Episode VI - The One with Embarkation
We were met at the entrance-way by a CM who asked our family's name and, per DCL usual, shouted it out to everyone in the lobby. Now, I know a lot of people like this, but I find it kind of weird. I'm just not a "shout our name to the world" kind of girl. We found ourselves in the middle of a rather crowded atrium, full of folks trying to fit into the 6 midship elevators. It was hectic and frustrating. Here's the obligatory "not filled with angry luggage toting people" photo of the lovely Fantasy atrium:
Now as any good
Disney cruise planner knows, this is the time when you either head to lunch or get into line to book your ticketed events. My personal plan was to do both. I was going to send everyone else off to lunch, while I went to wait in line. But alas, it was not to be.
You may recall my parents dragging some of their luggage onto the boat with them? Well, they didn't want to be lugging it around anymore. I HAD mentioned that to them, but they had insisted. So they wanted to head directly to our staterooms. However, it wasn't 1:30pm yet. I told them this. They said they knew and didn't care. I said they wouldn't be able to get into their staterooms yet. They reiterated that they didn't want to drag their luggage around. So, not wanting to belabor the issue, we just headed for the rooms. We decide to skip the whole mass confusion at the elevators and head up the stairs (3 decks) to our rooms. When we got there we found about 50 other folks milling around in the elevator area because the hallways to the staterooms hadn't been opened up yet.
Grandma B: "Huh. I guess they really mean it when they say the staterooms are not ready."
Cue me mentally slapping my forehead.
Luckily, it was only a few minutes until they let everyone file into their rooms for the week. We dropped our stuff off and took a few minutes to survey the room. As many other people have stated before me, the rooms are fairly roomy and there is a lot of storage space. A lot. Like, I had shelves that stayed empty the entire trip. That's basically unheard of when cruising. I'd also like to make mention of the round tub/shower. This is by far, in years of cruising and living on boats, the roomiest shower I have ever had the pleasure of washing in. Also, the overhead rain-type of shower head was also luxurious. The water temperature and pressure remained consistent throughout. It was particularly noticeable when contrasted (in the following week) with the less than impressive showers at the Wilderness Lodge.
Finally, my parents consented to go to lunch. Now, none of us are particular fans of buffet, and my dad openly hates them, so I knew Cabanas was a big no-no. Enchanted Garden also has a buffet at this time, but at least you get a little server attention if you eat there for embarkation lunch, so I had decided it was the better option. We headed down to the restaurant and were seated. I sadly do not remember the name of our server for that lunch, because he was just great. He immediately asked the "princess" what she wanted, and was quick to bring her a bowl of macaroni and cheese. He also put on her napkin and got her small sized silverware. Bee was very impressed. She got used to being made much of by the servers very quickly. I think it was something of a shock to her when we came home to Michigan and random people stopped referring to her as princess all the time.
We all actually enjoyed the buffet food, which is saying something for my (hard to please) parents. They were quite impressed that there were crab claws and the like to be had. This was the first of many times they would be impressed by the food on the trip. I had read that DCL was just middling in the food department (as cruise lines go), but my parents were seriously happy with pretty much every meal. They have, in fact, been raving about it to all their friends. So, there you go, a professional cruisers opinion on DCL dining.
I left the table early because I knew I was running out of time to get tickets to onboard events. So I went up to the port adventures desk and got in the line (which reached halfway around the atrium). I managed to get tickets to the Disney Junior breakfast, to the princess gathering, and to the separate Anna and Elsa gathering - all of which were scheduled for the 2nd sea day. I then went down to guest services to get tickets to the gingerbread making class. Now, why are these tickets not all handed out at the same place? God knows. It makes no sense why you would be running from one line to the next (and thank goodness I didn't have to rearrange any dining reservations, because I would have had to go to a 3rd location). But I digress. I stood in the much shorter guest services line....only to find out the gingerbread classes were sold out. At this point it is
maybe 2:15pm. I had never heard of someone
not being able to get these tickets, so I was kind of bummed. But now you may all learn from my misfortune: Get the gingerbread tickets first!
