they were really crowded but if you were able to wiggle your way in you came out with a fun craft and the rarest of all things - a free Disney souvenir.

The poor crew member running this activity kept trying to get people to stop taking the instruction sheets away from the front but no one would listen to her. We skipped the instructions and put our masks together as best we could by guessing where everything went on them. I think we did something wrong on every single one of them but it was still fun and it made us laugh so that was the important thing.

Next we dropped the kids back off at the clubs and Jesse and I headed to Diversions to play Movie Quote Trivia. Another couple invited us to team up with them so we had a better shot at winning. We did pretty well but there was another HUGE group of people there and they won. In fact we saw this same group at a lot of trivia events and they won a lot of them. My tip is that if you're going to play trivia you should find some people to team up with. In addition to upping your odds you might meet some nice new people.

Photobucket is quitting on me right now so I will end this here. More later once I'm able to actually do something.

 

[jjje]

I live in about half way between Galveston and Houston, and I can confirm those were Dolphins you saw. Don't worry about them too much. They are very social and fun loving so they like to hang out in the ship channel. They can swim out to the Gulf any time but choose to be near the ships. I agree, the port isn't very pretty, but it is fascinating. The large structure you are looking at in one of your pics appears to be an old deep-water oil drilling rig. Pretty sure that's a museum. There's also dry docks, the tall ship Elissa (150 years old?) and all the active loading and unloading of cargo ships. My son (age 5) loves it. I'm LOVING your posts. We sail on SATURDAY! 5 days. I'm super excited! Thanks for sharing your trip.

FYI... As an adoptive mom, I want to thank you for being a surrogate. That is quite literally something I could never do. It is so beautiful that you were willing to go through all that "stuff" to fulfill someone else's dream. I am in awe of anyone who surrogates or makes an adoption plan for their child.

Thank you! Surrogacy was an amazing gift to me as well and I am thankful every day that I was able to do it. I'm an adoptive mom as well. J joined our family through adoption so I know how really incredible adoption is as well. I love and respect all the wonderful ways there are of building families.

 

[jjje]

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.

 

[chrisrunty]

Great trip report and I've been sailing on DCL for 12 years! I too would take a seat if someone was saving so many, I bag up our bathroom items to keep them sanitary, and I'm tall, 6 ft in socks so I understand the shower.

Christine

 

[MetasCMs1988]

Love reading your trip report! We (me, hubby, daughter, son) are booked on a 7 day Western Caribbean on the Fantasy out of Port Canaveral in September - it will be our first cruise ever and our 11 yo daughter also has Asperger's.

She is super high functioning and is very social but I am a little worried about how some of the heights, sounds, and movement on the ship might cause her some anxiety in the beginning. We are planning to follow her lead, as usual, and include lots of breaks and down time as she may need. She does great at the Disney parks - rides every roller coaster, etc., goes all day - but I think being on a ship will be different enough that we will have to take a day or 2 to adjust.

My son does get car sick sometimes so we are planning on giving him (and probably all of us as a preventative) the non-drowsy Bonin daily to help offset those issues. I'm going to look into the patches as well - did you find they worked well? I know every ASD person is different but did you encounter any specific sensory issues that we should avoid/be prepared for?

We are watching a LOT of YouTube cruise videos to allow her to get as acclimated as she can ahead of time

 

[jjje]

Day 3 was another sea day so with no particular place we needed to be by any particular time we all slept pretty late. In fact the kids woke up and I turned on the tv and they watched Bolt while I snoozed for a bit longer. When we at last dragged ourselves out of bed and in to the tiny bathrooms we were all feeling pretty refreshed.

We headed out of our cabin and got a happy surprise when we found the door to the forward elevator lobby was open. Sometimes the door was shut and we had to walk to the midship stairs. When the door was open we all got ridiculously excited.

These are helpful if you're like me and forget where you're going and where you are whenever you get off an elevator.

