BlueEyes78
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2009
Chapter 3: Embarkation Day!!
The kids - much to my dismay, as I am not a morning person - started stirring in their individual beds around 7:30. Someone probably should have warned me before I had kids that they are opposed to sleep. Especially early in the morning. Caden does not quietly “go back to sleep” when he wakes up before the rest of us. He rolls, adjusts his covers, sighs, and sniffs.
Which of course woke up Megan. Connor (my favorite child in the morning) would have slept through the whole thing except Megan was in his bed, so her crawling on him woke HIM up. He was a little grumpy about this. He and I are completely on the same page about this. : )
Promptly at 8 there was a tapping on our door – they were here to get the luggage! We had done some reorganizing the night before so we could send most of it with Disney and just our backpacks and one other piece of luggage went with us (I think it just had our dry swim suits and dinner clothes, all we’d theoretically need before dinner). I’m glad the luggage porters pay attention to detail – I had been using our largest piece of luggage as a bedside table since my side did not have one, and laid my glasses on it the night before. They saw them when they took the luggage out and came back to return them to me. While I wear contacts most of the time, losing my only pair of glasses would have NOT been a good way to start the trip!
Since we had no plans but breakfast, we hung out in the room as long as possible, being lazy and watching TV. Just before ten we headed out for the short walk to the food court.
Beautiful morning!
Our plan was to eat a LIGHT breakfast, as cheaply as possibly at Disney, since we’d be getting all-we-could-eat (and already paid for) food. This plan did not come to fruition as they all wanted different things and sleepless Megan had turned into a beast. She wanted a cinnamon roll. I had planned to buy a “platter” of pancakes, eggs, etc. and split it between the kids. This resulted in her hanging on my leg, crying, and basically making a scene. Shawn was trying to go healthy and wanted a parfait, and I figured I’d split a bowl of oatmeal with Megan. So he was waiting in a separate line for those items and couldn’t help. This girl was really starting to harsh my vacation chill. Finally we both got our food and met up at the cashier line and got to wait there. This was a Saturday morning and the food court was body-to-body people. The boys were taking advantage of our distraction and entertaining themselves by doing silly things like dispensing all the straws from their little box and walking around backwards. As quickly as we could we picked out drinks (I was shocked when I finally found them and saw that milk was like $4 for a single-serve bottle! Ugh. We should have gotten water and fruit and called it a day). Breakfast was $40 by the time it was all said and done. Then we had to run around and find napkins, straws, syrup, butter, salt, pepper…not the nice quiet start to the day we were wanting.
The food was decent. The boys split the pancakes and the meat and had some of Shawn’s fruit. Megan and I split an oatmeal. No one had the eggs, turned out they were the gross powdered ones. I hoped they had real ones on the ship! At this point I had to take a couple of deep breaths and pull myself together as I was NOT in the best mood. We hadn’t even left the resort and Megan’s mood was really dragging me down. One of those starts where you’re praying “Please I don’t want to regret this vacation!!” I am going to try not to grouse too much about it on this trip report because probably the only thing worse than your own kid acting like a hose beast on vacation is reading about someone else’s! But when I look back on that morning all I can remember is feeling completely frustrated with her! Really though, she is a fabulous and funny kid when she does get enough sleep! : )
We walked back to the room and grabbed our last bag so we could check out by the 11:00 deadline and then went back to the main lobby to meet up with our cruise rep. She had us sit down at a table in the little restaurant and told us to have our cruise documents ready and to be ready to hop onto the bus when she called us (in other words, don’t let your kids run around like maniacs!). Since we were sitting I suggested the boys work on homework. We couldn’t find their pencils though and figured they’d left them on the plane. So Shawn went to the gift shop to buy some, and Megan’s whining recommenced. He was gone FOREVER because after he found them, he had to go back and buy sharpeners so we could actually use them. I kept asking Megan if she needed to go to the bathroom since we had at least an hour long drive ahead of us and she hadn’t gone since this morning. She kept arguing that she didn’t. After about twenty minutes, Shawn returned just as we were getting the signal to start packing up. And guess who suddenly needed to pee? So he hustled the boys together while I ran off with her. This was not improving my mood.
However, THIS sight did wonders for it after we got out of the bathroom! The last leg of our two-day journey was underway!