By this time DH and Bee were back in the room, and Bee was being put down for her nap. I noted to DH that there was a DVC member meet going on right then. I wasn't really interested in whatever sales pitch they were giving, but if there was DVC swag to be handed out I wanted to be on hand (plus, I wanted to get in on the possible stateroom credit action). So I went up to the meet, signed in, and got two nice DVC tumblers. They're my new favorite "go-to" glasses at home! I returned to the stateroom and found that some of our luggage had been delivered. Also, our cabin steward had been by while I was out. His name was James and he was from the Philippines (I think). Anyways, I started to unpack what we had on hand, while DH took his turn to explore the ship a little bit. The bag with our Fish Extender had been delivered, so I hung that out and put up the one magnet decoration I'd made beforehand (a Disney Christmas wreath which, coincidentally, fit perfectly around the DVC welcome magnet we'd received).
I want to take a moment to say how neat the door decoration thing was. I wasn't sure I'd like it, which is why I didn't bring much in the way of decoration myself. However, we received so many decorative things as part of FE gifts, that by the end of the cruise our door was covered with cheer. I'm kicking myself for forgetting to photograph the door before I took it all down, but it was some serious flair. I counted 30 magnets of one sort or another that we received. It really made the door more special (and much easier to find!).
Soon enough, we had to wake the Bee so that we could go to our muster station. I had been hoping we'd get one of the indoor stations, but it was not to be. We went out on the hot, sunny, crowded deck to stand with all the other sheep.
I believe that's the Carnival Valor in the background. We saw her take off while we were still mid-muster.
Bee was not happy to have been awakened, and was putting forth some high quality whining.
Not ready for her close up:
I wanted to go straight up to the sail away party, but DH said that Bee was clearly not up to it and should be put back to bed. I reluctantly agreed, but strangely, as soon as we walked back in to the ship (and the AC) Bee perked up. She indicated, in no uncertain terms, that she did NOT want to go back and nap more and that she DID want to watch the boat sail away. My parents weren't interested, so DH, Bee and I went up to Deck 12 to watch the festivities. We found a place on the rail where we could see everything and settled in. Bee seemed to enjoy the show (and her first distant glimpse of Mickey) and watching the ship pull away from the dock.
DH and I finally felt like we were able to start relaxing. I noticed some pelicans flying overhead and pointed them out to Bee:
Once we cleared the pier and were finally on our way out of port, our goal was to see the kids club. We knew we would be unlikely to have a chance to see it during a later open house event, and we adults wanted to check it out. We headed inside and down below, and this is when the rocking began to get noticeable.
Now, I grew up on boats. Rocking is nothing to me, but if you recall, DH is a land-lubber. So, of course, we all started watching him like a hawk. He already had his "patch" on, and he stated that he could feel the rocking, but that it wasn't too bad yet. (Spoiler alert: It got worse as the evening went on.) So we entered the Oceaneer club. Now, I expected this place to be pretty big, but even I was impressed. It had lots of little coves and hideaways, so you kept finding new areas everywhere. There were CMs everywhere trying to get the kids engaged in various activities, and Disney movies playing constantly on screens all over. Bee really seemed to like it.
Does that look comfy, or what?!
Bee particularly liked the hula hoops (Santa ended up bringing her one for Christmas).
We stayed until they started closing the open house portion. By this time the clubs were pretty much empty, likely because first seating for dinner was about to start. We headed back to the room and started getting cleaned up for dinner. At some point we must have stopped by the DVC info desk and picked up our DVC lanyards (because Bee is wearing hers in the photo below). Yay! More swag!
Being raised to cruising, it's sort of in my blood to change outfits for dinner. Yes, even on the first night. That means that everyone had at least 2 outfits for every day of the cruise (not to mention all the WDW outfits). You may ask, "How did I manage to pack all of this stuff?" I'll tell you: I'm not sure. So, we all got into our nice dinner clothes and then headed next door to my parents' room for cocktails. I had told everyone not to bother with the show that evening, because it's almost universally panned by Disboards critics.
