Dreaming of Returning to the Dream. 1st Cruise and 1st Trip Report 1/4 Bahamas

[FFMatt12]

Enjoying your report! I went on the Dream in March and loved every second of it so I'm now reading others to manage my withdrawal!

This is exactly one of my biggest reasons for even doing a TR. It helps my withdrawal and my "fix". Thanks for following!

Solid use of gifs. I'm in just for those.

Thanks for following! I followed a TR earlier this year that I loved and she used GIF's in the greatest way possible. I learned from her for sure. I actually wasn't sure if people enjoyed them as much as I did but I see they do! I'm doing something right! (Composing a TR update as we speak-- this week may finish it out. I have a boring desk duty for the rest of the week).

 

[cynditech]

Following along - love all the pictures from so many resorts!!! Thanks for sharing!

 

[cruisehopeful]

Great report and sounds like a lot of fun, other than your GF getting sick right at the beginning. I can't wait to read/see more.

 

[FFMatt12]

Disney Dream 1/4/16 - 1/8/16 Sailing to The Bahamas
Pre-Cruise day before at Walt Disney World Resorts
PART 4​

It's cruise time!!!!!!

After hanging up on the balcony, we realized we were getting close to check out time. We headed down to the front desk. I forgot to mention earlier that we had our luggage already picked up for DCL transfers by 8:00am before breakfast. After checkout it was time to say bye for now WDW! It was time to go meet our rep from DCL in the small living room at the Beach Club. We were about 45 mins early so we grabbed a couch and DGF watched Phineas and Ferb on the TV there. This is one show that I never had an interest in. She enjoys it a lot though.

After I shut my eyes for a while, the DCL rep arrived and chatted with us a bit about the weather. She was from Massachusetts and wanted to know if we brought the cold from NJ that she left there [90] years prior. LOL. She checked over passports and explained the boarding process like 4 times. There was a family that needed to have an electric wheelchair boarded first so this took a long time. I tried my best to be patient but I was tired and just wanted to get to the ship already. I would like to add, here, that I was involved in an awesome Facebook group of people for the year prior to our trip. The members were all on our sailing and we established several Fish Extender groups. I will go more into detail on our gifts and extender "adventures" we had in a later post. Anywho.. I knew from this group that a ton of people were already enjoying the ship for a few hours prior and I was itching to get on like a little kid.

We were thrilled to finally board our bus to Port Canaveral. We had a few stops at Caribbean Beach Resort, which I had never even seen in person before, so that was cool! Then we were off to the port. It took a while for the video to start and the kids got a little antsy. DGF slept a bit of the way since there wasn't much to see out our window, the colorful wrap on the bus blocked the view. I looked up a one point and saw the very top of the red funnels on the ship i the distance!

I guess since it's all in the past, it's ok to admit that DGF still had a slight cough and was become best friends with her bottle of Dayquil. Throughout the embarkation process and check-in, it was hysterical watching her try not cough. Especially when filling out paperwork related to symptoms, Ebola, and Africa.

I read up ahead of time and memorized the embarkation process, maybe a little too prepared. We felt a bit late in the game as we were checking in around 1:45PM so we skipped the photo line with Goofy and we got our Key to the World cards, etc!!!

We boarded the ship and decided to head for the stateroom first which we were told was ready for us. When you board a Disney cruise ship, they announce your families name on the microphone and ship officers are lined up to clap and greet you. I was so thrilled, I forgot to take a picture or video! Here is one from later in the day:

We made our way up to Deck 7, where our stateroom was located. Category 11B Standard Inside Stateroom #7517 in the forward part of the ship. (I actually didn't grasp that we were forward until the very last night). Our trip was booked with the assistance of an AAA travel agent and she recommended this location based on distance to activities, distance away from noise, etc. Looking forward a bit, we loved our location very much! It was our home away from home for the week.
The ship was a total sensory overload for any Disney fan! I wanted to look at and photograph it all.

(Our floor but pic taken of a map located aft)

The stateroom was SO COOL. As a young couple, no children, the inside stateroom was perfect size for us. It was a large enough room that we were not on top of each other. I wanted to check out everything on the TV, in the room, etc but we had to venture up for lunch before we missed out. We trekked up to Cabana's on Deck 11 for some buffet lunch.