Shawn volunteered to sit with Megan as I was clearly not her biggest fan at this point. That worked well because he spent most of the 90 minutes trying to convince her to nap for her own sanity and mine, and did not succeed. I always envy the people who have kids who will fall asleep anywhere! Caden sat in front of me, and I sat with Connor to help him with his homework, which took up most of the drive. In between papers, though, we’d watch the video playing overhead showing us all the cool things we’d get to do on the Fantasy. I kept sneaking a peek at Waze on my phone to see how close we were. It was exciting to see the blue water of the Indian River on the map getting closer, and just behind it the Atlantic Ocean!! Go to sleep, grumpy girl!
The driver soon announced that we were all about to get our first glimpse of the Fantasy and to get those cameras ready. As we crested the next hill we saw the two Mickey funnels in the distance! NEARLY THERE!
It was about 1:15 and I had no idea what to expect crowd-wise. Our bus parked, we were given instructions to have those papers ready, and to grab our carry-on and head on in. One short trip up the escalator and we were in the lobby and in the check-in line. The line looked a little longer than it actually was when you take into account the sheer volume of check-in agents available, along a LONG desk stretching down the entire side of the room. The two younger ones were convinced we’d be in line for the entire week, but it barely stopped moving. In less than ten minutes we were at the desk and smiling (some more fakely than others) for our IDs. The agent told us our room was ready and we could go straight there to drop off our bags. THAT was a pleasant surprise! One advantage to arriving after one, I suppose. She also assured us there’d still be tickets for the princess gathering and character breakfast but we needed to get to Deck 5 right away as they are first-come, first-serve.
Minnie Mouse was in the terminal also and Megan had seen her, but the choice of waiting in another fifteen minute line and walking onto the ship was a no-brainer for us. We assured Megan that Minnie would be on the boat, and headed into the Mickey tunnel!
We didn’t buy the embarkation photo (we look pretty sweaty and frazzled), so you’ll have to take my word for it that we posed for that, and then it was our time to board. We gave the CM at the door our name and told him how to pronounce it but there was a bit of a language barrier, so it was kind of mangled when he announced us. But we knew who we were, and stepped aboard anyway!
Caden was predictably blown away. The lobby with the peacock glass chandelier is truly an amazing sight. Connor was confused because he thought it would be taller (we found it later he was essentially expecting a floating, tall skinny skyscraper despite all the pictures he’d seen). I was really anxious to explore the ship but I wanted to do it as a family so I dragged everyone up two flights of stairs to deck 5 and followed the signage to Port Adventures. I’m sure the kids felt duped by now because we’d been promising them that once we got on the boat the vacation would begin and we’d stop shuffling from line to line. And the first thing we did was jump into another line!
At least the view of the lobby was good!
We only waited about 15 minutes and we received our tickets to the character breakfast - which would be Tuesday at 7:45. This was Grand Cayman day and we didn’t even plan to get off, so other than losing a chance to sleep in, this was good news. Our princess gathering and Elsa/Anna meeting were both Thursday morning, and that’s a sea day so that worked perfectly too.
Tickets in hand, we headed up two more flights (I was determined to use the stairs as much as possible this week to offset the crazy amounts of food we’d be eating) as we were dying to see the room we’d read so much about. It was just a little aft of the midship staircase. I was stunned by the space when we walked in. It was beautifully decorated and the storage areas were amazing. Other than trying to figure out how to pull out the boys’ beds (turns out you can’t without a key), we didn’t spend a lot of time exploring all the details – although we did check out the balcony. I knew right away this would be a favorite place of mine! The first thing we noticed out there was that when we looked up, we could see the windows in the bottom of a hot tub on Deck 11, as that deck juts out around the ship. We could see little kids in goggles looking back at us, it was pretty funny. I'll add more details later, since at this point we didn't hang here long.
We’d heard that the Enchanted Garden was open for lunch, but they must close at 2. We went all the way down to Deck 2 just as they were closing up. We didn’t feel like taking NINE flights of stairs up to Cabanas, so we did cheat and use the elevators this time. They weren’t too crowded at this point, I think the main lunch rush was over. I love the artwork with all the flying characters you see in the elevator shaft on the way up. Disney’s attention to detail is incredible.
We walked past the pools to Cabanas and were greeted with the hand-sanitizing wipe CM’s – they are posted at the door of every dining room and Cabanas which I think is a fabulous idea. I expected a light lunch offering of sub-par buffet food but I was blown away by the choices available. Pizza, salad, chicken, pastas, fruit, sushi…I kept walking thinking I’d hit the end but at each doorway you passed into a new section with MORE food. I got a little bit of everything. Caden got pizza and Megan got chicken fingers, and Connor found his favorite food in the whole world – shrimp. I think he ended up getting some sort of shrimp dish every day.
