“I have to keep telling Jack that the blue stuff down there is water.”
“Blue as the ocean”, is a phrase I’ve heard on a fairly regular bases for pretty much my entire life.
It’s a common comparison, but for the typical landlubber it’s really an abstract idea.
One I questioned for a good portion of my life actually.
I’ve looked out upon the mighty Atlantic from various beaches, inlets and shore lines off and on since I was child and the one thing I can tell you is that when viewed from most points in North America, the color of our oceans is at best:
Green…
...with a lot of brownish overtones to it as well.
(as evidenced by that tattered image from the mid 1960s)
One may draw a picture with the crayon whimsically named: “Ocean Blue”, or be forced to wear a navy blue suite to your cousin Amanda’s wedding reception, but there really is nothing about the water at the beach that can actually be related to these chromatic notions. Nope… to catch a glimpse of the hue that has inspired both adventurers and poets alike, you need to first loose site of the land.
And make no mistake; we’ll do just that…
but before this can happen, we best find our way on board the ship.
Otherwise it’s gonn’a be a long swim toward our destination.
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Rebel Spies
When last seen (or more rather, written about) our main characters of this rambling story were just being released from the check-in line and had already been cleared to board. Having been granted that clearance, we shuffled off toward the Mickey Ear inspired entrance of the terminal’s main gangway…
Barrowed that shot from the 627 TR, because everything was happening so quickly this time that I hadn’t even pulled out my camera yet. But I assure you, it still looks the same. The one thing that was different was that there was a motley colored ocean of other travelers between me and that entrance and they weren’t making any real effort to move on.
Turns out they were all just waiting for their number to come up.
Now I explained that the boarding is done in groups a little bit like the way airplanes are loaded. They call your number; you get up and head for the gangway. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work. But instead, everyone else just got up and clogged the center of the room pressing up against the ropes like tweens rushing the stage at some pop star’s most recent concert.
How about a little bit of consideration folks!
I’m completely aware that y’all are the only people here today that paid a good bit of money for this experience and therefore deserve to be treated in accordance with that level of outlay by all the worthless schmucks currently interfering with your grand adventure, but I honestly thought we’d all gotten at least a cursory grasp on this proper behavior stuff way back in kindergarten.
Sorry ‘bout that…
I’m just venting a bit here.
Ahem…
To be truthful, this wasn’t anywhere near the most ridiculous crowd I’d ever dealt with
(No,.. that would be this particular instance
from a very different TR)
…but it was frustrating.
Once I determined that the gaggle surrounding us was merely waiting for the siren call of larger numbers, I decided to get a mite rude (for a South’ner, that is) and started pushing my way onward to clear a path for the rest of my family. We finally got through the scrum and presented ourselves to the CMs at the gangway. A quick swipe of the cards, a visual check to ensure that the pictures they had taken of us from a few minutes ago still resembled the individuals purporting to be us annnnnd…
We’re officially “aboard” the ship.
We’ll procedurally that is.
We still had the long chaotic line of folks ahead of us waiting to have their official boarding pictures taken by the staff from Shutters. It was just about then when a CM announced that those who wished to skip the picture (and we fit that category) could step outside the ropes and continue on. It’s a bit like diving into the Fast Pass line at the parks.
Not intending to buy vary many of the ship board pictures anyway, we dove.
Moments later we were on the retractable gangway, just steps from the ship…
The holdup at this point is just waiting our turn on the “red carpet”…
If you’ve sailed
DCL before, you know all about this. If not, then here’s how it goes down. Every group and family that boards the ship is greeted by one of the junior officers at the entrance to the atrium for your official welcome aboard their ship. They’ll ask you for your family name and then announce it over the loudspeakers as you walk aboard. A group of other officers and staff will be on hand to applaud your arrival as well.
It’s all quite the miniature ego boost.
But here’s the thing…
They will announce you in whatever manner you wish them to (apart from profanity, this is still Disney ya’ know). If you want to be called something different, something silly, something thought provoking…
Whatever comes to your mind, just go for it.
