It was only early afternoon when we re-boarded the ship after a delightful (if a bit hot) morning on Castaway Cay. Since we were already wet and beach-y we figured this was the perfect opportunity for some pool-hopping,
DCL style. We dropped the kids at the Mickey Pool (surprisingly busy, since most people were still on CC).
We headed over to the Quiet Cove pool. Ron stopped in Cove Café for two mochacchinos , and I hopped in the pool. Im a fan of clean chlorinated water after a day in salt water. Ahhh. This pool was not dead either, there was a ring of adults hanging all around the perimeter chillin:
We enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere for a while, until we figured if we waited too much longer the kids might be wreaking havoc down aft, so we packed up and went back down towards the Mickey Pool. Halfway down, this is what greeted us:
Satisfied that they did not damage any property or cause undue bodily harm, the kids went back into the pool, and we looked for chairs. Savannah found some friends:
And had some fun in the splash area
.The *only* kid I saw in there the whole cruise, I might add.
Hopefully that is purified water, not recycled!!
We never did find chairs so we instead settled at the Goofy pool. The kids soon followed. It wasnt as crazy as we had seen in our prior cruise, which was nice:
Hot tub to ourselves:
As the afternoon wore on, we made a trip to Scoops. Im not really too impressed. Its just two soft serve machines, chocolate and vanilla
a couple of squirt bottles with toppings like chocolate sauce (NOT hot fudge, the runny stuff yech!), strawberry sauce, and caramel, and I think some sprinkles. There arent cones (maybe Ill remember to bring some next time). Not that I really have room to whine about it.
The scenery:
As afternoon wore on, time had its way with us. We had wanted to see the Disney Dreams matinee but we got back on board too late. And as it turned out we stayed too long up on deck to catch the 6:15 showing. We heded in to make our final selections at shutters. I had promised to cut back this time, and actually I had no problem keeping to our package. There was at least one night we had no photos taken at all. So as we were sprawled out in the corner, photos all over the floor
I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and a nice lady said to me Are you Jen
? AH! It was my fellow Dis friend Tiffany and her hubby Doug, who were also on our next cruise. We chatted for a bit, discussed our lonely decorated doors (we only saw one other door decorated other than ours & Tiffany and Dougs)..I believe I must have apologized profusely for my appearance. Beach Day. Nuff said. After we bid eachother adieu (til we meet again in Sept.) we each spent time at the re-booking desk. We had a Cat. 10 booked for our next cruise and decided we were thoroughly spoiled by the Cat. 5 this time, so we had to upgrade our reservations to a Cat. 8. We had a lot of discussion about it and actually left and came back to the desk several times. We *really* wanted at least a Cat. 6 but just could not afford it, so in the end we settled for the oceanview GTY 8 and decided we would just hope for the pixie dust and maybe score an upgrade later on.
Before we knew it, it was time to go get ready for dinner. Since we had no show to go to, we had some time to kill. But that also meant
..we had time to do something new. BINGO!
All dressed up and nowhere to go!
So we went down to Wavebands, and lucky us, tonight was jackpot bingo. Basically that meant that the highest jackpots of the cruise would be tonight. They had two card options, a red card which had so many bingo grids on it but also had extra chances to win the final game (the jackpot) and the basic purple card which just had six bingo grids on it. We bought the basic purple card and I think it was around $30. (Sorry its been awhile so I forgot the details). There would be four games of random patterns (i.e. straight, four corners, etc.). I found it amusing that when you get to one number away from winning Bingo you have to stand, so everyone is watching you! I found myself standing in the first two games, but did not win. The prizes in both of those were modest, I think about $50 for the first one and $75 for the second. I know the Bingo prizes are based on the amount of card sales per cruise so obviously the 3 night pots are going to be less than the 7 night ones. The third game I knew would be lucky as soon as I heard it was Postage Stamp (yall know where I work, right?). Sure enough I soon found myself standing with about 4 other folks. Very next number and I had it
BINGO! Except
..well
so did two of the others. Sigh. The crew verified our numbers and sure enough all three of us were winners! We each got around $40. Heres the winning card:
We didnt even come close to winning the big finale jackpot which was
around $200. And only one person won that one too
so the game I won was the only one where the prize was split. Oh well. It was enough to cover the cost of the card and a couple of bonus drinks!!
We headed to guest services to put the bingo winnings onto our account. (They give you a slip and you can either credit it to your account or take cash). While at GS, I took this picture of the kids and Michael (the little boy on the right). His mom was trying really hard to coerce him out of the picture but I just laughed and said no, that was ok
now Michael will be in our vacation memories forever!