We stopped back by the room to decide what to do next and found our luggage had arrived, everything was accounted for. We then tried to go down to the Oceaneers club for the open house, but they were closing up for the muster drill. So instead we went to that. Not much to say about it. It was in the Buena Vista Theater for our section of cabins, so at least we got nice comfy seats instead of having to stand out on a deck somewhere. Kids were bored but no one acted up. Here is how these three felt about it:
As soon as muster was over, we went back to the Oceaneers club. I love the cool, futuristic hand-washing station they use at check-in. Andy’s Room is really cute too. Megan got upset that she could not try on fairy dresses (we had seen them hanging up in the fairy section of the club in online pictures, but apparently in real life they only get them out at certain times). Then she got apprehensive about being there at all, but luckily one of the workers there noticed, bent down to her level and started talking to her about all the fun games they’d play and that they’d even have visitors (princesses) from time to time. She was really good with her, and I was so grateful for the time she took to talk to her one-on-one.
The boys, meanwhile, had found video games (of course!). We had taken the games off their kindles for the week, but I knew it wouldn’t take them long to discover the games in the club. We also got to see a demo for a new product coming out this fall (like an Iron Man glove thing), and they each got to try it. During the demo, I felt a vibration in the floor and I was pretty sure that meant the engines were on and I didn’t want to miss sailing away. As soon as it was over, I talked everyone out of the club and into the hallway, where we could see that we were already moving at a pretty high speed. I was really shocked because I hadn’t felt a thing!
We headed out on to Deck 4 as it was the closest exit, and made one last call to my mom and dad to say bon voyage. I really wanted to be up higher and close to the front, so after a few minutes we went up to 11. From there I could see there was an open-air section on 12, and I saw several folks headed up a staircase to it. When I got there, I saw signs indicating it was the adult-only section of the ship, but the two CMs manning the staircase entrance said kids could go up there at this time only, just to watch us sail away, so we headed up as a family. I guess the party was going on by the pool, or we may have missed it while in the club, but I was happy to be where we were. The view was spectacular.
Let’s get this party started!
The kids - much to my dismay, as I am not a morning person - started stirring in their individual beds around 7:30. Someone probably should have warned me before I had kids that they are opposed to sleep. Especially early in the morning. Caden does not quietly “go back to sleep” when he wakes up before the rest of us. He rolls, adjusts his covers, sighs, and sniffs.
Which of course woke up Megan. Connor (my favorite child in the morning) would have slept through the whole thing except Megan was in his bed, so her crawling on him woke HIM up. He was a little grumpy about this. He and I are completely on the same page about this. : )
Promptly at 8 there was a tapping on our door – they were here to get the luggage! We had done some reorganizing the night before so we could send most of it with Disney and just our backpacks and one other piece of luggage went with us (I think it just had our dry swim suits and dinner clothes, all we’d theoretically need before dinner). I’m glad the luggage porters pay attention to detail – I had been using our largest piece of luggage as a bedside table since my side did not have one, and laid my glasses on it the night before. They saw them when they took the luggage out and came back to return them to me. While I wear contacts most of the time, losing my only pair of glasses would have NOT been a good way to start the trip!
Since we had no plans but breakfast, we hung out in the room as long as possible, being lazy and watching TV. Just before ten we headed out for the short walk to the food court.
Beautiful morning!
Our plan was to eat a LIGHT breakfast, as cheaply as possibly at Disney, since we’d be getting all-we-could-eat (and already paid for) food. This plan did not come to fruition as they all wanted different things and sleepless Megan had turned into a beast. She wanted a cinnamon roll. I had planned to buy a “platter” of pancakes, eggs, etc. and split it between the kids. This resulted in her hanging on my leg, crying, and basically making a scene. Shawn was trying to go healthy and wanted a parfait, and I figured I’d split a bowl of oatmeal with Megan. So he was waiting in a separate line for those items and couldn’t help. This girl was really starting to harsh my vacation chill. Finally we both got our food and met up at the cashier line and got to wait there. This was a Saturday morning and the food court was body-to-body people. The boys were taking advantage of our distraction and entertaining themselves by doing silly things like dispensing all the straws from their little box and walking around backwards. As quickly as we could we picked out drinks (I was shocked when I finally found them and saw that milk was like $4 for a single-serve bottle! Ugh. We should have gotten water and fruit and called it a day). Breakfast was $40 by the time it was all said and done. Then we had to run around and find napkins, straws, syrup, butter, salt, pepper…not the nice quiet start to the day we were wanting.