I’ve done this enough to know that no one beyond the staff greeting you is paying the least little bit of attention to your triumphant arrival anyway. Heck, they’re way too preoccupied with the wondrous start to their own sea adventure and were given the same star treatment before you arrived - thank you very much - so they’ll never hear your grand announcement.
On our last DCL cruse, this fact led to a choice that would become the title of the TR that resulted from the endeavor, when we were introduced as:
“Experiment 627”
This time we chose a different one of Disney’s film properties and had ourselves ushered aboard thusly:
“Disney Fantasy please welcome aboard, The Rebel Spies!”
The lady doing the announcing put her heart into it and we even got a pretty robust belly laugh from one of the other officers on applause duty at the time. Even if only one person actually heard it, I did get a laugh out of him…
so I’ll count that as the next win of the day.
Once you step through the doors you’ll find yourself entering the Grand Atrium at the center of Deck-3…
That image was from a bit later in the week,
but gives a lot better idea of the space than the picture I didn’t take at the time would have.
Grand is an understatement for this part of the ship…
Both the main floor and the chandelier three decks above draw their design inspiration from a peacock fan, a well-chosen theme for the 1920s era art nouveau style chosen for Disney’s youngest ship. The intricate detail and sweeping flourishes are apparent throughout the atrium…
And of course, the Ship’s official hostess presides over all activities great and small…
And now that the spies are aboard…
a bit of espionage may now commence.
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Sustenance
First stop of the day was La Piazza. This is one of several spots on Desc-4 in an area of the ship collectively known as: Europa. Basically, this part of the ship is the opposite of the kid’s clubs. Rather instead it’s the Adult’s clubs, or to be more common and vulgar: the bars and night clubs
I’ll talk about these locals a bit more as we get farther into the trip but for now this is where you head if you want to sign up for one of the many tastings that are offered during the cruse. Or if you just absolutely need to get candid pictures of various members of your party pretending to ride a Vespa…
through the middle of a lounge…
Sometimes, and for some groups, that’s a high priority detail right there, but oddly, no one in our little band was interested in the photo-op. We were interested in making reservations to try out a little bit of libation a few days into the cruse
(well two of us were).
With that administrative task out of the way it was time for some lunch.
There are two ways to go about slaking one’s hunger on boarding day. The vast majority will head up to Deck-11 and hit the buffet at Cabanas (the main casual/buffet restaurant aboard ship). This is especially true of the folks that shot up there first thing to stake out a deck chair and get their young’ens into the pools and onto the Aqua-Duck. And honestly, that’s a fine plan if you have pre-teen kids that are bored senseless by anything that doesn’t specifically relate to them.
As one might expect though, with close to 4000 people reporting aboard, it can get pretty busy pretty quickly up there. There is a more laid back option though, available to those that are paying attention. As a rule, DCL will also open up a slightly smaller buffet in one of the signature dining rooms.
Far less crowded and chaotic,
this option is. Hummm…
Being as I’m generally in favorer of less
KAOS and more CONTROL, that’s the one we sought out.
On the Dream and Fantasy, the spot that usually opens up is down on Deck-2.
This spot…
We arrived precisely at noon just as they were opening the doors for lunch and were about the fourth or fifth group seated. One of the servers got us settled in and then brought drinks to order.
Shortly after we were free to peruse the buffet.
I’ll be telling y’all a lot about the various dining experiences, sharing menus, discussing options and the like, but there won’t be a plethora of images representing what we’ve come to refer to around here as food-porn. It’s not that I didn’t intend to take pictures, especially as dining is one of the main reasons for considering a cruse in the first place.
It’s just that…
we often so enjoyed relaxing while sitting down to some very fine eats up to the point where we often just slap forgot about taking any pictures of the proceedings. I may try to find a few examples that other fine folks have sprinkled across the web when it serves to aid the process of explanation, but we’ll see how that works out as I come to those points in the story.
We did get a couple pictures of today’s lunch plates before they had gotten completely devoured at least…
I see shrimp, a wrap of some type, pasta salad, asparagus,,,
You get the idea.