I had also told my parents about the All Hands On Deck cheese platter. We all love cheese platters, so I knew this would be a good fit. My parents had called down for one and asked (since they didn't know how much cheese there would be) how many people it would feed. They were told 1 person. I can only think that the CM on the line must have thought they meant "for dinner" because it is a size-able cheese plate which can definitely serve 2-3 comfortably. Well, because of the CM's info my parents ordered 4 plates. Yes, 4. They realized their mistake right away, but weren't going to send the stuff back. They just put it in the fridge and we didn't need to order another platter for several days. We also went to open a bottle of the wine we had brought on....and broke my parents' corkscrew. First try. Sadly, I always forget 1 thing whenever I go on a trip, and this time I had forgotten to bring my own corkscrew. Well, my dad managed to fix it well enough to be able to get the cork out, but would have to go and buy a new one soon.
FYI, they do NOT sell corkscrews in the ship stores. Why would they do that when they want you to pay a $25 corking fee? So, we had to wait until our first port to get a new corkscrew. We did cut the cocktails a bit short because we wanted to go to the tree lighting. We were a bit late and could only find a spot to see at the railing on Deck 5. There wasn't too much to see, though. Santa and Mrs. Claus came out, and the first family onboard that day was brought up to light the tree. Coincidentally, the "first family" was in my fish extender group, so it was interesting to see them in the flesh. They tossed some pixie dust into the air and......nothing. The lights didn't come on. The announcer commented that there must not have been enough pixie dust. Well, everyone went on their way and the lights flicked on a few minutes later.
Soon enough it was time for dinner. Our first night was in Animator's Palate, and I was excited to see the infamous Crush show. We were seated by ourselves, which was a bit surprising, not far from one of the big screens, but not right up next to it. We were introduced to our serving team, Rita and Frano. I know the DCL servers always get props for being excellent, and these two were no exception. I (and more significantly, my parents) have had a lot of good servers in the past, but every once and awhile you get seriously excellent servers who can literally make your cruise. These two were among that elite group. They immediately took to Bee and she to them. I wish I could tell you to request them, but Rita, by now, has ended her DCL run and gone back to Hungary (she's getting married this summer), and I'm not sure who Frano will get paired up with next. Just take my word as an experienced cruiser; they were awesome.
The dining room was fairly empty, and Rita even commented that we were some of her "die hards". No doubt some of the emptiness was due to it being a late evening on a very event-filled travel day, but almost certainly the rocking had something to do with it as well. It was rolling pretty good by this time. The servers were describing it as "pretty bad". I had a little trouble walking a straight line down the hallways, and poor Bee would spend the next 3 days tripping over everything. You know who wasn't having a bad time, though? DH. Clearly, the patch was working, because there is
zero way he could have handled those kind of seas otherwise. He said he could feel the movement, and he felt like he
should have been feeling sick, but he wasn't. So, if you're worried about seasickness, go to your doctor and shell out the money for the (not covered by our insurance) prescription patch. There are some side effects (DH was most disturbed by the blurred vision), but these effect were, in his words, "Much better than throwing up".
Crush came around and started talking to some people at a table near ours (to the great embarrassment of the poor lady he was addressing). My mom was seriously impressed by the technology for this show.
Grandma B: (whispering) "How do they do that?"
Me: (fluttering my hands mysteriously) "Its....MAGIC!"
We headed back to our staterooms and changed into our pajamas. We had asked James to put down the upper bunk, because I thought Bee would like it. I had thought, for some reason, that the stars on the ceiling above the upper bunk lit up, but they don't. A few days later we would find out that there is a special "nightlight" in that area of the room for little kids, but Bee didn't need or want it, so it wasn't a big deal. There were so many lights and such in that room that it took us the whole week to find them all. Seriously, I didn't know until the last day that many of them had a dimmer option.
I set an alarm for the morning, but we had no firm plans, so I wasn't going to be in a hurry to get everyone up. If Bee (especially) wanted to sleep in, I intended to let her.
).
), DH's mom and sister. They would be joining us for the last half of the land only portion of the trip. As you can see, there is some family blending going on in this trip, and it was up to me to keep the peace between the formerly married halves. Being wise, I planned only one day of overlap between the two, and everyone was on their best behavior, so it all worked out well. Auntie M had not been to Disney for about a decade (and didn't have great memories of her previous trip). Grandma J hadn't visited since around 1989, so quite a bit has changed at Disney in the intervening time (Captain Eo, notwithstanding). Both had zero expectations for the trip and were happy to let me handle all the arrangements.
I'm sure they found someplace, but as a consummate planner this just surprised the heck out of me.
