"Witty Western-Fantasy Trip Report Title"... January 5th-12th With Pictures

[PizzieDuster]

Originally Posted by Timon

Loving your report

Now, for the million dollar question.....


There is (non-heinz-crud) honey mustard dipping sauce now???????

Several years ago they got rid of the MUCH loved Ken's Honey Dijon on DCL and at the parks and replaced it with the grossest stuff made by Heinz

This is the first trip report I have seen with new honey mustard! From the looks of your plate, I am guessing it came from a large vat like the ketchup dispenser???

I am excited now

Just curious, Timon, are you talking about way back when DCL gave honey mustard in packets...like the sauces for McDonald's nuggets? My sons loved that sauce and were disappointed when they changed.

[MrRay]

Today we had Palo brunch planned. We were very excited. Reservation was for 11 and we woke up earlish again so we did have a small breakfast just to hold us over and got ourselves cleaned up.
Check-In was quick and we were shown a nice table right by the window by our server... I sadly can't remember his name. I want to say maybe it's "Nikola". I know he was from Serbia, I've even been trying to look up popular Serbian names to try and stumble upon it. But anyway he was great. There is a very different feel to the service in this restaurant. Everyone speaks better english and is very prim and proper. Anything we asked for was met with a very enthusiastic "of course" and a smile...lots of smiles. He told us that any minute Disney had planned for 150 Dolphins to jump past the window.

He showed us around the buffet. He started his tour at the desserts table and instructed us that there were no rules there, we could start with dessert if we wanted...very funny guy. There were a few other hi-lights that he pointed out, one of which he felt so strong about that he said "if you try this you will remember me forever". I didn't try it, that's probably why I can't remember his name sadly.



My first plate... The shrimp and scallops were fresh and delicious. I probably ate my weight in those. I had several servings of the buffet but most of what I really liked was light and all things considered pretty healthy. The roasted vegetables and arugala salad were amazing. I also can not ever get enough Tiramisu, there's is excellent and I had one with every trip.



A little side note about Iced Tea on the ship...From the drink stations there is only unsweetened Nestea from the fountain. I don't really drink soda and prefer unsweetened Iced Tea whenever I can, but that stuff from a fountain is just some kind of syrup still and is odd. In the restaurants I think they actually brew it, it definitely tasted better. At Palo it almost seemed like they brewed every glass for me. It was light and delicious.


After a few trips to the buffet we ordered. Jenna got Chicken Parmesan, which had been recommended by our server as well as Patrick the bartender from Skyline. I have a bit of a dairy allergy and try to avoid cheese so I ordered a Tilapia dish they had.

The chicken Parm was excellent, but the tilapia wasn't all that great unfortunately. I followed it up with one more trip to the buffet and was quite content. When we finally said we were done our server looked at us, opened his eyes extra wide, smiled, and said "Are you suuuure"? Nice guy.

We spent around an hour and a half there and had a very nice, quiet, laid back brunch. It is very classy place. I kept thinking that it felt like we were in a very upscale place, which we would never normally feel comfortable in, but here it felt like we were high class. It was a very nice change of pace and I strongly recommend it.

[Timon]

Originally Posted by PizzieDuster

Just curious, Timon, are you talking about way back when DCL gave honey mustard in packets...like the sauces for McDonald's nuggets? My sons loved that sauce and were disappointed when they changed.

Yes! Here's a pic from our cruise in 2009 on the Magic...



When I was at WDW and on the Dream in January 2011, they only had the Heinz stuff and it was GROSS!!!



Going back in November, SO glad to hear that they have a different honey mustard, even if it isn't Ken's, it does look similar


Sorry to hijack your thread temporarily, Mr Ray

[MrRay]

Originally Posted by Timon

Sorry to hijack your thread temporarily, Mr Ray

No worries...these are the hard hitting issues that I was hoping to hit in this thread. I did go off on Iced Tea a little bit just now too...

[PizzieDuster]

Originally Posted by MrRay

No worries...these are the hard hitting issues that I was hoping to hit in this thread. I did go off on Iced Tea a little bit just now too...

Me too, sorry I just knew they changed the honey mustard! Can't wait to read more

[stulaurie]

What size kyss bad do you have? Is it the medium or the large?

[MrRay]

Originally Posted by stulaurie

What size kyss bad do you have? Is it the medium or the large?

We got the large. It holds a lot. I think at one point we had 4 towels in there in addition to normal beach stuff and we still could have fit more.