There was a good bit to choose from and you could very quickly fill a plate and have to resort to a backup.
A fact better illustrated by the mounds of nibbles and noshes struggling to maintain position on my plate…
There were a number of vegies and chilled sides, soups and several meat courses as well including some prime rib if you were so inclined. And of course, several deserts to choose from. As for the dining room, I’ll show y’all more images of the Enchanted Garden itself later on when we get back here for dinner, but trust me, like every other spot on the ship, it’s a beautiful space.
There was one other thing we took a smidgen of time to accomplish while shaking off the minor stresses involved in the rush to get aboard. Since we were here anyway, it was decided that we ought to hunt down where our assigned table was located.
For those that haven’t yet experience it, here’s how Disney’s Rotational Dining works.
We’ve already discussed the rotation assignment back in the last chapter, but you’ll meet your serving team at dinner on the first night (and for us that will be upstairs at the Royal Court). Then each night you’ll be served in a different of the three locations, and the serving team that is assigned to you will also move from one venue to the next. They get to know you, you get to know them and it makes for a good relationship and dining experience. To facilitate this swapping of dining rooms, you will always be seated at a table with the same number assigned to it, and generally it will be in the same general area of each room (middle, front, back corner, ect…). It turns out that table-53 is in the back right section of each restaurant. It also turns out that our last mystery got solved; we were assigned to a table of four, meaning that we’d be sharing meals with a sum total of zero strangers on this cruise.
And that suited us just fine.
It’s not that we’re antisocial (well not entirely at least), it’s that we’re all a bit on the introverted side and it takes us a while to warm up to folks we don’t know (a long while). Our first two cruises had us placed at tables of six and sharing dinner with other families of three. Both times the other group included a young lady of a similar age to our son at the time. DCL does try to do things like that (matching approximate ages and such), but even they can’t ensure that everyone will hit it off and behave like long lost palls.
There were no problems from this to be sure, but in trying not to be rude to our fellow diners, we also tended to stifle our own conversations and that detracts a mite from the overall experience.
The last cruise had us placed at a table of eight and sharing dinner with a family from Iceland including three daughters of varying ages. Again, they were quite pleasant folks but spoke only cursory amounts of English so conversation was restrained there as well. On several nights, mom and dad were dining separately and only the daughters (who spoke almost no English at all) would be there with us.
In general, our experience with dining companions has been a bit lackluster, so this time we requested a table to ourselves. Regardless of whether it’s us who were the troublesome components to these previous encounters (and I’ll accept that pronouncement if need be) or “they” were, being left alone seemed like the best solution to the problem. Thing is, DCL can’t guarantee this. If you ask, they will try to accommodate you and there is no shortage of four-place tables in the dining rooms, but they also have to ensure that everyone is seated.
This time around though…
we would enjoy our meals in peace.
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Would you like some muster with that?
Not long after finishing up out first shipboard dining experience of the trip it was finally time for the next major encounter of every cruise…
getting into your cabin.
To ensure that the house keeping staff has adequate time to make every room as practically perfect as possible, guests are not allowed onto the halls of the “living decks” until at least 1:30 in the afternoon. As such there’s really no reason to even attempt to access your stateroom prior to that unless you just want to stand in one of the elevator vestibules waiting for the ropes to be dropped. When we stepped off one of the aft elevators and onto Deck-7, they had just opened up the passageway to the port side cabins. A minute or two later, the starboard side was opened and we were able to make the short journey from that spot to our new home for the next week…
And, just cause I’m generally mean and ornery…
I ain’t goin’a show y’all the actual stateroom just yet.
Now, you’ens just simmer down, ya’ hear…
I’ll get to it in nauseating detail in the next chapter, but for right now, your just gonn’a have to use your imagination because I’ve got other parts of the story to deal with right now.
Specifically, that next part of the story is the Muster Drill.