Our day started as it always did, with breakfast at Topsiders. For some reason we never really tried anything else. I think it was several days into the cruise before I even realized there were other breakfast options. I was so busy obsessing over every other detail of the trip that I forgot to plan breakfasts. The good news is that we all like the buffet options.

The lady on the left is a super hero. I saw her there every day handing out trays and very few people ever thanked her or even acknowledged her but she was always cheerful and always had a smile on her face. I made sure to mention her on our comment card.

J loved the buffet because it always had glazed doughnuts.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that both kids would pick a big range of foods and a lot of healthy stuff (although you can't see that here) when we let them choose whatever they wanted to eat. Jesse and I were the ones who sort of went crazy and ate all the bacon and one of everything from the dessert bar.

After breakfast we dropped E off at the lab so she could play Gaga Ball and the 4th Pigs Pasta Palace. That's where they made a house out of pasta and clay for the 4th little pig and saw who could make the strongest house. E says this was her second favorite activity after Gaga Ball. Jesse and I took J to the Promenade lounge where they was a paper airplane activity going on.

J likes Epic Mickey.

(Please note that Jesse is looking at the Navigator for this day and that we have highlighted the heck out of it. We didn't want to miss anything fun.) This event was super popular. After everyone had made their planes we all moved over to the elevator lobby to throw them and see who's went the furthest. The winning kid and the winning adult each got a medal. We got nothing because everyone in our family has a gene that causes our paper airplanes to crash to the ground instantly.

Side note - If you want your kid to get a lot of attention from the crew have him/her wear a shirt from a movie that is playing on the ship at that time. Everywhere we went people told J they liked his Wreck It Ralph shirt.

After paper airplanes we dropped J off at the Edge so he could do some sort of scavenger hunt. This did not go well and I'm going to talk for a second here about something that might annoy some people. Feel free to skip it.

There was a group of kids in the Edge who were just awful. J told us they were mean to him and some of the other younger/smaller kids. They wouldn't let people join in and take turns in the organized activities. They would demand the younger kids move when they wanted to use a certain computer game or play something on the Wii. We saw this same group of kids all over the ship and they were loud, pushy, rude and and just downright obnoxious. At activities they would yell and talk back tot he crew. One of them was seated at a table near us and she was so rude her serving staff that it made us all uncomfortable. (I noted their names on our comment card because we observed them bending over backwards to make her happy.) We saw kids from this group purposely running in to little kids in the hallway and then laughing about it.

J's feeling about the Edge were really influenced by this group of kids. He enjoyed the activities and the freedom of being able to do what he liked but this group made things pretty rough for him to feel comfortable. He felt like the counselors couldn't really do much. In his words "They are there to facilitate fun, not to assist you when you're in a difficult social situation." (We call him the Little Professor for a reason.) The very few negative experiences we had on this cruise were caused by other passengers, often this group of kids, and never by the staff and crew. It's really unfortunate that there's no way to deal with situations like this.

End of rant!

So we dropped J off at the Edge not knowing how his afternoon was going to go. We later found out none of the kids in this group would agree to partner up with him for the scavenger hunt so he paired up with one of the counselors. Meanwhile Jesse and I walked around the ship for a bit.

Everything seemed really gray outside that day.

We have plans to eat brunch here on our next cruise

Deck 10 was chilly and deserted.

Even the Goofy pool was pretty empty.

The hot tub on the other hand ...

Oof. Remind me to never go in there forever the end.

Look at all those empty loungers!

And more on the other side.

I wonder if anyone ever uses the crew pool.

You can kind of see that we were sailing into rain here.

We got a call that J wanted to be picked up from the Edge. We decided to get both the kids and get them some lunch. It seems like we ate all the time doesn't it?

I never got tired of how the light looked coming in through the port holes.

J looks a little stressed doesn't he?

I think he was telling us about the situation in the Edge here.

After lunch Jesse too E to the Animator's Palate to draw Stitch and I took J for a walk so we could talk about his afternoon. In spite of feeling bummed out about the situation he had a pretty positive attitude about trying again. He's a neat kid. We watched the water behind the boat and made each other laugh by making corny analogies about leaving the bad things behind and moving forward.