[MrRay]

Shortly after brunch we returned to our room to do something we hadn't really done all week... We flat out took a nap. We opened our verandah door a little bit to hear the waves and we were out.

To fill the gap here are a few more pictures of the ship.










Me and the Boss...


I find this amusing.



$25 for a bottle of shampoo?...They restocked our room twice a day whether we were using them or not.

We aren't hoarders. We donate them to the Children's hospital my sister works at for families to use who stay overnight.


Lamps in the stateroom


Random side note: As I mentioned earlier I have a dairy allergy. I cheat a little on desserts but cheese and ice cream are big offenders. In Cabanas they have hard scoop ice cream and in there they keep tofutti and rice cream. One day I was walking by and saw a young boy being scooped a big bowl of fake ice cream and he was so happy that he was almost bouncing up and down... I totally know how he feels. Disney is so good with allergies.

We can't remember what we did the rest of the day, we might have laid in the sun for a while. It was still very windy and the water very choppy this whole day. Mostly we rested and recharged.

Dinner was back in "Enchanted Garden" for semi-formal night. We were the only ones at our table to show up.


It was nice having another quiet meal to ourselves though. We loved our table mates but it gave us a chance to relax a little bit.

Our servers kept us entertained too. One of my favorite things about DCL is that with only 2,500 passengers you really form closer relationships with a lot of the crew. It's much more personal since you keep seeing the same people. There's a lot more handshaking than you would normally find and within a couple days we would get so excited to see our server Diartha that we would be exchanging hugs.

Next- Castaway Cay

[missmdr]

Thank you for a wonderful way to wake up this morning seeing all the beautiful photos' - looking forward to seeing Castaway Cay!!

[bbn1122]

Love your report..... Dreaming of the fantasy.

[MrRay]

I'm going to take a quick aside to pay a little respect for the Disney crew. They did such an amazing job our whole cruise that I want to showcase some of their work that never got seen.

Last year when I was doing some TV setups on the Fantasy for it's Inauguration in New York I spent 1 morning working in "Animator's Palette". There were a few small broadcasts going on in there, a couple of them live. The Disney crew working in there were all great and were clearly incredibly excited to be part of all the festivities in New York.

Well the big spot that we had for the morning was a live broadcast for "Good Morning America and they had made an ice sculpture to mark the occasion. Unfortunately there was another smaller live broadcast not too much earlier so they weren't able to have it preset. So once that ended 5 or 6 kitchen guys came in and started to place the sculpture and were feverishly scraping it away to make it look perfect.

Probably not more than a couple minutes before going live the "Good Morning America" people all come running in, having just finished another segment. The ice guys just barely finished as the broadcast went live. The segment couldn't have lasted more than a minute, if that much, and it was all over.

GMA realized just as they finished that the ice had never even made it in the shot. They had their picture taken with it...so it wasn't a total waste.

All of the Disney crew was so excited to be in the room and were asking me where they could find the video online. They weren't aware the Ice didn't make it in.


So since it never made it on TV, here is the Ice sculpture that they worked so hard on.






Next...Castaway Cay...For real this time.

[MrRay]

Before we even left for the cruise we had managed our expectations about Castaway Cay. We knew it could be a crap shoot and even more we knew that it was risky in January. By this morning we had had such an amazing time that we really were content with our vacation and if we weren't able to make the stop at Castaway we would have been ok.

We woke up early, I think before 7, and opened our curtains to see the complete opposite of the day before. The sea was wonderfully calm, the sun was shining bright, and there was hardly any wind.

We made our daily stop by Cove Cafe and wandered around the higher decks, which were barren.







The only time this was ever empty.


The weather was perfectly warm and sunny.

We learned our lesson from the previous days and went to "Royal Court" for breakfast. This was also where our serving team was spending the day so we got a chance to see them. I was planning on doing the Castaway Cay 5K so I didn't want too much but they had a healthier option of a buckwheat crepe with egg whites, spinach, and some other veggies in it and it was delicious. I definitely ate more of it then I should have.





While we were eating the ship started docking. Everything was going like clockwork so we went to get ready for our day on the island.

[tgropp]

Thanks for the report!! We are leaving on the Fantasy on the Feb 2 cruise. Getting very excited after reading this.

[libpetersen]

Love your report and pictures. We are doing this trip on May 25 and we are getting so excited!!!

[mom3bellasorella]

Loving your report! Thanks for sharing!