The food was decent. The boys split the pancakes and the meat and had some of Shawn’s fruit. Megan and I split an oatmeal. No one had the eggs, turned out they were the gross powdered ones. I hoped they had real ones on the ship! At this point I had to take a couple of deep breaths and pull myself together as I was NOT in the best mood. We hadn’t even left the resort and Megan’s mood was really dragging me down. One of those starts where you’re praying “Please I don’t want to regret this vacation!!” I am going to try not to grouse too much about it on this trip report because probably the only thing worse than your own kid acting like a hose beast on vacation is reading about someone else’s! But when I look back on that morning all I can remember is feeling completely frustrated with her! Really though, she is a fabulous and funny kid when she does get enough sleep! : )
We walked back to the room and grabbed our last bag so we could check out by the 11:00 deadline and then went back to the main lobby to meet up with our cruise rep. She had us sit down at a table in the little restaurant and told us to have our cruise documents ready and to be ready to hop onto the bus when she called us (in other words, don’t let your kids run around like maniacs!). Since we were sitting I suggested the boys work on homework. We couldn’t find their pencils though and figured they’d left them on the plane. So Shawn went to the gift shop to buy some, and Megan’s whining recommenced. He was gone FOREVER because after he found them, he had to go back and buy sharpeners so we could actually use them. I kept asking Megan if she needed to go to the bathroom since we had at least an hour long drive ahead of us and she hadn’t gone since this morning. She kept arguing that she didn’t. After about twenty minutes, Shawn returned just as we were getting the signal to start packing up. And guess who suddenly needed to pee? So he hustled the boys together while I ran off with her. This was not improving my mood.
However, THIS sight did wonders for it after we got out of the bathroom! The last leg of our two-day journey was underway!
Shawn volunteered to sit with Megan as I was clearly not her biggest fan at this point. That worked well because he spent most of the 90 minutes trying to convince her to nap for her own sanity and mine, and did not succeed. I always envy the people who have kids who will fall asleep anywhere! Caden sat in front of me, and I sat with Connor to help him with his homework, which took up most of the drive. In between papers, though, we’d watch the video playing overhead showing us all the cool things we’d get to do on the Fantasy. I kept sneaking a peek at Waze on my phone to see how close we were. It was exciting to see the blue water of the Indian River on the map getting closer, and just behind it the Atlantic Ocean!! Go to sleep, grumpy girl!
The driver soon announced that we were all about to get our first glimpse of the Fantasy and to get those cameras ready. As we crested the next hill we saw the two Mickey funnels in the distance! NEARLY THERE!
It was about 1:15 and I had no idea what to expect crowd-wise. Our bus parked, we were given instructions to have those papers ready, and to grab our carry-on and head on in. One short trip up the escalator and we were in the lobby and in the check-in line. The line looked a little longer than it actually was when you take into account the sheer volume of check-in agents available, along a LONG desk stretching down the entire side of the room. The two younger ones were convinced we’d be in line for the entire week, but it barely stopped moving. In less than ten minutes we were at the desk and smiling (some more fakely than others) for our IDs. The agent told us our room was ready and we could go straight there to drop off our bags. THAT was a pleasant surprise! One advantage to arriving after one, I suppose. She also assured us there’d still be tickets for the princess gathering and character breakfast but we needed to get to Deck 5 right away as they are first-come, first-serve.
Minnie Mouse was in the terminal also and Megan had seen her, but the choice of waiting in another fifteen minute line and walking onto the ship was a no-brainer for us. We assured Megan that Minnie would be on the boat, and headed into the Mickey tunnel!
We didn’t buy the embarkation photo (we look pretty sweaty and frazzled), so you’ll have to take my word for it that we posed for that, and then it was our time to board. We gave the CM at the door our name and told him how to pronounce it but there was a bit of a language barrier, so it was kind of mangled when he announced us. But we knew who we were, and stepped aboard anyway!