We had a nice buffet of American food, I can't remember exactly what we had but it was good after a long day of traveling and check-ins. DGF is a french-fry lover so if you bring her to an unlimited supply, she's a happy gal.

After the buffet, we made our way down to Deck 4 (Group H) for our safety drill. This was my first cruise ever and DGF's 3rd (None Disney) so it was kind of cool to attend for us. We had Natasha from entertainment as our muster leader. We met her several other times on the ship as well. It blows my mind how people could be 15 minutes late to a safety drill on as tight a schedule as embarkation day. Come on folks lol. We each bought the drink of day, I can't recall what it was but it was fruity and good. Every day, 1 alcoholic and 1 non-alcoholic drink of the day is discounted. This was fun to try new things without breaking the bank,

Here is a nice panorama that DGF took on her cell phone of Deck 11 before the Sail Away Party.
In my next update, I'll cover the sail away party and the first night's dinner and entertainment!

 

[FFMatt12]

Disney Dream 1/4/16 - 1/8/16 Sailing to The Bahamas
Pre-Cruise day before at Walt Disney World Resorts
PART 5​

It was now time for the sailing away party at 4:30pm! We scouted out a spot above the action (Deck 12). I thought it was so cool that they can cover the pools to make them a flat floor space for the crowds.

(See if you can spot the token rude person with a selfie stick in the crowd above )

The Sailing Away party was a blast and we really enjoyed ourselves. The songs are going to be forever stuck in my head. If you can't beat em... join em-- I downloaded them for my ipod . I am going to try and post a collective YouTube video compilation of my videos of some portions of the deck parties later on in the thread. I loved all of the "Mickey whistles" that the ship is capable of!! I could have sat up on deck and watched us sail out of port all night. I love how everything works in planes, ships, etc. Unfortunately we had to get going and be ready for dinner and there was a ship to explore!

I'll explain here about the Fish Extender process worked. We had our group on Facebook for a little less than a year prior to our sailing. Fish extenders are pocket organizers that "extend" down from the fish (or in our case, seahorse) outside our stateroom door. We had groups of 10, some larger, and we brought a gift customized for each member of the group to their stateroom. My description isn't that great, so take a look around the boards if you ave never heard of these before.

We opted to purchase our customized FE organizer from a nice store on Etsy. I ordered it in November and for some reason, it didn't arrive until the afternoon before our flight to Florida! I contacted the shop owner a week prior and she tried to sell me a $15 rush order price. Umm hello?? I ordered it in November!!!

I decided to gamble and keep it coming normal rate. As a backup, Nicole and I made our own FE organizer. We bought fabric and materials from Hobby Lobby (I love Hobby Lobby). Nicole spent 3-4 HOURS sewing the damn thing.
Thankfully we didn't put the decorations on it, in case the Etsy one arrived and it did. I got my money back on all the stuff, minus the fabric. It turned out that the one we sewed was HUGE. We totally didn't know how big to make it.

I scowered the internet for months trying to decide on what I wanted to give everyone on our FE list. I really liked magnets that were replicas of cast member name tags, with the family name on them. Since we also received who their favorite characters were, we decided to make perler bead keychains. Perler beads come in all sorts of colors and get assembled on a little peg board. Then, once your design is complete, you simply iron it to mold the beads together. I found tons of patterns on Pinterest. I did my best to make the person's favorite character. The Olaf pictured above came out huge compared to the rest of them. I ordered bulk carabiner keychains and pouches to hold them in from oriental Trading. They came out really well but took forever to make over a few months of occasional crafting.

We decided to deliver our gifts over several nights. It was fun to find the different staterooms all decorated nicely and we got to see other decks all over.

These were some other really cool doors nearby. There was a stateroom near ours that really wow'd me. It was an older couple who had been on over 12 Disney cruises together. They placed a picture from each one of their sailings on their stateroom door. I only hope that I can get on that many in my lifetime!