It was already time for dinner, so we got into the Tritons line, which was already practically backed up to Wavebands. As soon as we got in the line it headed in, and we were seated quickly. The girls goofing around:
Fortune greeted us promptly and we waited for Luis for our beverages
then
no Luis! We had a new assistant server, a young female (whose name has escaped me, sorry!) She took our drink orders and kept our drinks full all night
and did a standup job! We asked what had happened to Luis and basically got the He wasnt feeling well excuse so we had to wonder if he was really sick, or fired! As far as food goes, Tritons is our least favorite restaurant of the three rotational ones. Love the elegant atmosphere, but we always end up leaving here hungry. Maybe its the French sized portions? For salads, we both ordered the Mixed Garden Salad, and it was fine. Nothing special though. Just regular salad. I liked the goat cheese croutons. Ron got the Shrimp Medley, which was baby and jumbo shrimp cocktail
mostly baby shrimp. I skipped the appetizer as nothing appealed to me. For main courses we both again had Roasted Beef Tenderloin. It is served sliced with gravy and what looked like mashed potatoes-but dont let em fool ya, theyre rutabagas! We had this downed in about three bites (sans rutabaga of course). I dont remember what Brendan ate, surely a burger or pizza off the kids menu. Savannah had the mickey pasta, heres a pic:
Tonight we were celebrating Brendans 8th birthday (which was the next week). Our serving team brought out the funky jello cake which looks a lot better than it tastes and serenaded him with the birthday song.
This was the first we had seen of our head server, I think her name was Julie or Julia. We asked her about Luis, since we were so sure they abandoned him in Nassau. She too said he was under the weather (suuuuuuuuure) and not to worry that the tips would be distributed appropriately. She continued to make the rounds to the other tables, but we did notice the ranks had thinned considerably. We had a couple of large tables around us where only half of the party was present and actually every table immediately around us seemed empty. We were not as impressed with the service this time around. While our server Fortune did fine, he did not do any of the extras like magic tricks or the sort that we had experienced in our first cruise. We only saw the head server the last night, and of course whatever Luis problem was certainly affected his service. Our assistant the last night was very good. But overall we were not wowed and began to wonder if the service is not as stellar for those who have cruised DCL before. Our desserts, the crème brulee, were good but again not nearly enough to fill us up. We look forward to scheduling Palo on our Lumieres/Tritons night on our next cruise.
We skipped the Til we meet again character party, as the kids were tired and we had that ever-annoying last evening packing to do. We found a bunny waiting for us on our bed.
We had been trying to assemble a towel animal zoo, but yikes- it seems the poor monkey met his demise and must have been disassembled to create Mr. Rabbit! Apparently the swan spared detection, so we still had 2/3 of our zoo creatures.
The packing was much easier this time, being so organized. The extra space and steamer trunk really made a difference for us. We were done early and spent some last lovely moments out on our verandah before retiring for the evening.
The kids were beat.
The next morning we arose and sadly dressed and prepared for disembarkation. I wanted to go to our assigned table breakfast, as I thought they would have better food., so down to Tritons we went. Again there was a line, and the atrium seemed pure chaos. The early seaters were heading out of the restaurant and off the ship. It took a bit to get seated this time. Even fewer people showed up for breakfast and I think we may have been our regular teams only table. While service in & of itself was fine, we did seem like they were trying to rush us off a bit. As far as the food goes, the only extra additions (that you could not get at BBB) seemed to be pancakes, and thats what I got. They were nothing to write home to mom about. They were not fresh, obviously a frozen variety and they were a bit cold and rubbery. Also again, not enough food about 3 sand dollar sized cakes and two slices of bacon. I cant remember what everyone else had but it was unanimous that we preferred the buffet offerings. Since we all had the cruise is over blues we said farewell to our team and headed off the ship. Or tried to head off the ship. We found disembarkation much more of a pain this time. Last cruise we ate at BBB and just walked off the ship when we were done, and that was obviously in the middle of a breakfast seating as we were off quickly. This time quite a few folks were trying to leave at the same time and we were held in the lobby. When they finally opened it up, they only let a small amount of us go..then we were held again in the terminal before the escalators. Frustrating. We figured customs and luggage pick up must be too busy to let us downstairs, and that must have been the case as it was still really busy when we finally did get waved through. We snagged a porter, quickly found our area and our bags and poked through the slow moving customs line. This time our customs guy did not say even a word to us and waved us through. In what seemed like an instant we were across the street, in the car, and driving off with the beautiful Wonder in the rearview mirror.
This marks the end of another truly wonderful
Disney Cruise adventure.
Folks, September is just around the corner. Ill see ya real soon!
)
And if you spend a lot of time at the chairs you see your "beach neighbors" and they see you..so really I can't imagine someone would have the nerve to conspicuously dig through other ppl's stuff right infront of others nearby. So really I wasn't too concerned. 
.