Photobucket is acting up so I'm going to end this here. Next time I'll talk about why, in spite of everything, we call this our most hilarious day and what I found in the bathroom that made me cheer out loud. And I realized that the Very Bad Thing with the taco happened another day so you'll need to keep reading.

 

[jjje]

Great trip report and I've been sailing on DCL for 12 years! I too would take a seat if someone was saving so many, I bag up our bathroom items to keep them sanitary, and I'm tall, 6 ft in socks so I understand the shower.

Christine

Hey, my tall, cruising twin!

Love reading your trip report! We (me, hubby, daughter, son) are booked on a 7 day Western Caribbean on the Fantasy out of Port Canaveral in September - it will be our first cruise ever and our 11 yo daughter also has Asperger's.

She is super high functioning and is very social but I am a little worried about how some of the heights, sounds, and movement on the ship might cause her some anxiety in the beginning. We are planning to follow her lead, as usual, and include lots of breaks and down time as she may need. She does great at the Disney parks - rides every roller coaster, etc., goes all day - but I think being on a ship will be different enough that we will have to take a day or 2 to adjust.

My son does get car sick sometimes so we are planning on giving him (and probably all of us as a preventative) the non-drowsy Bonin daily to help offset those issues. I'm going to look into the patches as well - did you find they worked well? I know every ASD person is different but did you encounter any specific sensory issues that we should avoid/be prepared for?

We are watching a LOT of YouTube cruise videos to allow her to get as acclimated as she can ahead of time

J is a super star at the parks as well. He handled the adjustment to cruising without too much difficulty. We planned a ton of stuff in advance, looked at Navigators from other cruises, watched videos, all that stuff.

The patches were a life saver for me! They worked really well. Perhaps too well since I got terrible land sickness when the cruise was over. I think Jesse took Bonine once or twice but more as a preventative measure than anything else. Neither he or the kids get motion sickness and none of them got sea sick at all.

The only sensory issue J ever had any big issue with was crowds. Like after the really busy paper airplane activity he needed sit somewhere quiet for a bit. Sometimes he wore earplugs to dinner because the dining rooms are loud. We never noticed any issues with strong smells nor did we have a problem with any bed linens or other textures. I hope you guys have a wonderful cruise! J (and the rest of us) all felt like it was just about the perfect vacation.

 

[mlayton14]

I would be very tempted to tell those little rude punks to watch their behavior around my kids .. but I TOTALLY understand why you would be hesitant to do so .. not an easy thing to do, and not always appropriate.

Really like your trip report by the way.

 

[wgeo]

Again - thanks for the great updates - except you're being a Taco Tease!

Seriously though it sounds like your raising a pretty amazing son there. Seems like his attitude is much more mature than a lot of adults I've met, kudos to him for not letting a group of entitled people ruin his cruise!

 

[dallastxcpa]

You know the insanely sad thing is that there were probably a few good kids in that group but they went along with the others for fear of being the target.

Unfortunately, I grew up with an older brother and sister that loved to gang up on me and bully, taunt, and just generally make me miserable. And they were so good at not doing it in front of adults. So I am very sensitive to that issue. Just reading your post made me just sick.

I applaud you for letting your son handle it and not trying to fix it for him. He appears to be a wonderful young man and it looks like he handled it well.

I will stay tuned in for the next posting.

 

[beccafish3kids]

Well, now how about that!! You all looked familiar because we were table neighbors!! That's our family in your first Parrot Cay pic background! And for those who are wondering, we are NOT the family with the rude kid at the Edge... Oh man, I HOPE we are not. . Thanks for taking great pics of our little world for the week, nearly from our true perspective!

 

[jjje]

I would be very tempted to tell those little rude punks to watch their behavior around my kids .. but I TOTALLY understand why you would be hesitant to do so .. not an easy thing to do, and not always appropriate.

Really like your trip report by the way.