I borrowed this picture from the FB group to show you a sample of what was given. This is all of the stuff we got in our extenders during our sailing, it just has another family's name on them.

We had first dining time, 5:45PM and our first restaurant was The Royal Palace, right near the Atrium and grand staircase. They had live entertainment by a group called Enharmoniq. It was quite fun to watch everyone dancing around with their families. DGF got several slow dances in throughout the cruise and it was very romantic.

Ok, so maybe not Cinderella ball gown romantic but hey it was nice!

We entered the Royal Palace for dinner and I was a little nervous to see who we would be seated with. Everything was so packed and fast that first night, I never really got a chance to enjoy the Royal palace and it was our only night eating there. This, however, was my first introduction to the amazing service on the Disney Dream! Our server's name was Francisco (from Honduras) and his assistant was Deewa (Indonesia). They were incredible and took great care of us throughout the week.

We were paired with a great couple from Alabama who were our age. It's amazing how Disney matched us almost to exact similar interests. He was very much like me! They were on their honeymoon or sorts after being recently married. It was awkward at first but then I broke the silence and made small talk. By the end of the trip, we were all Facebook friends and enjoyed each other's company!

I am going to do my best to remember what we had to eat based on the menu choices online at the moment. I believe I had the "Chateaubriand Roasted Filet Steak, crushed new potatoes with shallots, buttered green beans, red wine jus and bearnaise sauce on the side" Some of the meals and appetizers were a little intimidating when we saw things like duck and escargots.

DGF definitely chose the roasted chicken off the Lighter Fare menu. They celebrated our anniversary with a nice little cake and they sang to us and gave each of us a little anniversary button.

I put the button on my FE outside the room. It was always a struggle to eat any dessert immediately after a two or three course meal but everything was soooo good. We are not fancy diners whatsoever so I had to be daring and experiment quite a bit on this trip.

As soon as we were excused, we went back to the Stateroom for a few minutes before the 8:15pm show in the Walt Disney Theater!! (Insert here that DGF's luck was not working out.... again! She was getting out of the bathroom in our stateroom and forgot to watch her step. She banged the side of her foot on the metal partition and bruised it) So I had a limper on my hands for the rest of the night. I was so excited to see the Broadway quality shows I had read about in my trip planning. We typically can't afford actual Broadway Disney shows like The Lion King or Aladdin in NYC. Tonight was The Golden Mickey's!

The show was excellent!!! It was so cool and wonderful and Disney. I typically love the things that Disney creates that blends multiple Disney classics into one storyline (Fantasmic, Celebrate the Magic, etc). Our Cruise Director, Jimmy, opened and closed each show with information about the next day and he also pumped up the crowd. He was g-r-e-a-t! DGF had a tickle- throat coughing fit mid-show and I begged her to let me get her some water from the Preludes bar outside but she didn't want to make me miss the show. She's so good to me.

We walked around Deck 11 to see it at night a little and then headed back for bed.

Our magic porthole window gets switched to a night time scene with fun characters that appear as surprises. We got our first towel animal and the next day's navigators to give us some time to plan the day.

 

[summerskye]

Keep it coming. Love reading about your adventure.

 

[cruisehopeful]

Our Cruise Director, Jimmy, opened and closed each show with information about the next day and he also pumped up the crowd. He was g-r-e-a-t!

I've had 3 different cruise directors and Jimmy is the only one that I look forward to seeing again. He is great at cracking jokes and keeping things exciting.

 

[FFMatt12]

I've had 3 different cruise directors and Jimmy is the only one that I look forward to seeing again. He is great at cracking jokes and keeping things exciting.

I know, right! Later on after the last night's show, I saw him walking in the Atrium and asked for a selfie with him. I also explained how much I appreciated the entire week's experiences and service. (Nothing I'm sure he hasn't heard before but he did say he loves hearing it again and again)

 

[bcwife76]

Following - enjoying your TR so far

 

[pagek83]

Love your TR! We're going on the Dream for our first cruise later this year!

 

[dosorio629]

I was on the 1/11 cruise on the Dream and had the same server team as you!

 

[FFMatt12]

Love your TR! We're going on the Dream for our first cruise later this year!