Caden was predictably blown away. The lobby with the peacock glass chandelier is truly an amazing sight. Connor was confused because he thought it would be taller (we found it later he was essentially expecting a floating, tall skinny skyscraper despite all the pictures he’d seen). I was really anxious to explore the ship but I wanted to do it as a family so I dragged everyone up two flights of stairs to deck 5 and followed the signage to Port Adventures. I’m sure the kids felt duped by now because we’d been promising them that once we got on the boat the vacation would begin and we’d stop shuffling from line to line. And the first thing we did was jump into another line!
At least the view of the lobby was good!
We only waited about 15 minutes and we received our tickets to the character breakfast - which would be Tuesday at 7:45. This was Grand Cayman day and we didn’t even plan to get off, so other than losing a chance to sleep in, this was good news. Our princess gathering and Elsa/Anna meeting were both Thursday morning, and that’s a sea day so that worked perfectly too.
Tickets in hand, we headed up two more flights (I was determined to use the stairs as much as possible this week to offset the crazy amounts of food we’d be eating) as we were dying to see the room we’d read so much about. It was just a little aft of the midship staircase. I was stunned by the space when we walked in. It was beautifully decorated and the storage areas were amazing. Other than trying to figure out how to pull out the boys’ beds (turns out you can’t without a key), we didn’t spend a lot of time exploring all the details – although we did check out the balcony. I knew right away this would be a favorite place of mine! The first thing we noticed out there was that when we looked up, we could see the windows in the bottom of a hot tub on Deck 11, as that deck juts out around the ship. We could see little kids in goggles looking back at us, it was pretty funny. I'll add more details later, since at this point we didn't hang here long.
We’d heard that the Enchanted Garden was open for lunch, but they must close at 2. We went all the way down to Deck 2 just as they were closing up. We didn’t feel like taking NINE flights of stairs up to Cabanas, so we did cheat and use the elevators this time. They weren’t too crowded at this point, I think the main lunch rush was over. I love the artwork with all the flying characters you see in the elevator shaft on the way up. Disney’s attention to detail is incredible.
We walked past the pools to Cabanas and were greeted with the hand-sanitizing wipe CM’s – they are posted at the door of every dining room and Cabanas which I think is a fabulous idea. I expected a light lunch offering of sub-par buffet food but I was blown away by the choices available. Pizza, salad, chicken, pastas, fruit, sushi…I kept walking thinking I’d hit the end but at each doorway you passed into a new section with MORE food. I got a little bit of everything. Caden got pizza and Megan got chicken fingers, and Connor found his favorite food in the whole world – shrimp. I think he ended up getting some sort of shrimp dish every day.
We stopped back by the room to decide what to do next and found our luggage had arrived, everything was accounted for. We then tried to go down to the Oceaneers club for the open house, but they were closing up for the muster drill. So instead we went to that. Not much to say about it. It was in the Buena Vista Theater for our section of cabins, so at least we got nice comfy seats instead of having to stand out on a deck somewhere. Kids were bored but no one acted up. Here is how these three felt about it:
As soon as muster was over, we went back to the Oceaneers club. I love the cool, futuristic hand-washing station they use at check-in. Andy’s Room is really cute too. Megan got upset that she could not try on fairy dresses (we had seen them hanging up in the fairy section of the club in online pictures, but apparently in real life they only get them out at certain times). Then she got apprehensive about being there at all, but luckily one of the workers there noticed, bent down to her level and started talking to her about all the fun games they’d play and that they’d even have visitors (princesses) from time to time. She was really good with her, and I was so grateful for the time she took to talk to her one-on-one.
The boys, meanwhile, had found video games (of course!). We had taken the games off their kindles for the week, but I knew it wouldn’t take them long to discover the games in the club. We also got to see a demo for a new product coming out this fall (like an Iron Man glove thing), and they each got to try it. During the demo, I felt a vibration in the floor and I was pretty sure that meant the engines were on and I didn’t want to miss sailing away. As soon as it was over, I talked everyone out of the club and into the hallway, where we could see that we were already moving at a pretty high speed. I was really shocked because I hadn’t felt a thing!
We headed out on to Deck 4 as it was the closest exit, and made one last call to my mom and dad to say bon voyage. I really wanted to be up higher and close to the front, so after a few minutes we went up to 11. From there I could see there was an open-air section on 12, and I saw several folks headed up a staircase to it. When I got there, I saw signs indicating it was the adult-only section of the ship, but the two CMs manning the staircase entrance said kids could go up there at this time only, just to watch us sail away, so we headed up as a family. I guess the party was going on by the pool, or we may have missed it while in the club, but I was happy to be where we were. The view was spectacular.
Let’s get this party started!