our truly magical 1st cruise... April 26 Eastern Caribbean

[poffles]

Another great installment!

 

[Karen Mouse]

Great trippie - loving it so far

 

[zerog]

Great photo's Kay. I recognize your stateroom hostess, since we must have walked by your room at least 100x. I knew it was your room because I knew your door signs (from Kristin).

Next cruise, it's going to be nice being directly below Topsiders. Remember, we've got your room on our next cruise. BTW, we didn't plan it that way. It was odd because Kylie (I think that was her name) booked us in 2610. As we sat there asking questions, she goes 'oh, 2608 just opened up.' So we took it since it was that much closer to the mid. Even then, it didn't occur to me till later that was your room.

 

[dreamcometrue]

Great photo's Kay. I recognize your stateroom hostess, since we must have walked by your room at least 100x. I knew it was your room because I knew your door signs (from Kristin).

Next cruise, it's going to be nice being directly below Topsiders. Remember, we've got your room on our next cruise. BTW, we didn't plan it that way. It was odd because Kylie (I think that was her name) booked us in 2610. As we sat there asking questions, she goes 'oh, 2608 just opened up.' So we took it since it was that much closer to the mid. Even then, it didn't occur to me till later that was your room.

you will love MY room Randy!! It was really really nice to be so close to the aft elevators, it's just a short trip up to deck 9 which is nice esp when you get thirsty at night, and also so close to most restaurants. We have the same room again for our next cruise! It was also very quiet, we never heard a thing!

 

[pierresgirl]

Great installment! Love the butterfly pics! Can't wait to hear about the dolphin encounter. I really want to do that!

 

[Tonyspad]

Waiting for day 5!!!

 

[JDBlair]

There are a lot of similarities between our TR's! We were in room 2606 (awesome location - rebooked it for our next cruise), we had Sylvester in Palo, it was our first cruise! I'm enjoying your TR!!!

 

[dreamcometrue]

I am hoping to have day 5 up tonight! Thanks for all the nice comments! We can't wait to go back!!

 

[MsLeFever]

great reading!

 

[DundasDad]

Wow ... loving your trip report. Absolutely fantastic!

Hoping to book our first cruise for early next year ... fingers crossed!

 

[philatiger]

really enjoying your TR. It's been great seeing the same trip from someone else' eyes. We had a great time as well. Thanks for the pirate night pics...I was tired of luggnig my camera around all day and didn't bring it up on deck that night

 

[dreamcometrue]

Day 5 St. Thomas and Dolphin Encounter

I woke up way early today, showered and headed up to deck 10 to watch the Magic dock in St. Thomas.

the sun is rising as we pull closer to St. Thomas

Captain Tom and the other officers docking the Magic. I thought that was so cool to watch!

I called down to the room to wake the others up and then headed down too. We made our way to immigration, which was pretty painless. We had an early
excursion and had to be in Studio Sea at 7:30am anyway. We checked in for the dolphin encounter and were off the ship by 8. We got on a 1 hour ferry ride that took us to the Island of Tortola. This was a bit of a pain since Tortola is in the British Virgin Islands and St. Thomas U.S. Virgin Islands. We had to go through immigration again in Tortola. We were put in little open air busses and drove a short distance to the dolphin discovery facility. There we put our things in cubbies and were given life vests. Then, we watched a short orientation video and they took pictures of all the families posing with parrots.

this is a scanned picture

We went in groups to where the dolphins are. Our dolphins name was Calypso, he was a 12 year old male. We went in the water with him and got to play around with him touch him, learn about dolphins in general, kiss him and dance with him. It was a great experience and of course we bought all the photos they took of us and souveniers at the gift shop. Here are some pictures I took with the disposable camera:

And here are the scanned images of the kids interacting. Yeah I know... how can you NOT buy these? And they know it too, and they make you sell your soul but hey, we were on vacation so who cares right?

They gave us a lunch of cheeseburgers, hamburgers, hotdogs, fries, pasta salad, little tuna and cheese sandwiches and some pastries. After that, we went on a island tour. Our tour guide took us way up in the hills to a restaurant type place where we got a complimentary drink and stopped for photo op. You could see both the British and U.S. Virgin Island from up there and it was just breathtaking! Soooo beautiful!

view of Tortola from the bus

Then it was back to the ferry and back to St. Thomas and through immigration once again.

this was on the ferry ride back. I wouldn't mind spending some time there!

beautiful Magic docked in St. Thomas

The only thing that bothered me about this excursion is having to go through immigration all these times, which meant standing in line. It was never more then 10 minutes though so it wasn't soooo bad. But you had to take your passports along which always makes me uneasy because I worry that we will lose them. The whole dolphin encounter was awesome and my whole family enjoyed it very much.