You're bound to love every minute of it. I can't wait to go back

I was on the 1/11 cruise on the Dream and had the same server team as you!

That's awesome! I was torn on whether to take a group picture of our table and our servers and now I regret not doing it! Francisco was hysterical, especially his "duck call". We were walking along Cabanas one morning and out of nowhere I heard it, he had spotted us from his post lol.

 

[FFMatt12]

Disney Dream 1/4/16 - 1/8/16 Sailing to The Bahamas
Pre-Cruise day before at Walt Disney World Resorts
PART 6​

Good morning beautiful, wonderful, exotic, Nassau in the Bahamas!! (Am I being facetious?) We woke up to a rocky ship moving a tad more than the day before but it was fine with us. I found out that I definitely do not get sea sick so that's a great thing to know now that I am hooked on cruising. Ever since the early wake-up before our flight, I was stuck in this pattern of waking up way before DGF. This was especially after NyQuil knocked her out for a good nights sleep. I sat up looking through the DCL app on my phone. I enjoyed using the app during the sailing, however, about 1/4 of it's features needed wifi. I tried to keep my WiFi off as much as possible. We signed up for the Free 50MB per stateroom (50mb total for entire voyage) on the first day. (As long as you sign up Day 1). I wanted to save this for once a day updates to our family back home.

Anyway, off topic there, I decided I couldn't wait any longer and jumped in the shower while she slept. When finished, I woke her up by turning the Magic Porthole window on by the switch. I guess this was the equivalent of opening the shades.

We were slowly pulling into the Nassau Port! This was exciting for me because I had only been out of the country once before and that was Montreal in Canada. DGF has sailed to Canada, flown to Italy with a layover in Switzerland.

I get up and get ready very easily for the most part. DGF takes forever. Even as a girl who doesn't need to beautify herself with a dozen products, she's just not a morning person. I probably rushed her in my excitement to get up to Cabanas for breakfast. Unfortunately, just as I had dreaded, it was raining and cold on the island so we prepared with long sleeves/jeans/ rain coats.

Cabanas breakfast is hectic in the beginning stations because most people stop right there and try to begin. A tip for you future cruisers, walk further around the buffet for duplicate stations that are less crowded. There is also an option of Enchanted Garden for breakfast (see Navigator for times). it's still buffet but the wait staff serves you drinks and coffee. We LOVE the hash browns on board and I love me my mickey waffles!

We had plans to go back to the stateroom, grab a backpack, and venture out to Nassau for a few hours. I took a few pictures from Deck 11 before we departed. We wanted to see the Straw Market, visit Senor Frogs, and maybe grab some lunch there before heading back to enjoy the ship. Originally I would have loved a visit to Atlantis, Paradise Island, but it was just too expensive this go around. The rain and cold were too much too. I had read a ton of stuff about the pushy flea markets and tourist hounds in Nassau but still wanted to see a country we hadn't been to.

(Panorama from my cell phone!)

Let's just say I might stay on the ship next time a ship itinerary stops in Nassau. The people were super super obnoxious and we stuck with the typical/polite no thank you's. Some old lady even tried selling me an apple! The nerve!

As soon as you get out of the immediate port gate building, we found our way towards the straw market. Nassau has a ton of poverty and you cannot stray too far from the main street there. So we continued past some name brand shops like Gucci and stuff like that. There's also a Starbucks and a Hard Rock Cafe. I bought my Dad a guitar pin, he collects them and has a really cool display of them. I bought him a cool guitar shaped case/ shadow box for his Birthday last year. We poked around a little in the souvenir stores. I bought a few post cards here later on. We eventually found the straw market. It was a newer warehouse stuffed and packed with little stands with very very persistent vendors. Many of them begging or strangely trying to catch your attention. "Hello handsome" "Hi pretty girl". Polite no thank yous were fine here. The main reason I didn't buy anything was because none of it was unique. All of the stands sold the same exact items. This didn't make sense to me at all.

We went over to Senor Frogs and they hadn't opened the bar/restaurant yet. We browsed the gift shop and DGF had to sit because her foot was still killing her. We realized we weren't even hungry because it was 10:45am and we had just had breakfast. DGF insisted that we grab a drink at least. I know she was just doing this because she knew how much I wanted to go there and I was getting bummed about the weather and kinda felt like we weren't having any fun.