Unfortunately a lot of the stuff we saw the rowdy kids doing they were doing right in front of their parents. That complicated things.

Again - thanks for the great updates - except you're being a Taco Tease!

Seriously though it sounds like your raising a pretty amazing son there. Seems like his attitude is much more mature than a lot of adults I've met, kudos to him for not letting a group of entitled people ruin his cruise!

I fear I might have over sold this taco incident. I better think of something to make it more interesting. J really is such a good kid and I was so proud of how he didn't let this ruin his vacation.

You know the insanely sad thing is that there were probably a few good kids in that group but they went along with the others for fear of being the target.

Unfortunately, I grew up with an older brother and sister that loved to gang up on me and bully, taunt, and just generally make me miserable. And they were so good at not doing it in front of adults. So I am very sensitive to that issue. Just reading your post made me just sick.

I applaud you for letting your son handle it and not trying to fix it for him. He appears to be a wonderful young man and it looks like he handled it well.

I will stay tuned in for the next posting.

He's a great kid! He handled it well. A lot better than I would have. I had some negative experiences like that when I was young too and to this day I think I am super sensitive to this stuff.

Well, now how about that!! You all looked familiar because we were table neighbors!! That's our family in your first Parrot Cay pic background! And for those who are wondering, we are NOT the family with the rude kid at the Edge... Oh man, I HOPE we are not. . Thanks for taking great pics of our little world for the week, nearly from our true perspective!

You were 100% NOT the family I am talking about. Have no fear. I remember your family and your delightful children.

 

[mrsaunders]

I have to say, yours is one of my favorite trip reports. You are a great writer

 

[pharmjenn]

I am enjoying your trip report. We were on the Wonder in December with DS who was newly turned 5yo. He attempted Gaga Ball, but just stood in one spot and got angry when someone hit him with the ball. The one time I watched, he was actually ignored by the other kids until the very end, so he did pretty well. I am hoping when we cruise on the Magic in 2014, he will participate in a lot more of the group activities since he will almost be 7yo by then.
And we were originally booked in cabin 1037 on that cruise, so it is fun to see your photos of what we could have had!

 

[jjje]

I have to say, yours is one of my favorite trip reports. You are a great writer

Oh my goodness. You are making me blush. I have had so much fun reading other people's trip reports that I had to give my own a try. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

I am enjoying your trip report. We were on the Wonder in December with DS who was newly turned 5yo. He attempted Gaga Ball, but just stood in one spot and got angry when someone hit him with the ball. The one time I watched, he was actually ignored by the other kids until the very end, so he did pretty well. I am hoping when we cruise on the Magic in 2014, he will participate in a lot more of the group activities since he will almost be 7yo by then.
And we were originally booked in cabin 1037 on that cruise, so it is fun to see your photos of what we could have had!

I think 7 is the prime age for the Club and Lab. Still young enough to enjoy the kid stuff and old enough to enjoy the big kid stuff. I'm going to have to try and sneak a peak at a game of Gaga Ball on out next cruise.

 

[BigTex71]

I am really enjoying your trip report, and you have a great sense of humor - like me.

We are thinking about trying to surprise the kids with a last-minute trip on the 8-night Bahamian on the Magic on April 26th. Your report is making me want to do this even more. Hopefully the budget will agree.

I am eager to hear about your Magic taco incident. I am assuming you liked the tacos, according to the hints you dropped at the start of the report.

Speaking of Palo, I would love to book that for dinner - I just hope my kids love the clubs as much as most of the other kids do that I have heard about. That would make for a nice belated birthday adult dinner. Boom chicka wow wow.

 

[jjje]

After lunch and destressing over the Edge we decided to go to the matinee show in the Walt Disney Theater. The was described as "Featuring the comedy of world record holding balloon artist John Cassidy". I'm going to tell you right now that we were very skeptical but we all wanted to do something together we were hopeful a funny show might lighten the mood of the day. On the way to the theater we stopped at the bathroom because that is what we always do when E is with us.