Also known as the lifeboat drill, this is an exercise that is performed on every cruse originating from a US harbor. If you don’t do it, the USCG won’t clear the ship to leave. Just like any fire drill you ever endured back in your schooldays (or even in some office building like the one I work in), when the alarm sounds you’re supposed to follow designated paths from wherever you are on to your assigned assembly station.
So where is your assembly station?
Well for the majority of passengers it will be where the lifeboats are somewhere along the “main deck” or “boat deck”, which on all of Disney’s ships happens to be Deck-4…
Notice the green sign on the left of that picture with the big “G” plastered on it…
That would be the muster station for everyone assigned to Lifeboat “G”. So how do you know which one you are assigned to? Well, like I said in the last chapter, it’s printed on your key card (it’ll be the large letter in the bottom left corner of the card), It’s also listed on the back of you stateroom door and printed directly onto the life vests (along with your cabin number) that will be stored on the upper shelf of the closet in you stateroom.
You really should take time to read the escape plan on the door and if you’ve never sailed before I’d make sure that you figure out how to put the life vests on. If not for yourself…
at least get the kids to play with them for a minute or two.
On board DCL’s ships, this drill takes place precisely at
Eight Bells of the Afternoon Watch.
For regular folk…
That’s 4 pm.
And you should already be there by 4:00. The quicker everyone is accounted for, then the quicker the crew can go through the process of explaining the procedures, demoing life vests and safety precautions and sending you on your way. If you don’t show up for the drill, they won’t go hunt your down, but you will receive a rather stern letter directly from the captain and delivered straight to your stateroom door.
Will you get kicked off?
No, but that bit of grace will be your last and count against you in any future dealings with the ship’s officers.
And trust me, from that point on…
they’ll be watching you.
Always watching…
So all things considered, just get yourself down there for the twenty minutes it take to pull this off and everyone will be all the happier. Besides, they no longer make you actually wear the life vest during the drill so what’s there to complain about?
Another thing that has traditionally occurred while we were taking part in the muster is that the crew would line everyone up rank and file by traveling group and ask you to stand tallest to shortest. Ostensibly this is to make sure everyone can both hear and see the crew throughout the demonstrations. This mundane fact lead to something that has gotten to be a bit of a tradition in my family. Going back to our voyage on the Magic in 2009, Max has always be in the middle height-wise between his momma and me. And back then, while waiting for everything to commence, I had a moment to be silly and was looking sneakily at Tamara from across the boy’s shoulder. Tam caught a picture of it and I couldn’t resist the same ploy on the Dream in 2011…
Obviously, with such a precedent set, it was incumbent upon us to replicate the result.
The problem is we weren’t assigned to a life boat this time.
No, we were assigned to a nightclub.
Say What??
(well, everyone except Ponzi, he’s already learned to follow that command)
Here’s the deal, The vast majority of crew and passengers will fit into the ships sixteen iconic Mickey Yellow life boats
(and DCL they had to get special permission to paint them yellow rather than orange)…
Actually I believe that their rated for an occupancy of 270 per boat.
Yet even so, there’s really not quite enough physical room on the exposed portions of Deck-4 for over four thousand passengers to crowd onto at once. As such, those folks in staterooms that are either fairly far forward or aft are assigned to report to a larger open area (either the main theater forward or the largest of the clubs back at the stern).
In the event of an actual evacuation, these folks - once accounted for - would then be led either to fill in the open spaces remaining in the life boats, or to one of the numerous inflatable life rafts.
Do trust me though when I say there is enough buoyant lifesaving space to accommodate all onboard…
it’s just that it might end up being on an inflatable rather than a hard sided boat.
Being as cabin 7676 is located rather near the stern, we were assigned to Assembly Station “P”, which happens to be any chair, stool of booth you care to have a seat in on the starboard side of the Deck-4 nightclub known as “The Tube”. Since visual obstructions are not an issue in this space, there is no need to line everyone one up rank and file for the demonstrations.
Which means that in order to get our Official Stupid Muster Drill Photograph…
We had to improvise just a mite…
Yep…
I look pretty stupid there.