We ordered a round of mudslides and decided on some loaded nachos for a light lunch. They weren't very good and had gross crushed up beans all over them. Let's just say I won't be back to Senor Frogs during the day or on a tight budget. It was pretty expensive for us to have wasted that much food. We did get our silly balloon hats though! and you bet we brought them back on the ship!

After lunch, we bee-lined back to the ship. Well, as fast as gimpy could walk with that foot.

We definitely had the nicest ship in port that day. I was amazed at how old and run down the other ships appeared to be. They were the Royal Caribbean Majesty of the Seas and the Celebrity Constellation.

We changed into swimsuits and I took a very cold trip down the aquaduck. DGF had 3 towels wrapped around her on a lounge chair.

I took some more port pictures from Deck 11 while we enjoyed the adult only pool and swim up bar a bit. I got a beer and DGF and I froze a little even though the pool was mostly heated.

I felt like they should have had a big summer blowout! (My text message ring tone is "Ooh Hoo")
I will be posting the rest of this day in a little while. We are prepping for a very large blizzard/ snow storm here in NJ slated for tomorrow. Happy Disboarding!

Queen Elsa must be on her time of the month. now now, only a joke!

 

[FFMatt12]

Disney Dream 1/4/16 - 1/8/16 Sailing to The Bahamas
Pre-Cruise day before at Walt Disney World Resorts
PART 7

We came back to the stateroom to hang out our wet rain coats and we looked over the Navigator for an activity to do. I wanted to try a mixology class but DGF still wasn't feeling well and alcohol wasn't the answer mixed with meds.

We also looked at character drawing but it was really close to our dinner time and we wanted to make that for sure! We settled on a very exciting activity that probably excited me more than DGF. A tour of the ship called "Art of the Theme Show Tour"!!! It was described on the app as a walking tour discussing the design aspects of the ship. Right up my alley! The app was also neat in the way you could save activities in your "favorites" and almost make a personal schedule for yourselves.

We ventured to the back of the ship at 3:15pm to meet our tour guide and group at Meridian, the bar located directly at the center (Meridian) of the ship between Palo and Remy, the two exclusive dining restaurants on The Dream. We met with Natasha, who had been our safety drill team leader the day before. She was from South Africa and was very bubbly and super excited to take us around. We toured the details in Meridian, Palo, Remy, Bon Voyage Bar, District Lounge, Evolution, Pink, and Pub 687. I'll post a few photos but I don't want to spoil the tour completely.


Palo

Remy

The details in these restaurants were super amazing and obviously VERY elegant and fancy. She told us about all of the hidden stories and reasoning as to why it was designed this way. I loved the tour.

I had hoped to get to enjoy the adult bars and lounges on our sailing but in reality, we were always very full from dinner, always tired from the day, a longer sailing like a 7 night we'd be able to do more ship exploring and drinking/dancing.

We walked around a bit before heading to our stateroom to get ourselves ready for..... FORMAL NIGHT!

I loved formal night, especially because it was our first night of 2 in a row Animator's Palate for dinner!! I do wish I dressed up nicer for it. DGF got tons of compliments by guests and cast members alike on her pretty minnie mouse Lauren Conrad dress. She really did look great. I'll post the 4 high-res pics at the end that we bought from Shutters on board. We took pictures with a ton of characters. Unfortunately, we don't have some of them because the employees with the cameras were not Disney Cast Members, therefore they could not use our personal cameras. If there was a Disney cast member there, then they could use your phone or camera. The lines were manageable but you have to play it smart to get the characters you want, especially if they appeared at the same time. CM's cut the lines off at a certain family if it looked like it would run late. We always have fun with characters so we scattered over the 4 days. I was a whole lot happier at night than I was during the day time that night.

Dinner on Tuesday night was excellent. DGF and I met up with our table mates and shared details about our day in Nassau. Both of us ordered a glass of wine and had the pasta with bolognese sauce. is was great! I don't remember if we got desert or not! For my next trip report I'm going to take more food pictures for my TR.