After we got back to St. Thomas it was almost all aboard time, we had about 20 minutes to shop, so we headed to the mall right by the pier and bought us some t-shirts and a St. Thomas magnet, just a little souvenier. Then back
to the ship. We watched the Magic pull away. There were a whole bunch of passengers on deck on the Royal Caribbean ship next to us and they all cheered when our Disney horn sounded. Gave me the chills!

We got hungry and had a quick bite to eat by the Mickey pool. The kids put their bathing suits back on and swam until dinner time. We had a special moment by the aft elevator on deck 9. Kaylee and I were about to head
down to the room when in walked Chip and Dale. I took a quick picture and then much to our surprise they both squeezed in the elevator with us!! (we all know how tight those elevators can be, imagine being in there with 2 huge chipmunks!!) Kaylee was in heaven. Dale picked at Kaylee's hair on the way down, and she giggled like crazy. She could not wait to tell her dad about that!

Dinner tonight was in Lumiers again and I had some jerk pork appetizer, some gumbo seafood soup, and roasted chicken dish for entree. Dessert was some sort of White Chocolate Truffel Torte which was delicious.

Kaylee at dinner. I have to mention that she LOVES the cherries in her Shirley Temple. She told Dobi, our server the first night, and every night after that when we sat down for dinner, there was a small dish full of cherries waiting for her along with her drink! She always dumped them all in her cup!

After dinner, we went to Shutters to pick up some pictures, and then had more taken around the atrium and just wandered around the ship for a bit.

Ran into this silly guy...

We were all exhausted so we headed to our stateroom early. There was no
show we wanted to watch tonight, so we just all put on our pajamas and got in bed and watched a movie. Towel animal tonight was a bunny (I think!?)

Tomorrow... Day at Sea and character breakfast.

 

[poffles]

Another great installment. Everyone still having lots of fun.

 

[jollytammy]

I am so enjoying your trip report!!!

 

[philatiger]

Can't wait to hear about the character breakfast. We opted to skip ours on Thursday morning since we had brunch scheduled at Palo

 

[Suzanne Place]

Hi, We are from Leeds in England and this was our 1st Disney cruise, which we discovered after an amazing holiday last year at Animal Kingdom!! We've been watching your blog ever since we got back off our holidays as my husband discovered it, whilst browsing DIS...we have loved looking at your photo's as we lost our camera with about 300 pictures on our very last night of our holiday. After the cruise we spent 5 nights in saratoga springs, which was lovely, but was gutted about losing our camera on our last night!....

We are actually starring in your photo's on pg 2, im the lady in the blue top with my back to you, sat near you on the next table, just near the mickey pool. This must have been really soon just as we had boarded onto the ship, I had seen you with your lunch and had sent my husband and kids off to investigate where you had got it from, while I sat with the pushchair!!..we had ticket number 5 to board from the cruise termainal, so we got on the ship quite early...Its been really lovelly to to re-live some of our memories through your photots and if you have any more of Brett, send them on, as I thought he was gorgeous!!!! x

 

[dreamcometrue]

Hi, We are from Leeds in England and this was our 1st Disney cruise, which we discovered after an amazing holiday last year at Animal Kingdom!! We've been watching your blog ever since we got back off our holidays as my husband discovered it, whilst browsing DIS...we have loved looking at your photo's as we lost our camera with about 300 pictures on our very last night of our holiday. After the cruise we spent 5 nights in saratoga springs, which was lovely, but was gutted about losing our camera on our last night!....

We are actually starring in your photo's on pg 2, im the lady in the blue top with my back to you, sat near you on the next table, just near the mickey pool. This must have been really soon just as we had boarded onto the ship, I had seen you with your lunch and had sent my husband and kids off to investigate where you had got it from, while I sat with the pushchair!!..we had ticket number 5 to board from the cruise termainal, so we got on the ship quite early...Its been really lovelly to to re-live some of our memories through your photots and if you have any more of Brett, send them on, as I thought he was gorgeous!!!! x

wow that is so funny you found my trip report and are in one of our photos! What a bummer about losing your camera. If you want any of my pictures, feel free. I have tons I took from around the ship, and even though it wasn't you that took them, you were still on the same cruise so you might want them. Let me know!

 

[zerog]

Kay, I'm still enjoying your trip report. Keep up the good work, but just like the cruise I don't want it to end.

 

[GoofyTraci]

wow..I am so excited to hear and see your pictures. I almost cried when you talked about leaving the port and the sounding of the horn. I have nine months before our first cruise so i feel sad about that, but love to see what lies ahead for us and our cruise.

can't wait to hear more..

 

[CruisinEars]

Great tr! We were on the western the week following you. We had a fantastic time. Your kids remind me of my kids. My dd even has the same pirate costume as your dd.

We just booked an Eastern for Aug 2009 so I am interested in your report, pictures and itinerary. I just don't know what to do for our port days. Thank goodness I have 15 months to figure it out!

Looking forward to reading about St. Thomas and the rest of your report.