Mission accomplished.
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Shove off, Mate
Generally, Disney’s ships will pull away from the dock around 4:30 or shortly after the Muster has been completed. Once everyone is dismissed all of the elevators become quite inundated quite quickly. As one might imagine considering that everyone was now crowded onto Deck-4. We looked at that madness for a moment or two and decided that the best option was to take the stairs up three decks to our cabin and then chill for a little bit to let the crowd dissipate some (and for those among us who are rather out of shape to catch our collective breath after ascending those flights of stairs).
It wasn’t long at all before we could feel the slight vibration of the ships thrusters as they began steadily pushing nearly 130,000 tons of ship away from the dock and terminal. Time to head up topside and enjoy the transit up the Cut and out to sea.
The big party had already gotten started up on Deck-11 as it gets moving almost immediately after the lifeboat drill. The party I’m on about here is known as the “Sail Away” party.
This character driven, bass beat infused dance party takes place in the family pool area just behind the forward funnel. Smack in the middle of this spot right here…
I took that one a bit earlier in the day actually.
By the time everyone gets back up here the crew will have moved all those chairs out of the way and the retractable decking will have been extended to covered over the pool. The whole area then becomes one great big dance floor. Being as I generally don’t care all that much for dance music and I’m fairly certain that it would be a violation of several federal statutes and endanger the lives of thousands if I were to actually be caught dancing…
We have been known to skip this little bash.
That’s why you only have “before” pictures of the area here.
Far more entertaining - to me at least – is to find a nice spot along the rails (and away from the mind numbing thump, thump, thump of the dance party back there) to just watch as we slowly follow the Pilot boat out of the port and on toward open water…
We even went back after the trip was over to see if we were lucky enough to get picked up by the Port Canaveral WebCam. Turns out that this time anyway, we were…
We’re the couple off by ourselves on the left side of that picture.
Max decided just to sit out the sail-away back in the cabin, so it was only the two of us at that point. Not terribly detailed nor flattering as pictures go, but it’s better that you don’t see too much of me too often anyway.
Once we’d cleared the channel, the captain signaled: All Ahead Full and the Florida Coast started receding into the distance at a right fair clip. At that rate it didn’t take too much longer for us to maneuver clear of the coastal shelf and into the deep open ocean waters.
This is where the water’s color that I was talking about way back at the top of this post changes. It moves form that dull green that I’m so accustomed to seeing from the land on toward an actual shade of deep blue.
But that description doesn’t do the change any justice at all. It’s not “blue” so much as it’s this incredibly mesmerizing shade of sapphire. It is such a deep and rich color that explanations are difficult and in truth, it doesn’t even translate well when photographed. I’ve tried many times to get a picture of this color so that I can show people what I’m talking about, but what the camera sees just isn’t the same thing as what my eye sees.
By pushing the hue and saturation levels of this image I snapped, you get a little bit better idea though…
Now, I did some digging around the web trying to find someone, anyone that had succeeded in capturing the actual color of deep ocean waters on film (or in pixels as it’s now done); turns out that it was the Royal Navy that would finally get the job done correctly. Here’s a image of HMS Ocean keeping station with the replenishment ship Fort Roaslie…
But it’s not the ships in particular that I’m interested in at the moment (and that’s unusual for me),
it’s the water…
That almost unearthly blue that looks more like a solid surface than an undulating fluid. Maybe it’s just me, but I find it almost hypnotic. Maybe it’s because I can’t see it anywhere else other that when I’m aboard a ship. Could be it’s all a hallucination and I’m seeing only what I want to see and no one else can even make out what I’m on about. But then again, maybe a good hallucination every once in a while is just what I need to get through the hum drum of the daily world.
Either way…
I can live with that.
Next up: A discussion of magnetism
pretty much. 
Never heard of that one!!! I'd think if it wasn't listed on the TSA website it should be fine. I mean, TSA wouldn't be checking for Disney contraband, just TSA regulated items.
I love your writing style. This is going to be a fun one!
Got lucky there!