We had a blast watching the families interact with Crush from Finding Nemo! The restaurant was beautiful.

It was.... drum roll......

AWESOME!!!

DGF and I excused ourselves a little early and went back to change into comfier clothing for VILLAINS TONIGHT at the Walt Disney theater! We made sure to arrive extra early for good seats. (With a stop for water for Nicole LOL)

The show was incredible as expected!! I loved every second of it. The actor who plays Hades was perfect! His jokes were spot on and there was even a ton of adult humor in there for us grown ups. We left there laughing and smiling the whole way to Deck 4 to the D Lounge.

Nicole really wanted to go to the Donald Duck Latin dancing class in D Lounge. This was designed for families but when we showed up we quickly realized we were the only adults there. We decided to duck out and go hang inside the room.

I forgot to mention earlier that we had found a new towel animal in our room earlier after dinner, however, we didn't have a navigator printed. The whole week, I had my fingers crossed that the Captain would somehow switch our forecasted stormy Castway day with our warm sunny Sea day. Nicole thought I was crazy. When I spotted our Stateroom Host, Troy, in the hallway he said they had to reprint them because.....

THEY CHANGED OUR ITINERARY!!!!!! The Captain, Gus, sought to it that the island would be available to us on Thursday instead of Wednesday and saved our cruise plans! Thank you Captain Gus! I was so happy.

Tuesday night's towel animal! Stay tuned for our At Sea Day next post in my TR.

 

[DIS_Ag]

What do you mean the weren't CM's taking the pics? I've never heard of anyone not being able to use their own camera.

 

[TinkerbellLuvr7]

I'm sorry your trip to Nassau wasn't very magical! I can tell you that the $200 we spent on the beach day at Atlantis last March was a waste of money. I wish we had just stayed on the ship but my mom had never been to Bahamas and so we decided to do it. It was completely different from when I went in 2013. Our tour guide left us, the beach was changed to a public beach, the food options were all over the place, and the area of beach that we went to (from what I remembered in 2013) was a resort section of beach but was all dirty, chairs were broken etc. We did manage to do the aquarium tour which was included and I didn't do it in 2013 and that was actually really nice. Since the guide left us, we basically did a walking tour of the lobby and surrounding areas until we found the beach path and that was nice. We could have saved a ton of money and just took a cab over there and walked around ourselves. So…feel better about not wasting the $$$$$!! Especially since your weather wasn't good too!

 

[FFMatt12]

What do you mean the weren't CM's taking the pics? I've never heard of anyone not being able to use their own camera.

The actual photographers are an outside contractor. Sometimes there's a cast member standing with them and they can take a pic with your camera in addition to the fancy one for your account. If no cast member, the photographer can't touch your camera. Sure, a family member can take your pic but it was only the two of us so we wanted all pics of the two of us. Hope this clears it up.

 

[DIS_Ag]

Had no idea the photographers were not CM's.

 

[summerskye]

Thank you for your report. Our 1st cruise is in July for 7 days. We are getting very excited. Reading your reports has only added to the excitement. Plus i have enjoyed your sence of humor. Keep it coming. Again thanks.

 

[FFMatt12]

Disney Dream 1/4/16 - 1/8/16 Sailing to The Bahamas
PART 8
​

I first want to update you all that I fixed the handful of broken links pictures in the previous posts. I noticed there were like 3 of them. I also forgot to mention about the cool bottles of wine that they offer at Palo and Remy. The guide explained that there was a $10,000 bottle of wine crafted in the 1960's! There were also a Pixar series (pictured above) with a bottle representing all of the Pixar movies. John Lasseter himself even has his own selection for when he sails Disney.

Since the police academy is coming up very soon, I planned on running the track on Deck 4 at least once to complete a mile or 2. Didn't want to throw my entire progress away on our cruise. The heavy winds and rain kind of made this impossible on our sea day (reminder-- itinerary was switched so we had a rocky, rainy sea day). The ship was swaying decently this morning and I woke around 6:45am. I silently donned gym clothes and slipped out of the stateroom to go up to the fitness center near the Senses spa.