Often times when we get home from our travels I will find i have taken 2000 pictures but there's not a single one of me. I hate that and I'm trying to change it so I snapped a quick selfie in the bathroom mirror.

Even my bathroom selfie felt ridiculous.

After I took the picture I looked over to my side at the tampon machine.

"Score!" I yelled and quickly shoved a bunch of the loose tampons into my camera bag. You ladies know how it is. You don't pass up free tampons and I thought I had hit the mother lode of malfunctioning tampon dispensers. It wasn't until a few days later that I realized all the machines are like this all the time and that my big score was less of a big score and more like me being a crazy tampon hoarder. So there's a word to the wise.

Here's the stage before the show started.

OK, how do I describe this show to you? I don't want to over sell it but... it was AWESOME! My face hurt from smiling so hard when it was done. It was fast paced, funny, silly, sweet and wonderful. Really the perfect show for a Disney cruise. There were several moments where he had the entire audience gasping with amazement and roaring with laughter. I am so glad we overcame our skepticism of this show and just went with it. Really, really, really top notch.

What do you do after you laugh so hard your stomach hurts? You sooth it with ice cream!

They had part of the deck by Goofy's Galley closed off so they could do maintenance on it. The work on board the ship just never stopped.

Another bathroom stop.

I saw someone walk out of this bathroom without washing their hands or using a wipe. If that was you - Shame! People get sick when you do stuff like that!

The kids each wanted to spend some time in their clubs so we dropped them off and then Jesse and I went to see Chimpanzee in the theater. People were pretty loud and kids kept moving around and changing seats. Usually that annoys me in a movie theater but since we were seeing the movie for free it really didn't bug me at all. The movie is really cute. Disney does such a nice job with their nature movies and I hadn't seen this one so it was a really nice break in what was otherwise a rather lively day.

After the movie Jesse and I went up on deck so I could get a taco. It was incident free.

Next we picked the kids up from the clubs and went back to the Walt Disney Theater to see the main show. It was the same magician we saw the night before in Rockin' Bar D. He was even more incredible that he had been at his earlier show. Everyone needs to go see this guy. We're still talking about the stuff he did and trying to figure it out. Really, really impressive. Or, as Mike Super would say, LAVENOUS.

After the show we went to Studio Sea to play Who Wants to Be a Mousketeer? When you go in everyone gets a number and if your number is called you get to go up and play. And what do you know? J was the first one called! If a kid got called they get to bring an adult up to so I went. I should have instructed Jesse to take a picture because he didn't take a single one and I'm bummed about that.

The game is played just like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with questions with four answers and lifelines and all that jazz. I was up there to "help" J but he's such a Disney expert that he didn't need me at all. In fact, he won! He got a trading pin and a cute Disney Cruise trophy. That was pretty fun.

Next up was dinner and we were back in Parrot Cay again. This time there wasn't a themed menu and I remember what I had.

Jamaican Marinated Chicken Tenderloins - These were pretty good but I certainly wouldn't call them "sizzling" like they are described. They were very mild. I liked the blue cheese sauce that came with them a lot.
Island Spiced Seared Ahi Tuna - Nummy! I love seared tuna so this was right up my alley. I had a second appetizer instead of getting a salad.
Pan – Seared Grouper - This was really delicious. The fish was very mild and I really liked the rice they served with it.
Chocolate S`More Vanilla Cake - This was good but I was so full from eating all day that I could only manage a couple of bites.

We stayed late at dinner talking a bit with our table mates and sipping coffee. We had been hoping to see the balloon guy's second show in Diversions that night but both the kids were pretty wiped out so we decided to call it a day. We all wanted to but up for Castaway Cay pretty early the next morning.

We had this in our stateroom and we think it might have been a lobster. Maybe. Whatever it is we took his chocolate away and ate it and fell asleep to the sweet sounds of Disney cartoons.

Up next: We go to Castaway Cay? Or do we? No. We don't. Also, The Very Bad thing with the taco is revealed.