Delayed but quick post for now -- and I will get pics uploaded by the weekend hopefully. Its just been a crazy week trying to get everyone readjusted back to work/school so haven't had time yet to upload them.
We stayed CR TPV and LOVED our room and the view. Watching Wishes from the balcony was incredible and falling asleep/waking up to the Castle view was so worth the added expense!! We stayed on the 9th floor and when we came off the elevator our room was right there smack in the middle which we were concerned about how much noise we were going to hear from people coming off the elevators and walking to their rooms and Chef Mickeys being to the right and the gift shops to the left, esp. with DD being such a light sleeper, but we heard NOTHING. Not even the monorail when it came through.
Loved Nadia at Chef Mickeys, but honestly the rest of the staff at the resort was not that great. The guy doing our check-in that kept staring at my breasts the entire time and made barely any eye contact because of it -- which was pretty disrespectful and rude), the person that took my order for DH's surprise birthday cake almost blew the surprise by putting it down for 8:30 p.m. instead of 8:30 a.m. and I felt like the cake was rushed to get done and delivered. But the cake came out nice, DH was totally surprised and rather than try and rush out to make our reservations at Kona Cafe...which we were a bit disappointed over, DD loved the idea of having cake for breakfast so we just went with the flow.
Pirates/Pals Cruise was pretty cute. You walk to the conference room and check-in where they give you a bandana to either wear on your head or somewhere on your body so they know you're part of the cruise and they assign you a boat = either "Capt Hook" or "Mr. Smee". There's a couple of statues around the hallway to take pics with, and then two pirates come out and interact for a couple of minutes before you go inside the room where there's a buffet of treats from bags of popcorn/chips, ice cream, chocolate coins, drinks, etc. Then Hook and Mr. Smee come out for 'meet and greet', then they leave and the two pirates come back and escort us to the boats where they interact with us until Wishes starts -- then back to the dock where Peter Pan is waiting. The view from the water watching Wishes was beautiful and there's no better place to see it IMO, even from our TPV room.
With regards to the Pirates cruise - did the boat look like a pirate ship or was it a typical boat?