I was surprised that there was a decent amount of people who had the same plan as me at the gym. I grabbed a treadmill overlooking the rocky ocean. I got in about a mile and a half or so. There was a yoga class going on behind me too. It was a neat perspective to run on the water like that. I'm happy to report that there were 0 accidents that morning lol.

I snuck back into the stateroom and grabbed a quick shower. I again woke up DGF with the porthole screen turned on. We moved a little slower that morning and planned on trying the Enchanted Garden restaurant for breakfast. This serves most of the same buffet breakfast choices as Cabanas but you are seated and served your juice and coffee by the wait staff.

After a yummy breakfast, we came back to the stateroom to plan the day at sea. Look what we found in our stateroom! Our host, Troy, was incredible. He was very helpful and he left us this cool arrangement for our Anniversary. Swan towel animals, extra chocolate, and rose petals. (and our Pirate bandannas!! )

DGF wanted to give the Midship Detective Agency a shot. We went back down to Deck 2 to the kiosk and waited in the line of children to get her "badge". This was the interactive scavenger hunt around the entire ship and all decks.

In the middle of our mystery, we grabbed a quick picture with Woody! We also found out in the morning that we had unlimited on demand Disney movies and TV shows. When I say unlimited.. like they have them all (basically)! Anyway, we told Woody that we had just watched him on the TV in Toy Story while we got ready in the morning!

We made our way around the ship and we noticed a large crowd forming in the Atrium for Jack Jack's Diaper Dash! They had a race between different crawling babies/toddlers. This was SO cute lol. If you stood up, disqualified, if you stopped too early, disqualified. This was especially hysterical as parents coached their crawlers closer to the finish line.

We watched for a few rounds and then made our way to the shopping area to meet and take a photo with Captain Gus!

Me gazing at the gray, choppy seas. We wanted to sit on the lounge chairs on 11 while the rain seemed to subside. We ended up wrapping in towels with ice cream cones and a drink of the day, the High Tide. We didn't last very long and grew hungry and cold so we went back to order some room service lunch. I was very confused as to whether room service could be done for breakfast or not. I had planned on doing this for our sea day but the menus didn't say breakfast. Later on, I found breakfast room service door hangers in the drawer of our desk. Oh well lunch instead!

I ordered a cheeseburger and fries and Nicole got chicken fingers and fries. I also had our stateroom attendant bring by some ice and I had DGF ice the foot still bothering her. The food came within 30 minutes and we finished Toy Story! Those TV's in the rooms were pretty cool. You have all those movies, shows, as well as Bridge reports, weather, music, and the ability to look at your photopass photo's.

After lunch, DGF took a much needed nap before Pirate night and I watched some Frozen.

When it was time to wake her up, the porthole screen looked like a clearing sky! This was hopeful for the night time fireworks coming up.

It was a ton of fun walking around on deck with the hoards of pirate families! A ton of people really dressed up to the 9. Some just wore the bandannas that DCL provided us. There were a bunch of pirate related character appearances too. Nicole's favorite character is Tinker bell so we had fun with Peter Pan looking for Tink with us.

We lucked out and got Animator's Palate two nights in a row! When I found this out, I was so excited (embarkation day).

DGF had the salmon and I believe I had a chicken dish with sweet potatoes. I had sweet potatoes twice on this sailing and they were excellent both times. Like I wanted seconds, but was watching my self for the academy. I also got a strange orange juice based alcoholic beverage that wasn't enjoyable to me.

Dessert marked the spot too! Err.. X did too.

As soon as dinner was over we made our way up to Deck 11 to find a spot for the Pirate Deck Party!

Captain Hook and Mr. Smee tried to abduct the crew and ruin the party but it's ok.. we put a stop to that.

The good guys won and we had a decent amount of time to kill before the second show and fireworks began after 10pm. I waited in a very long line to meet Jack Sparrow in D Lounge but it was getting long and I didn't see any point in waiting much longer so we went back to the room for a few. We changed into warm clothes and sweatshirts for fireworks and found our new towel animal.

Mr. Potato Head dropped in and caught us by surprise.